Community forestry: What works for the community and forest

The purpose of the research is to investigate 'what works' in community forestry in the Surge Narrows area of British Columbia, Canada, and in the Santa Cruz area of Cagayan de Oro, the Philippines. Both cases involve individuals who use community forestry to act on their concerns about community development and forest ecology by organizing through their local community association. Over the last ten years, members of the Surge Narrows Community Association (SNCA) and the Santa Cruz United Farmer's Association (SCUFA) have developed community forestry arrangements that build on local ecological knowledge and reflect community organizing and stewardship traditions. In that time, they have dropped some arrangements and maintained those that seem generally to 'work'. Rather than setting out with a fixed definition, the research starts from the assumption that community forestry is shaped by complex interactions and relationships at the local level, and 'what works' is best determined by the participants themselves. It sets out to investigate what these relationships mean to participants and local forests, making use of recent research on community-based management systems. Ultimately, three layers of insight are combined to build a rich picture of 'what works' in community forestry in Surge Narrows and Santa Cruz.