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Abstract
The indigenous people of Talaanding in Basac village, Bukidnon, the Philippines, had
to deal with a high occurrence of disease and a high number of malnourished children in their
village. This situation was due to the inability of the local health clinic to provide adequate
health service and medicine to the community. Using an approach that promotes social
learning and collective action, a CIFOR Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM)
research team facilitated a group of women, mostly the village health workers, in addressing
their local health problems by using their local knowledge of medicinal plants and herbal
medicines. This paper describes the ACM concept and the social learning processes that the
women went through in identifying their health-related problems in the village, devising
strategies to deal with those problems, monitoring the outcomes of their action, and
improving their subsequent strategies. This paper also shows that the ACM processes
promoted not only collective action and social learning among the women, but also helps to
revive local knowledge of herbal medicines and conserve genetic resources in the area. The
sustainability of the women’s efforts will depend on their ability to mobilize more
community members to manage the established herb gardens, to enforce rules so that the
costs and benefits of the gardens can be shared more equally, to link-up with local
government and other stakeholders, and to continuously learn and adapt their management
strategies.