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INFLUENCING THE INTERNATIONAL FOREST POLICY: THE ROLE OF COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

By Purabi Bose

'Does research in collaboration with partners has any impact on shaping global forest policy?' is a question being asked more and more frequently. Often, the challenges faced by most academic research institutions while working with partners and trying to measure impacts are related to:

• interpreting the impact of research partnership, which is made difficult by the fact that different stakeholders interpret 'impact' in different ways.
• obstacles to implementation when working with 'partners'.

This paper will deal with the above-mentioned challenges and will address the following questions related to partnerships in adaptive collaborative management plans:

• What role is there for research?
• What is needed to facilitate the learning perspective in terms of the institutional environment, leadership and organisational change?
• What is the potential for research to contribute to improved livelihoods and sustainable forest management?

As far as the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) is concerned, researching collaboration with partners remains the key to success with regard to influencing major global policy issues - forests and people - and public opinion. The purpose of this paper is to present CIFOR's decade-long learning experience, process and strategy of working in close alliance with its partners.

The paper begins by exploring CIFOR's strategic relationship with regard to science initiatives undertaken with local communities, civil societies, academic and research institutes, governments, donors and policy makers. It then goes on to sketch out how networking, capacity building, bridging valuable links and acting as an intermediary among partners intersecting the global, national and local levels have had an impact on forest policy. Briefly, it illustrates how international institutes such as the World Bank, FAO, GEF/CBD, WRI, UNFF and ITTO, among other organisations, are utilising CIFOR's research and network studies for prioritising and disseminating purposes via their policy documents. These major institutes often provide support in the form of technical advice as well as financial investments in forest activities on behalf of governments, NGOs and academics. Thirdly, the paper addresses the achievements of CIFOR and its partners in assisting institutions and individuals from developing countries through its collaborative research approach.

The study corroborates other findings that 'partnership' research on forests and people is successful thanks to strong, strategic, shared leadership that purposely seeks to create a collaborative advantage. It also seeks to confirm that collaborative research has a higher level of mutual accountability and a shared vision with a sense of purpose. Findings primarily suggest that collaboration research yields a greater utility value through the dissemination and implementation of research outputs.

The study concludes that:

• partnerships can be best understood as a social instrument that can enhance policy effectiveness;
• although collaborative research is a slow process, its findings can influence major decision-making;
• collaborative research plays a crucial role in establishing networks and thereby wider dissemination.

Finally, we conclude that, while the impact of research on policies changes over a period of time, one thing that remains constant is the value of partnership.

Note: This impact adoption study (2003) is currently under process. It focuses on views of CIFOR's partners and CIFOR's ten long years of experience in collaborative forest (policy) research.

Further information:
Purabi Bose
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
P.O. Box 6596, JKPWB Jakarta 10065, Indonesia
E-mail: p.bose@cgiar.org

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