VIETNAM 1 March 2000

CHANGING FORESTRY EDUCATION:

Enhancing Beta/Gamma Professionalism

By

Niels Röling

Wageningen University

The Netherlands

Keynote Paper for
‘Changing Learning & Education in Forestry’
A Workshop in Educational Reform
16 –19 April 2000
Sa Pa, Vietnam

1. Introduction

This month it is thirty years ago that I became a member of the social science faculty of Wageningen Agricultural University. I had a fresh PhD in communication and glowed with self-confidence and ambition. Neither lasted very long. If you are ambitious, avoid being a social scientist in a technical university. And the same goes for self-confidence. For most agricultural scientists, especially in those years, social science was an oxymoron. It does not live up to the minimal criteria for professionalism in using the most important tool we have to create opportunities for ourselves. With social science ‘you can’t send a man to the moon’ is how one of my (male) colleagues put it, after listening to one of my better public lectures.

Our most-influential-professor-ever had defined agriculture as ‘harnessing the energy of the sun through plants for human purposes’ (De Wit, 1974). Assuming the human purposes, the scientists had set out to optimise harvesting sun energy and developed powerful and influential crop growth simulation models which incorporated the knowledge of most disciplines in the university, except of course, that of social sciences. We were a pretty much marginalised.

I was better off than most. I had completed my PhD under the supervision of Everett M. Rogers of Diffusion of Innovations fame (Rogers, 1995) and joined the Department of Extension Education, started by Van Den Ban (Van den Ban and Hawkins, 1996). This department was considered an ally by the technical scientists. After all, once the fundamental scientists had discovered the truth about the world out there, and once the applied scientists had used that knowledge to develop the best technical means to serve human ends, we came in handy to ensure that those products were delivered to the ultimate users. We are still not above cashing in on that expectation to capture consultancies and rope in MSc students.

The situation only changed gradually. A new perspective emerged in Health Education, with which we in extension education were closely involved. Green and Kreuter (1991) developed a model which gave social science a place of its own. The epidemiologist (i.e., the natural scientist) studies morbidity and mortality in a population. Heart disease is a case in point. Causes might include hereditary, environmental and behavioural factors, such as smoking, bad nutritional habits, lack of exercise, and stress. Behaviour is not the realm of the epidemiologist. Social scientists, especially psychologists, are required to study the ‘determinants’ of behaviour (as we called it then). On the basis of knowledge of these determinants, we developed persuasive intervention strategies to change the undesirable behaviour. It is of interest here to note that our persuasive interventions only used information about the impact of the behaviour on the body to a limited extent. We soon found out that showing pictures of cancerous lungs is not the best way to prevent people from smoking. Many medical doctors smoke. (Scientific) knowledge is not a sufficient condition for behaviour change.

Required was an understanding of the role of smoking in the life styles of people (Koelen, 1988), the social functions of smoking, the reward structures that supported it, the tug of war between tobacco advertising and counter messages, mechanisms such as selective perception, repression, and so forth. But equally important were supportive policies, such as banning smoking in public places, limiting the influence of tobacco companies, etc. In all, Green’s model provided us with space to develop our own discipline. Social science and technical science each had their own theatre of operations and were complementary. After all, the epidemiologists would again be required to evaluate whether the social scientists had been successful in reducing morbidity and mortality.

The rural sociologists in our university developed a less complementary, if not confrontational role. They formed the ‘Wageningen School of Actor Oriented Sociology’ (e.g., Long, 1984). It emphasised that people are strategic agents who struggle in the arena of life to realise their projects. A science-based development project just introduces some other actors in the arena and its outcome can never be predicted since that outcome is the resultant of the struggle among the many strategic actors who appropriate the project for their own purposes. Hence the intervention was ‘demythologised’ (Long and Van der Ploeg, 1989). Systems do not have goals, people have goals. One cannot assume general development goals for people and develop the best technical means to achieve them. Knowledge is not objectively true, but used ‘on the battlefield’ (Long and Long 1992). And we in our Department of Extension Education, with its focus on ‘determinants of behaviour’ and the use of communication as an ‘instrument of change’, were little more than ‘social engineers’. It required a bit of swallowing, but we learned a lot. In all, the Wageningen School of Sociology became another autonomous social science unit within the technical university. It did not develop an effective interface between the technical and social sciences.

