Principles for Collaborative Governance: Based on Experiences of Forest Management in Asian Countries

The commitment of various stakeholders in forest policy in the tropics and Japan was brought into the mainstream. The objective of the study was to demonstrate the principles of collaborative governance applicable to both developed and developing countries as an inevitable consequence of logically-proposed strategies, in order to tackle the enduring problems confronting the people.

In Japan iriai forests, or communal forests, were noticed by many scholars of Common-Pool Resource management because of the particularity of iriai rights. Beginning in the mid 1980s, city dwellers started visiting rural areas to help manage forests as forest volunteers for recreational purposes as well as for social justice. De facto iriai forest owners and forest volunteers, however, potentially conflict over the purposes and recognition of the forests. In the tropics, participatory forest management systems, such as social forestry, community forestry, community-based forest management, and others, were introduced from the late 1970s as a consequence of the failure of autocratic forest governance. The participation of various stakeholders, however, causes anxiety about being controlled by outsiders as well as facing difficulties in consensus building.

Under these circumstances, the people could take three options of social movements/strategies in terms of the response to globalization: resistance, adjustment, and eclectic strategies. Collaborative governance is embodied under the eclectic strategy. To tackle the barriers of the eclectic strategy, two important guidelines are proposed: (1) “graduated membership” of executive management bodies, and (2) “commitment principle” for decision-making, or a principle in which the authority of stakeholders is recognized to an extent that corresponds to their degree of commitment to relevant activities. “Commitment principle” functions effectively in the areas where local autonomy is granted by the government. An adoption of the principle brings about a phenomenon of relativizing the ownership. Social movements hold the keys to these trends.