| Collaboration: Lessons Learned |
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Date Initiated:
Description:The Ecological Restoration Institute has been involved in a variety of projects that explored lessons learned from experience with collaboration. These include workshops and syntheses of social science research on collaboration. In 2003, ERI sponsored a workshop for community forestry group representatives and forest policy experts, who collectively identified key barriers to implementing collaborative forestry groups’ on-the-ground restoration projects and brainstormed recommended actions to address each of the barriers. Participants were from 20 different collaborative forestry groups, the USDA Forest Service, Pinchot Institute for Conservation, Society of American Foresters, and American Forests. Overall, workshop participants agreed that frustration and burnout in collaborative forestry is a result of several important and interrelated factors. First, the anticipation of unrealistic outcomes for collaborative efforts has created expectations that have not been fulfilled. Second, inconsistent commitment, participation, and support of collaboratives within federal land management agencies have made it difficult for collaborative efforts to succeed. Finally, collaborative group participations may lack the capacity or experience to deliver outcomes. To bring some clarity to the concept of collaborative forestry in the United States, social scientists at the Ecological Restoration Institute, working with researchers from Southern Oregon University, Colorado State University, and the USDA Forest Service, have reviewed and synthesized the extensive scholarly literature on collaboration as it relates to forest restoration and fuels management. The results are reported in an ERI working paper and a USDA Forest Service General Technical Report. ERI’s short (4-page) guide, Collaboration as a Tool in Forest Restoration, provides a working definition of collaboration for forest restoration, describes different forms of collaboration and best practices for effective collaboration, and outlines the benefits and the costs of collaborative forestry. The in-depth report, Social Science to Improve Forest Management: A Synthesis of Research on Collaboration, details potential benefits of collaboration, stages of the collaborative process, challenges to building and sustaining capacity for collaboration, policy resources for collaboration, and keys for successful collaboration. Project Status:The projects described above are all complete, although ERI staffers continue to explore the benefits of and barriers to collaboration in forest restoration. Four publications are currently available and a journal article and book chapter are currently in progress, with publication expected in 2007. Lessons learned from this work have been incorporated into ERI’s Collaboration Training Module and Multiparty Monitoring Guide. Publications:
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