The university is now entering a new and very interesting period, let us call it the period of ‘Beta/Gamma science’, where Beta stands for the natural sciences and Gamma for the social sciences. Together, Beta and Gamma sciences are becoming increasingly involved in the ‘interactive design’ of technology, farming systems, knowledge systems, natural resource use and other forms of ‘land use negotiation’ (e.g., Leeuwis, 1999). Note that we do not talk of land use planning any longer (Brinkman, 1994).

The Beta/Gamma focus was not developed by the social scientists. It is more accurate to say that in departments such as irrigation, entomology, forestry, soil and water conservation, ecology, and spatial planning, maverick scientists and doctoral students began to take seriously developments which were taking place in the field and which emerged from the recognition that the ‘delivery’ of science-based innovations to ‘ultimate users’ such as farmers simply does not work. A typical example was the failure of the Green Revolution in the highly complex, variable, diverse, and risk prone rain fed farming systems in hilly and mountainous areas, such as the Deccan Plateau in India and most of Africa (Chambers and Ghildyal, 1984, Chambers and Jiggins, 1987). As a result, but usually not without considerable struggle with the established positivist order, new issues and fresh perspectives were developed in several of our university departments (table 1).

Table 1: Examples of ‘Beta/Gamma’ areas that developed in
originally purely technical (‘Beta’) departments

We are still in the middle of these developments. We are also still in the middle of trying to develop adequate curricula and teaching programmes, in terms of content and process, to prepare our graduates for Beta/Gamma tasks. In many departments, the struggle is still on, as some professors are reluctant to give up achievements hard won in positivist pursuits. Lest I am misunderstood, I do not reject their positivist pursuits, but their efforts to block significant development. I strongly believe in the usefulness of maintaining a capacity to do pure, laboratory, on-station, hard science, under positivist/realist assumptions. But I also see the detrimental effects of the old guard continuing to dominate the choices of the university, the formulation of its mandate, and especially the self-destructive public image it creates.

The exciting thing that is happening is that a totally new additional area of science professionalism is emerging. This professionalism is based on the assumption that ‘knowledge is effective action in the domain of existence’ (Maturana and Varela, 1987), and not the accumulation of a store of objective truths. When it comes to designing effective action in the domain of existence, pure science has an important role, but in addition, we have to deal with people’s objectives and opinions as ‘extended facts’ (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993), and with shared cognitions, intentionality, and institutions as essential design ingredients. In such design, people are not objects that can be instrumentally or even strategically manipulated. They must participate. The design must be interactive (Röling, 1996). Box 1 provides an example.

Box 1: An example of the complementarity of scientific research and interactive design
(based on Van Schouwbroeck, 1999).

Newly graduated, a young entomologist obtained a job in an integrated rural development programme in Eastern Bhutan, financed by the Dutch government. The first problem the young scientist faced was to decide the problem he would choose to work on. This was an important decision. At first, pests in maize seemed indicated. Not only were there a lot of them, but maize was clearly the most important staple crop of local farmers. But our young scientist hesitated to take the decision himself. He consulted farmers. It soon turned out that farmers were not the least bit interested in maize production. As long as they had enough, which was normally the case, they did not bother. There was no market for any surplus, and if they had a surplus, which they usually had, they used it to produce alcoholic drinks. After considerable time and careful study of the local farming system, our man discovered that a small citrus fruit, the Mandarin, was an important cash crop which local farmers could sell in nearby India. A major problem with the Mandarin was fruit drop. Our entomologist investigated the problem. Although local people were not aware of it, the fruit drop was caused by the larvae of the Chinese fruit fly, Bactrocera minax. Being able to control this pest would be very beneficial for farmers in terms of income size and dependability.

Developing an effective control required substantial biological on-station research with respect to the life cycle of the fly, its eating and egg laying habits, the pheromones that attract it, etc. But having done that research, the entomologist discovered that his on-station work was not sufficient to develop ‘effective action in the domain of existence’.

