Abstract:
The need to engage in collaboration is increasing due to both policy and program directives, and the complex, cross-boundary nature of forest resilience challenges. Cross-jurisdictional, multi-scale collaboration is necessary to achieve outcomes related to resilient landscapes and communities, such as increased community awareness of and support for prescribed fire and forestry operations, a long-term pipeline of forest and fuels treatments across land ownerships, and sufficient workforce. Collaboratives can provide the structures and processes needed to identify, connect, and align interests throughout problem assessment and goal setting; co-developing strategies at scale; coordinating operations; and supporting science-informed, continuous learning and adaptive management. However, getting to a point of stability and capacity to sustain collaborative functions long-term requires resources, and those resource needs change over time. The Stages of Collaborative Readiness Framework combines theory, existing frameworks, and practice-based knowledge to provide stage appropriate benchmarks and outcomes of collaboration through four iterative, overlapping, and non-linear stages: 1) developing a shared vision; 2) translating that vision into strategy; 3) translating strategy into action; 4) and scaling and sustaining the continuity of the collaborative environment as needed to achieve desired outcomes on the landscape. The framework encourages capacity investments in early-stage collaboratives or in landscapes without collaboration; and project investments in landscapes that have a co-developed spatial strategy and where partners are ‘ready’ to receive and deploy implementation funding. The framework emerged from research-informed practice in Northern Colorado Fireshed Collaborative, where it has been used to enhance the ability of conveners and partners to articulate capacity needs, allocate funding equitably and transparently, and report on collaborative progress; additional applications in other contexts will be discussed.
Bio:
Ch’aska Huayhuaca (she/her/hers) is a program manager and research associate at the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute at Colorado State University, where she contributes to and leads collaborative adaptive management processes addressing forest resilience, wildfire risk, and watershed health issues. She applies practical experience and social science expertise to evaluate the readiness, effectiveness, and adaptiveness of collaborative processes and performance, as well as the application of spatial and non-spatial decision support tools in collaborative forest and wildfire management settings. She previously led the Center for Collaborative Conservation’s Colorado Atlas of Collaborative Conservation project, and her dissertation focused on the origins, form, and function of collaborative conservation initiatives across the state. She received her Ph.D. from CSU’s Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, her M.S. in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at CSU, and her B.S. in Natural Resources at Cornell University.
