Preferred presentation format: Refereed Paper

Affiliation(s): (1) School of Resource Management, University of Melbourne

(2) Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment.

	Title: Dr R. John Petheram Position: Senior Lecturer: People in resource management Organisation University of Melbourne, Creswick Campus. Contact email: johneth@unimelb.edu.au Phone: 03 53214101
	Title: Mr Peter Stephen Position: : Lecturer: Agroforestry /Community Management. Organisation: University of Melbourne, Parkville. Master Tree Growers Program, Australia. Contact email: pstephen@unimelb.edu.au Phone: 03 53214101

Keywords: Collaborative forest management, community, extension, collaboration

The trend towards participatory and learning-based approaches has become common to most extension agents working with private landholders across Australia. In contrast, professionals in forestry and other public land management agencies have traversed a somewhat different spectrum of approaches – from consultation and other tools of public engagement, to working with reference panels, stakeholders bodies and non-government groups. These agencies dealing with public natural resources – particularly forests – may now face a major paradigm shift – towards supporting citizens in collaborative management initiatives.

The global movement towards community forestry is phenomenal - in rate, diversity, and extent. Since the 1970s it has exploded from a few ‘common’ forests in countries like Switzerland, Italy and Mexico, to over 100 000 community forestry groups globally. While better-known examples are in Nepal, India, and The Philippines, but the concept has also caught on strongly in parts of Africa and South America. The USA, Canada and England have developed community forest programs in the past decade. In Australia, the Wombat State Forest was declared a pilot area for community forestry in Victoria in early 2003.

Redefinition of roles and retraining have become major activities in forestry agencies globally, to enable staff to cope with change from technocratic management and limited public engagement - to facilitators of collaborative partnerships.

Key learning points:

• a combination of ‘drivers’ can bring spectacular global change
• current modes of public engagement contrast strongly with concepts required in supporting collaborative resource management
• principles of collaboration can be learned, and applied locally.