In a number of pilot villages, he then set out, with local farmers, to develop the procedures, (collective) practices and institutional arrangements that farmers found acceptable and understood, that fitted their culture, and that were effective in controlling the fly at the same time. It was an exciting process that captured the entomologist’s imagination. He finally wrote a dissertation on his on-station research and his interactive design work under the supervision of an entomologist and a social scientist, and ended up a ‘beta/gamma scientist’.

It should be mentioned here that our entomologist failed to scale up his success in pilot villages to an effective government programme.

The emergent additional Beta/Gamma perspective has important conceptual implications.

• Innovation is no longer the end-of-pipe outcome of a linear process starting with scientists discovering the truth and developing innovations which users ‘adopt’. Innovation emerges out of interaction among complementary stakeholders in ‘theatres of innovation’ (Röling, 1988; Engel and Salomon, 1987; Röling and Wagemakers, 1998).
• Farmers are not ultimate users of science-based component technologies but experts in managing agro-ecosystems (a principle of the Asian Community IPM Programme).
• Sustainability is not the hard attribute of an ecosystem but the emergent property of a soft system (Bawden and Packam, 1991).
• Since humans have become a major force of nature (Lubchenko, 1998), it is not natural laws that determine the direction in which natural systems evolve, but human intentionality, agreement, conflict, and, hopefully, forward looking collaborative adaptive management (Buck et al, in press).

The rest of the paper takes off from the assumption that foresters will increasingly need to be beta/gamma scientists, able to operate at the interface of ecosystem and society, or better still, able to operate the duality of the natural and human dimensions of natural resource management (Jiggins et al, 2000). First, I will describe some key paradigms that, in my experience, need to be captured by beta/gamma professionals. I will then present Community IPM as an example of a successful large scale Beta/Gamma programme, focusing on issues such a scaling up, institutional support, and staff training. I will then describe conditions for learning the new professionalism, to the extent that we understand them. Since this involves considerable institutional change, I will end with an example of a project, ISNAR-Nuevo Paradigma, that is deliberately trying to introduce institutional change in the present ‘change of epoch’.

2. Key paradigms for Beta/Gamma professionalism

As I said above, there is no question of consensus with respect to the content or process of Beta/Gamma training. I briefly present what I believe to be crucial perspectives that underpin both process and content.

Box 2 gives an example of a nature reserve considered as a soft system. Simply put, this means that the boundaries of the system are arbitrary and defined by people, that looking at the reserve as a system is a deliberate human construction, and that the direction in which nature develops in the reserve is the outcome of human intentionality. That intentionality is shaped by conflict, negotiation and hopefully agreement among inter-dependent multiple stakeholders with multiple purposes and perspectives. A key point is that sustainable management of the reserve requires agreement and concerted action.

From this perspective, professional forestry means being able to play a key role, not so much in directly managing trees and other forest resources in a sustainable manner, as in facilitating local people to do so. Foresters must be able to foster the required local knowledge, the agreements, the shared monitoring systems, the institutions, and the collective action, of the stake-holders who collectively de facto, if not de jure, control the future of the forest.

Beta & Gamma, hard & soft systems, and positivism & constructivism tend to contrast hard, objectivist, bio-physical (natural) science, on the one hand, and soft, participatory, constructivist, social science on the other. It is my experience that economics does not get talked about much in this context. Yet, more than perhaps natural science, economics has shaped our thinking, especially what we believe about people and society. Economics is rather blind to processes of learning, collective action and communication. Especially neo-liberal economics, the dominant strain, is based on rather narrow axioms about people’s knowledge, preferences and (rational) choices. The interaction among selfish, strategic actors, left free to pursue their business, is more or less automatically (‘invisible hand’) expected to lead to ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’. Where the market fails, fiscal policy and regulatory measures are the preferred instruments. In this type of economics, there is little space for processes by which stakeholders learn to agree to do things differently and to act collectively. Hence it presents a blinding insight with respect to the issues that interest us.

It is my experience that economists are much less inclined to professionally take on board interactive design than natural scientists. It simply does not fit with their assumptions about people (which they consider scientific ‘facts’). There is no doubt that professional forestry requires insight in economics. There is also no doubt that stakeholders in forests, when involved in interactive design, will take into account economic considerations. But I personally have seen little evidence that economics is taking the gamma dimension seriously, preferring instead to deal with human messy situations by assuming people’s goals. Hence it can concentrate on rational goal seeking and act as if it were a hard science. In table 1, economics is absent for a that reason.

