Sharon Sturges
c/o Trustees for Alaska
100701 Abbott Loop Road
Anchorage, Alaska 99516
USA
Typically, environmental policy making and dispute resolution are placed into the hands of a "higher authority" based on the patriarchal-based hierarchial model. Disputants (or those who will be directly impacted by policy) have no power to mold the outcome of an issue or dispute. Likewise, the U.S. legal system engages in competition by pitting one view against the other in a glorified form of combat. These traditional (patriarchal) methods are unacceptable for a variety of reasons; the most striking of which are the methods' resulting in a dis-empowering/powering imbalance and the constant need to enforce a decision (often by the use of force).
On an international scale, diplomats and generals have been the primary resolvers of the disputes involving international environmental issues. The main alternative to armed conflict, diplomacy, has not yet evolved beyond the view that there is a single, fixed reality of the world or a "mechological" (first discussed by Gregory Bateson) approach to solving problems. This purportedly objective view believes in a natural hierarchy to the world and a proper place within that hierarchy for all. Based on the mechological framework, one side in a dispute must be correct and the other incorrect. Present methods of environmental policy making or dispute resolution do not truly solve environmental problems but create a process by which a problem leads a short-sighted action to solve the problem, which leads to less intense focus on the problem, which leads to less action to solve the problem, which leads to the problem remaining and gradually increasing to a more urgent level, which leads to another short-sighted action, etc. ad nauseum (Robert Fritz first described this problem cycle). This form of problem solving for environmental matters is dangerously ineffctive. Instead, we must create a stable structure for changing the world into something we want it to be. That "stable structure" by which resolution to environmental disputes should be achieved must provide a long term solution to the problem by transforming it into something permanent, desirable, and one which will maintain its own integrity.
"Ecological dispute resolution" or "EDR" (introduced by Edgar H Auerswald) is the most promising method to accomplish this goal. EDR focuses on the relations and interests of "stakeholders" (including a species) to a conflict in order to arrive at a mutually acceptable solution that exists for its own sake and is not dependent on enforcement or power display techniques. EDR resolves conflicts in ways that are empowering (those most impacted are usually the most disenfranchised under present conflict resolution methods) and respectful of the connections between countries, species, and individuals to create a stable and healthy structure for the future. There are three major steps in EDR: germination (behind emotionally charged disputes, there are common goals and interests), assimilation (the "gestational" stage in which time passes and the parties internalize the common vision as well as by repeatedly consulting with advisors and constituent groups), and completion (bringing the resolution to fruition, learning to live with the resolution created).
Return to Women and Environmental Policy: Levels of Practical Influence
Return to Top Level