Karen A. Kainer
School of Forest Resources and Conservation, CALS and Center for Latin American Studies
Community Forest Management (FOR 6934/LAS 6290)
Community Forest Management is a core course of UF’s Tropical Conservation and Development Concentration and Certificate Program. Rural communities have become an increasingly important stakeholder group in natural resource management and conservation. This trend is particularly salient in the developing world where at least 25% of tropical forests are owned or managed by communities. Community Forest Management provides multidisciplinary perspectives on the biophysical and socioeconomic contexts in which communities function, encouraging students to think critically about the real-world challenges of implementing this management approach. The course is team-taught by Dr. Kainer (forest ecologist) and Dr. Marianne Schmink (anthropologist). It integrates key theoretical and conceptual frameworks from the socioeconomic and biophysical sciences with practical aspects of forest management at the community level.
In discussing ways to improve this course during the Fall 2006 semester, enrolled students identified the need to learn concrete strategies and methods for not just studying forest-based communities, but integrating them more fully into student research agendas. In particular, students requested a session on taking research results back to communities in forms these local managers could understand and employ when making day-to-day forest management decisions. This grant will provide resources to achieve the following objectives:
(1) Permanently add a component on returning research results to local stakeholders to the existing Community Forest Management course; and
(2) With a UF graduate student, research strategies and methods for developing this component, and subsequently integrate these methodological findings into the Fall 2007 course.