I believe that, in training forestry professionals, it is particularly important to discuss the axiomatic basis of economics (assumptions of perfect information, externally determined given preferences and rational choice theory), and to contrast ‘economic rationality’ with ‘ecological rationality’ based on principles of maintaining structural coupling between organism and domain of existence (Maturana and Varela, 1987; Röling and Jiggins, 2000).

What I have said concerns the dominant neo-liberal strain of economics. Especially institutional economics has played an important role in research on social dilemmas (e.g., the prisoners’ dilemma), and on common property resource management (e.g., Ostrom, 1992). This work has been particularly influential in community forestry (box 4).

Box 4: Community forestry in Nepal (based on Potters, 1998)

As so many countries, the government of Nepal in the 1950s considered it prudent, from the point of view of democratisation of forest management, to take over the private forests in the country, which until then had been managed under various forms of ‘feudal’ tenure, including community control. And, as other countries, also the government of Nepal experienced that public properties tend to become open access goods, from which everyone tries to get as much as possible before others do. This is the classical setting for Hardin’s (1968) ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, itself a misnomer because it is not the commons that are necessarily destroyed, but common pool resource under an open access regime (Steins, 1999). Nepal has now embraced a community forestry policy under which forests are given to local communities to manage under strict conditions. The forest is clearly demarcated (often using local people’s knowledge to identify the old boundaries). The people who have access to the community forest are clearly defined. The sustainable take-off is agreed among those who have access. A forest warden is appointed by the community to monitor the use of the forest, to apply agreed-upon sanctions in the case of misuse and to collect a small fee to maintain himself as a ‘public good’. The whole set up is managed by a community forest management committee. Of course, some of these community forests are more successful than others. But the case study on which this box is based reports that agreeing to a limited sustainable off-take, which is the same for each household irrespective of its size, meant for some villagers that they had to sell some of their livestock because they would no longer be able to feed them. This was done without much ado. Furthermore, the system seemed rather robust in that villagers preferred to stick to the agreement even when the leaders sometimes took more for themselves than agreed. Also the fact that the male guards are not allowed to touch women means that they cannot catch female offenders, a situation apparently profited from with gusto and laughter. Problems occur especially with payment for the services for the guards, and this undermines the viability of some community forests.

‘In the emerging theory of living systems, mind is not a thing, but a process. It is cognition, the process of knowing, and it is identified with the process of life itself. This is the essence of the Santiago theory of cognition, proposed by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (1987)’ (Capra, 1996: 257).

Their starting point was the question: how do organisms perceive? Take a frog looking at a fly. Their research showed that the image of the fly can not be projected on the central nervous system of the frog. In fact, the physical processes that govern the image of the fly (light waves) are totally different from the neurological processes that determine the image created in the central nervous system of the frog. One could say that the central nervous system is informationally closed. There is no way that the fly can be ‘objectively’ projected. But the presence of a fly can trigger change in the central nervous system of the frog. The frog ‘does not bring forth the fly, but a fly’. The construction of reality is not a human prerogative but a quality of all living organisms.

But, say Maturana and Varela, the frog does not bring forth any fly (as pure relativists would have us believe). It brings forth a fly the frog can catch and eat. Organisms and their environment are structurally coupled. They maintain this coupling through mutual perturbation. The way organisms bring forth a world allows them to maintain structural coupling with their environment. This leads Maturana and Varela to the startling and powerful definition of knowledge as effective action in the domain of existence, which I mentioned before.

According to Maturana’s and Varela’s definition, mental process is immanent in matter at all levels of life. There is no organism that is not capable of cognitive action, that is, of assessing experience according to some emotion and taking action accordingly. ‘The new concept of cognition, according to the Santiago theory, is much broader than that of thinking. It involves perception, emotion, and action - the entire process of life’ (Capra, 1996: 170). The cognitive system as a co-evolving duality of the perceiving organism and its environment is sketched in figure 1. We observe that the system includes (1) an organism or agent that can perceive the environment and take action in it; and (2) the domain of existence with which the agent is structurally coupled. We further distinguish (3) an ecosystem, i.e., a space in which multiple agents (both human and non-human), interact and mutually determine each other’s domain of existence.

