Enhancing Environmental Quality and Sustainability through Negotiation and Conflict Management: Research into Systems, Dynamics, and Practices

Abstract

In a world of rapid population growth, urbanization, and climate change, sustainability and environmental integrity are increasingly central concerns. The frequent recurrence of conflict within these arenas, coupled to the difficulty in determining their impact on social-ecological systems, challenges governance at all levels of society. Negotiation-based conflict management provides a promising response to these challenges. This guest editor's article examines: (a) the emergence and conduct of environmental and public policy (EPP) conflict management as a distinctive practice over the past 40 years; (b) the interplay between theories of environmental decision-making and practices of EPP conflict management; (c) trends in research into EPP conflict management systems, the dynamics of interventions into these systems to resolve conflict, and the efficacy and impact of EPP conflict management practices; and (d) the contributions of the articles contained in this special issue to this literature and future directions in the field.

The Role of Experts and Scholars in Community Conflict Resolution: A Comparative Analysis of Two Cases in China

“…Therefore, Pruitt and Kim (, pp. 7‐8) noted that “conflict means perceived divergence of interest, a belief that the parties current aspirations are incompatible.” There are a lot of methods, such as litigation, punitive sanctions, arbitration, conflict containment, mediation, negotiation, consensus building, joint problem‐solving, and informal arbitration (Elliott & Kaufman, ; Lan, ; Matsuura & Baba, ; O'Leary & Bingham, ; Pruitt & Kim, ; Sidaway, ; Stephenson & Pops, ), involved in dealing with conflict, and all these methods aim to come up with a resolution to conflict. Therefore, in this study, I defined conflict resolution as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the de‐escalating (Kriesberg, ; Lewicki, Weiss, & Lewin, ; Pruitt & Kim, ) and ending of conflict.…”

NCMR's First Decade: An Empirical Examination

“…Most special issues have centered on a particular research topic that editors believe has lacked attention or could benefit from new perspectives. Examples include Thatcher and Phillips’ () issue on how parties to the same conflict or negotiation may have different, or asymmetric, perceptions of it; Kressel and Wall's () issue on the role that a mediator's tactics and behaviors have on resolving disputes; and Elliott and Kaufman's () issue on the growing use of conflict management theory and practice to address issues of the environment and sustainability. Other special issues have been broader in scope and have been opportunities for a certain kind of paper, such as the development of new theory for negotiation or conflict management problems (Cronin, ), conceptual reviews of a literature (Gross, Adair, & Neuman, ; and more recently Gross, ), or ways in which our theory and research can be more closely linked to our teaching and to practice (Ebner & Parlamis, ).…”

Exploring stakeholders’ ecosystem services perceptions across Massachusetts Bays using deliberative valuation

“…There are many deliberative valuation techniques to elicit monetary and non-monetary values (Lennox et al, 2011;Wanek et al, 2023). In this study, we used the deliberative multicriteria evaluation method (DMCE) because it 1) combines the advantages of decision theory (structure and transparency) with deliberation to elicit shared social values (collective preferences) that reflect local knowledge and experiences (Proctor and Drechsler, 2006;Kenter et al, 2016) and 2) allows to include in the assessment task ecosystem services that may have different measurement units, provide intangible benefits, and/or cannot be assigned in monetary terms (Belton and Stewart, 2002) The DMCE method provides the appropriate framework to encourage and allow citizens and stakeholders to actively contribute to decision-making, resulting in heightened community involvement and understanding, leading to better outcomes and socially justifiable choices in environmental policy formation and planning (Elliott and Kaufman, 2016). Shared social values usually differ from the aggregate values of the group's individual members (Mavrommati et., 2021;Murphy et al, 2017).…”