Initial Reactions to Environmental Conflict Resolution

There are so many facets to environmental conflict resolution and so many players in government (EPA and DEQ), special interest (BP and Sierra Club), community organizations (Friends of the Rappahannock and Toast Masters), politicians (republican and democrat), the media (FOX and NY Times), and interested individuals among many more.  Not only are the organizations and people different in every conflict, but so are the topics.  A watershed in Oregon will have one distinct set of players while a watershed in Arizona will have an entirely different set.  How do you measure and compare each conflict and the resulting resolution in a way that allows ECR practitioners and researchers to compare them appropriately?  How can these comparisons be used to make future ECR processes better? 

There are some real parallels here to the K-12 education system in the US in that each teacher is evaluated and based on the results of student testing the teacher (and school) are given a score.  How can this be done appropriately for each of the intrinsic specialties that a teacher has?  Similarly, how can comparisons of strikingly different ECRs appropriately value the differences in each situation, while allowing practitioners and researchers to compare them?  It’s an important question, but one that must be answered in order to propel the field forward.  The value on ECR has been observed within agencies like the EPA and others opening up shop to include ECR departments within their fold along with consulting firms.  So, what do the criteria look like to evaluate one ECR from another?  I hope this course will help shed some light on this subject. 

Another major theme from the reading this week is the importance of communication in the ECR process.  For example, when the EPA, Ducks Unlimited, Green Peace, and a farmer’s cooperative sit down to talk about an environmental conflict each will have a different idea of what “mediation” is and what role the “facilitator” is actually going to play.  Not to mention very different knowledge levels of the specific environmental topic (such as climate change or stream buffers).  Without each group having a strong understanding of the language used during the resolution process any efforts could be hindered at least and slow moving at best.  I wonder if a mediator/facilitator has ever assigned a pre-session reading assignment about definitions and if this helped the participants?

Seem like I have more questions than answers for this week!  Looking forward to talking about this during class, see you Monday.