Defining Environmental “Conflict Resolution”

If “conflict resolution” happened in a forest, and nobody was around to facilitate it, would it still be “conflict resolution”?

In an article in the most recent Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Patricia Orr, Kirk Emerson, and Dale Keyes report on the development of an evaluation framework for conflict resolution practice in environmental and natural resource disputes. I’m entirely sold on the idea that a more nuanced, contextually-responsive set of evaluation tools are needed for ADR in general, and for conflict resolution in the public policy setting in particular. I am still mulling over the content of the framework they present, but it made for interesting reading.

One piece of the article jumped out at me, though. The authors suggest (largely as an aside) that environmental conflict resolution necessarily involves:

(1) environmental or natural resource conflicts (fair enough),

(2) “a process intention to seek agreement” (not positive what a process intention is, but I think I get what they mean), and

(3) “involvement of an independent, third-party facilitator or mediator.” (?!)

I wouldn’t be at all surprised by this third component of their definition if they were presenting a framework for assessing mediators’ performances. Then, we’d certainly need to make sure that there was actually a mediator involved.

But to include/exclude conflict resolution practices on the basis of the involvement /non-involvement of
a third-party seems to me like it misses the possibility that conflict resolution principles might be applied (indeed, might be most effectively applied) by the principals to a dispute, rather than only by outsiders. And that, in turn, seems to me to present selection problems, at least, when considering an evaluation.

Again, I’ve not spent enough time with the substance of the framework the authors present to offer an informed opinion. But this piece of their introduction jumped out at me.

To my mind, the utility of conflict resolution ought not to hinge on who is doing the resolving.

Michael Moffitt

One thought on “Defining Environmental “Conflict Resolution””

  1. Many thanks to David Famiano from Jossey-Bass, who provided the URLs for the online versions of the article and for Conflict Resolution Quarterly. The URLs are now embedded in the above post.

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