Document(s) 3 of 24

Despite what you see on MTV, there is more to Asia than shopping malls, cell phones and Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you are willing to scratch the surface and follow dirt roads into the hills and forests, it is quickly apparent that many people still cannot enjoy the region's famous prosperity.

These are women who wake up in the morning to fetch water and fuelwood; children who help their parents in the fields and forests; grandparents who wait for their relatives to send money from town. These are people who fish and farm, hunt and harvest, sell a bit, sew a bit, get sick too often and talk to make the day go by. You can list all their belongings on a single page. Often the only real productive assets they have are their knowledge, creativity and willingness to work, a small parcel of borrowed or rented land, and access to places where they can fish and collect wild products – and even much of that is being lost, exhausted or eroded.

No high-yielding crop variety, mosquito net or new well is going to solve all these people's problems. The situations in the various remote and inhospitable places they live in are so diverse that no shoe fits all. The families typically need to do small amounts of many different things to get by; so just improving one of them usually won't help them that much. Although some people may be able to earn more money by moving to town or growing vegetables, for many others those are not real options.

A more promising approach is to provide these people with skills and information, and help them get organized. That can build their self-confidence and give them tools to solve their various problems. Much of this needs to centre on their natural resources, since that is one of the few things they have. Government agencies and NGOs also have to change their policies and the way they do business to support villagers' efforts, instead of making life harder for them. That is particularly true when it comes to policies and practices that affect peoples' access to land, forests, grasslands and fish.

Research can play a very important role in making those things happen, but it cannot be just any old research. It has to be research that is deliberately designed to help local people, government officials, NGOs and other groups think through issues, reflect on their own experiences, support positions that favour poorer and less powerful people, and provide relevant information about markets and technologies. The researchers themselves must be committed to achieving real change and seeing things through. They must also be savvy enough to understand all the different interests that exist in local communities and avoid being hijacked by the agendas of the rich and the powerful. Otherwise, their work may end up leaving out women, tribal peoples and others that usually get forgotten.

For some time now Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has been working to support precisely that type of research. This book was designed to share some of the more interesting lessons coming out of their research projects on community-based natural resource management in Asia. In particular, it focuses on 11 research projects carried out by national researchers from Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Laos, Mongolia, the Philippines and Vietnam between 1997 and 2004, and shares some of the more general insights coming from all that work.

The stories here are just that: real stories about real lives. By reading them you can get a sense of what the researchers did and why, how they interacted with the different groups, what worked, what didn't and what they took away from it all. You will also get a sense of how the researchers tried to spread the messages about one group's successes and failures to other groups, so that the work could have a larger impact.

There is a lot of wisdom in these pages, as well as common sense. You will find some answers, but no road maps or magic bullets. Each new country or new group of researchers will have to work through their specific situation and find measures that fit for them. This book can inform and inspire the process for doing exactly that. It certainly inspired me.

David Kaimowitz
Director General
Center for International Forestry Research

Document(s) 3 of 24