Ecological Knowledge Among Communities Managers a

Authors: Lucy Rist Charlie Shackleton Lily Gadamus F Stuart Chapin C Made Gowda Siddappa Setty Ramesh Kannan R Uma Shaanker

Publish Date: 2015/12/12

Volume: 57, Issue: 4, Pages: 798-813

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Abstract

Multiple actors are typically involved in forest management namely communities managers and researchers In such cases suboptimal management outcomes may in addition to other factors be symptomatic of a divergence in perspectives among these actors driven by fundamental differences in ecological knowledge We examine the degree of congruence between the understandings of actors surrounding key issues of management concern in three case studies from tropical subtropical and boreal forests We identify commonly encountered points of divergence in ecological knowledge relating to key management processes and issues We use these to formulate seven hypotheses about differences in the bodies of knowledge that frequently underlie communication and learning failures in forest management contexts where multiple actors are involved and outcomes are judged to be suboptimal Finally we present a set of propositions to acknowledge and narrow these differences A more complete recognition of the full triangulation between all actors involved and of the influence that fundamental differences in ecological knowledge can exert may help lead to a more fruitful integration between local knowledge and practice manager knowledge and practice and contemporary science in forest managementRamesh Kannan sadly passed away before the final publication of this manuscript his enthusiasm and friendship will be greatly missed by his colleagues We thank two anonymous reviewers for comments that improved the manuscript LR was supported in this work by an Alice Horsman Travelling Fellowship from Oxford University and by Future Forests a multidisciplinary research programme supported by the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research MISTRA the Swedish Forestry Industry the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences SLU Umeå University and the Forestry Research Institute of Sweden CS was supported the by Indian Council for Cultural Relations We gratefully thank actors at all three locations for sharing their time and knowledge

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