(After Maturana and Varela, 1987; Capra, 1996)

It is important to note here that Maturana in particular does not accept the identification of ‘emotion’ with ‘intentionality’, nor, further, a definition of ‘intentionality’ as implying some a priori setting of an objective to be attained, that motivates action. The biological basis of the cognitive system implies on the contrary, that the triggered response of a perceiving organism’s cognitive processes to its environment, is necessarily something that occurs ‘in the moment’. Learning, that is, occurs in the continuous present and is necessarily adaptive (Jiggins et al., 2000)².

I find the cognitive system very important for several reasons. In the first place, it allows us to discuss the duality of beta and gamma perspectives. In figure 1, effective action in the domain of existence obviously requires an effective understanding of the working of the domain. ‘Technology’ is needed to intervene in the domain. Effectiveness requires perception of one’s impact in the domain (feedback). Decision Support Systems (such GIS) to inform us about the domain. All that can be considered a Beta perspective. But then, the domain usually consists of other cognitive agents. Thus monitoring in the Nepalese community forest is partly a question of the state of the forest, but very much more a question of making sure that other people do not take more than their due so that one can confidently serve the collective interest. Hence we are talking Gamma.

In the second place, the cognitive system allows a discussion of learning, as a process of mutual adaptation and reaching consistency among the elements of the cognitive system. In fact, the cognitive system allows a sophisticated discussion of learning.

In the third place, where sustainable forest management is very much a question of collaboration and collective action by the stakeholders involved, the simple model of the cognitive system allows discussion of the processes involved in collective cognitive agency, i.e., the movement from a situation with multiple, often conflicting agents, to one characterised by collective cognitive agency where issues such as signification, legitimation, and domination play essential roles (Giddens, 1984).

Finally, the Santiago theory of cognition seems to provide a powerful common perspective that unifies biology, systems theory, economics, psychology, and other perspectives.

3. Case study: Community IPM in Indonesia, with special attention to training and up-scaling³

This third part of my paper deals with a case study of a change programme that satisfies the following criteria:

• It is large scale, in that it affected more than 400,000 farmers and hence has been able to tackle the crucial issue of ‘scaling up’;
• It represents a total transformation in approach from the old transfer of technology model;
• It allows us to examine what it takes to effectively create change, notwithstanding bureaucracy and powerful vested interests;
• It has paid very considerable attention to learning and its facilitation as a key ingredient of change, including the training of professionals.

Although it does not deal with forestry, I have selected it because it seems that it can teach us very valuable lessons now that the forestry sector is seeking to institutionalise the many Beta/Gamma practices that innovative forestry projects around the globe have been pioneering.

Integrated Pest Management in irrigated rice in Indonesia emerged in response to a second generation problem of the Green Revolution. The use of pesticides had led to resistance and resurgence of pests, particularly the brown plant hopper (bph), which had never been much of a problem before because its natural enemies kept it in check. However, in the late seventies and early eighties, bph caused very extensive damage which actually affected rice yields to a point where it became politically significant. The Suharto regime had learned that rice food security is a key factor in political survival and hence it took drastic action against pesticide use, once it was convinced by scientists that pesticides were the cause of the pest problem. This political will was important because pesticides had become a vital element in a system of kickbacks for top officials, additional income for extension workers, and so forth. But the political priority was such that, in 1986, 57 broad spectrum pesticides were banned for use in rice and in the following years the subsidy on pesticide use which had been 85% was removed. It is in this political context that the IPM training programme was started. Notwithstanding the conducive political context, the IPM Training Programme has had to continuously fight off efforts by the pesticide industry and officials to sabotage it.

IPM training started off by allocating unused moneys in the regular extension service for a crash campaign to introduce IPM through the regular extension service. Thousands of leaflets, folders and other materials were printed, staff was trained, and so forth. This effort remained without effect. Throughout Asia the experience has been the same. It is virtually impossible to introduce IPM through the existing extension system based on the idea of transfer of component technologies (Matteson et al, 1994). For local farmers to practice IPM, that is anticipate pest problems on the basis of observation, and to rely on their skills in doing so, takes more than being told. It requires a substantial learning process. Conventional extension agents have been deformed and have to unlearn a great deal before they can facilitate farmer learning. The Indonesian IPM Training Programme (unique in that its manager was an adult education specialist, while the scientists involved were real beta/gamma entomologists), decided to take a totally different route. It established the programme outside the Ministry of Agriculture in the Food Security Planning Unit, and used field workers (‘pest observers’ without extension training) from the Plant Protection Division. Thus it set up shop in a niche where it could develop an effective prototype IPM training.

