Year of publication 2002

This training package examines conflict within forest resource use and community-based forest management and offers strategies for managing it. In forest resource management, conflict in its many forms is inevitable and unavoidable. Most people working in community forestry would say that conflict comes with the territory. Forest resources are central to the social, cultural, political and economic fabric of forest communities. It has been prepared primarily for trainers who help people and organizations that work collaboratively in community forestry. The training package aims to support diverse and multiple forest user groups to manage conflicts that will inevitably arise in the protection, use and control of forest resources. A related goal is to strengthen participation and, thus, the role and recognition of local stakeholders (forest-dependent communities) in forest management. To achieve this, the objectives of the training package are to: increase knowledge about conflict in community- based forest management; improve understanding of how processes and outcomes of collaborative forest management and conflict are related, and how both need to be planned for and reviewed together; provide tools and aids for training in conflict analysis, selection of appropriate strategies, negotiation and facilitating resolution processes.