New Graduate Certificate Launched Environmental Conflict Resolution and Collaboration
In partnership with the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy (ESP), ICAR has established a 15-credit Graduate Certificate in Environmental Conflict Resolution and Collaboration beginning in August 2009. This program has been developed in collaboration with Dr. Frank Dukes of the Institute for Environmental Negotiation, University of Virginia, and in consultation with an informal advisory group of environmental leaders in the region.
Why this new certificate program? Crashed fisheries, lost species, contaminated water, toxic communities, looming impacts of global warming – despite decades of laws, regulations, and environmental education, we are failing in many ways and in many locations to ensure a safe, resilient, and nurturing environment. The President’s Commission on Sustainable Development found that environmental conflicts “increasingly are exceeding the capacity of institutions, processes, and mechanisms to resolve them ... What is usually missing from the process is a mechanism to enable the many stakeholders to work together to identify common goals, values, and areas of interest through vigorous and open public discussion.”
Leaders from all sectors – public, private, and nonprofit – need the ability to build consensus when faced with conflicting interests and difficult choices. Environmental decisions are generally better when developed by processes that are inclusive of diverse views, transparent and inviting to those such decisions affect, and responsive to participant needs. Such processes can shape behavior that builds relationships of integrity and trust and decisions that are creative, effective and legitimate. Communities can only be sustained ecologically, socially, and economically with informed, legitimated participation by citizens actively engaged in public life.
Dr. Dukes returns to ICAR and ESP after a nearly 20-year hiatus in his teaching in the program. The second student to receive his Ph.D. from ICAR, he has worked for the Institute for Environmental Negotiation (IEN) since 1990, and has been director since 2000. With nearly 20 years of experience working on projects involving environment and land use, community development, education, and health, he combines on-the-ground experience with extensive research and publications. His book, Resolving Public Conflict: Transforming Community and Governance describes how public conflict resolution procedures can assist in vitalizing democracy. He is lead author of Collaboration: A Guide for Environmental Advocates, and with two colleagues, including ICAR Ph.D. John Stephens, is coauthor of Reaching for Common Higher Ground, which describes how diverse groups and communities can create expectations for addressing conflict with integrity, vision, and creativity.
Individuals in the Environmental Conflict Resolution and Collaboration program will develop a capacity to assess the strengths and weaknesses of collaborative processes while learning about best practices for preventing, preparing for, and addressing environmental conflict. They will focus on the strategic thinking that is required for assessing and designing appropriate collaborative processes. They will learn how to conduct a situation assessment and use criteria for determining which processes are appropriate for which situations. Finally, they will apply the theory and skill-building of course-work to real-life situations, drawn from issues they face in their own work or communities.