The Programme developed its training approach, the by now famous Farmer Field School (FFS), very carefully, together with farmers and together with future trainers. In fact, developing the FFS was one of the ways by which the first trainers were trained. This cadre of trainers which was gradually expanded over the years to some 2100 now, has been a crucial back bone of the whole programme. These trainers were first trained themselves as if they were farmers. That is, they followed prototype farmer field schools and did everything the farmers were expected to. ‘Walk the talk’ is an extremely important principle in training the new professionals.

Developing the FFS required a great deal of scientific input. The curriculum and the agro-ecosystem analysis on which it is based, as well as the various exercises, such as the insect zoo, the defoliation experiments and so on, are all based on sound entomological and ecological understanding of the age old sawah rice system. I personally find the IPM Training Programme a fascinating example of the new roles that scientists need to develop in the new paradigm.

One of the key points in the success of the IPM programme is that it works. Using IPM leads to effective pest control. Many officials keep up the idea that one needs to protect rice production against ‘outbreaks’. But with IPM there simply are no outbreaks. The effectiveness of IPM is based on the robustness of the sawah system and on the fact that farmers benefit economically from reduced pesticide use (especially after the removal of subsidies)

The IPM practices that were finally developed were based on the following principles: (1) grow a healthy crop; (2) use natural processes; (3) the farmer is an expert. The FFS is based on the idea that farmers must learn by doing and by discovering things for themselves. The IPM trainer is not expected to ‘deliver’ the message. They key ingredient in the season long training with meetings once a week is the field in which groups of trainees observe insect life according to certain prescribed routines. Farmers are expected to analyse their results and come up with their own conclusions. The Programme has confidence that, when farmers follow a proper decision making procedure, they will come up with the best answer, even if that is the use of pesticides. Hence the intervention shifts from content to process. This is a very difficult step to take for scientists and agricultural officials.

One of the important issues faced by the IPM Training Programme was ‘scaling up’. Given that Java alone literally has millions of small-scale rice farmers, how does one expand the programme from the bridgehead, even after training 2100 trainers? This question has plagued the programme for a long time, and it has deliberately paid a great deal of attention to it. Various models were tried. One was to use the conventional extension service. What finally emerged is the use of farmer trainers. From each FFS two farmers were selected: the best professional in terms of technical farming and the best ‘politician’, i.e., the farmer with the most influence on others. The farmers thus selected were assembled with similar others in new FFS in which training issues were addressed. Thus trained, farmer trainers were supported with resources to train other farmers. This was a new idea: spending public money on farmers to act as trainers. Earlier it has already proved very difficult to get World Bank officials and government workers to agree to pay for snacks during FFS. One reason that the use of farmer trainers worked is that the financing shifted to local governments. Hence the programme decentralised (under the leadership of trusted senior IPM trainers who had been with the Programme for a long time). Farmer trainers now have trained the majority of the 400,000 + farmers who have been reached by the Programme. What is more, the farmer trainers have begun to organise, to form active networks of professionals and to run IPM locally. Thus Community IPM was born, an IPM programme that is run locally by farmers, and local government officials, and overseen by senior decentralised trainers. To establish these conditions, in terms of creating channels of finance, acceptance by the Ministry of Agriculture and foreign donors, and political support has been and still is a major struggle.

The IPM Training Programme paid a great deal of attention to ‘PR’. That is, it invested a great deal of resources and energy in publicity about the successes that were being achieved and in involving senior politicians and officials in the programme. They were encouraged to take ownership of the success.

4. Simple Framework for thinking about learning-based transformation

The experience with IPM has led to the development of a very simple framework for learning-based transformation (Röling and Wagemakers, 1998). This framework is presented in Table 2.

Table 2: A Simple Framework for learning-based
transformation applied to IPM training in irrigated rice

This framework has a number of advantages. First, it draws attention to important factors easily overlooked (such as the institutional support framework. Second, it is coherent in that all elements of the framework make sense together. This becomes very visible if one uses the same framework on the conventional transfer of technology model (table 3). Third, it allows integrating technical (beta) science and gamma science, by linking the practice (i.e., stakeholders’ effective action in their domain of existence) to the learning, institutional and policy conditions required to allow the practice.

Table 3: The Simple Framework applied to transfer of technology

Thus the simple framework allows construction of coherent and consistent ‘praxeologies’ (i.e., theories for supporting practice). It is not the place here to develop a framework for forestry education. It is my experience that the simple framework allows for discovery learning, in that participants in workshops, planning groups and others get a kick out of using the framework, suitably provided with empty cells, to figure out the requirements in their own sector. It would be of interest to use the framework for situations in which collective cognitive agency is a condition for the sustainable management of a natural resource, such as a water catchment or forest.

5. Institutional change: the example of INAR Nuevo Paradigma

I end this paper by providing a brief description of an innovative project that tries to tackle the issue of institutional change head on. In the Indonesian IPM programme, the innovation was largely brought about by establishing a parallel institutional framework that avoided the deadly momentum of the ministry of agriculture. It will not always be possible to do so. In fact, it is likely that changing forestry education will have to tackle institutional change. I therefore briefly present ISNAR Nuevo Paradigma⁴.

The project is based on the following argument. Humanity is experiencing a change of epoch: simultaneous and qualitative changes in the relations of production, power relations, human experience and culture. These changes generate turbulence. This turbulence ruptures the values, concepts, approaches, models and paradigms that guide and shape institutions, causing uncertainty, discontinuity, disorientation, insecurity, instability and generalised vulnerability. To reverse their vulnerability, most organisations are struggling to build a new basis for their institutional sustainability. Hence the organisations need to innovate and manage institutional change. In a change of epoch, institutional innovation precedes technological innovation. The Project focuses on collaboration with institutions for agricultural research and development to build institutional capacity in the strategic management of institutional change. The key words are institutional vulnerability and the need to focus on institutional sustainability. Hence the Project appeals directly to the felt needs of people in organisations.

The Project works together with agricultural organisations in 12 Latin American countries which all have enough confidence in the project to commit substantial resources, especially by freeing quite senior personnel for collaboration with the project (e.g., participating in workshops) and for taking on roles as change agents within the organisations (e.g., through pilot projects). The project-specific finance underpins the core team, the workshops, the electronic network, the newsletter, the research activities, etc.. The confidence that organisations in 12 countries have in the Project is one of its major achievements and can perhaps be explained by its Latin American ownership and the dynamism and conviction of its young initiators.

The strategic approach to building institutional sustainability is based on five dimensions: future, context, participation, strategy and management. For each of these dimensions, the Project is developing training modules. In addition to these dimensions, the Project is developing two themes: (1) training/facilitation in the strategic management of institutional change, and (2) research in the management of institutional innovation. A few examples of each of these elements suffice here. With respect to future, the project has developed a methodology to build alternative scenarios. Context features a module that focuses on a methodology for analysing technological demands in agro-food chains. The module participation focuses on (a) participation as the power to influence policies, plans, programmes, budgets, priorities and decisions and (b) collective value added. The management module builds a methodology for the collective construction and appropriation of an institutional management model. Table 4 tries to summarise the Project in a ‘Simple Framework’.

Table 4: The Simple Framework applied to ISNAR Nuevo Paradigma

6. Conclusion

In our world dominated by economic thinking, we tend to focus on advantage, incentives, rates of return, and self-interest when we think about innovation. It is my experience that beta/gamma thinking, developing new ideas, frameworks, methodologies and especially engaging in collaborative or participatory change is in itself immensely exciting, satisfying and motivating. That is why it is crucial to provide ample space for ownership, involvement and commitment. In a change process, the enemies are feelings of being threatened or left out, having one’s turf or competence invaded, being disenfranchised, or losing control. It is not easy to navigate between strategic considerations aiming at winning in battle, and communicative considerations aiming at collaboration in collective action.

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Notes