Turning Points in Environmental Negotiation: Exploring Conflict Resolution Dynamics in Domestic and International Cases

Since the modern environmental movement began more than 40 years ago, negotiation has become an important way to resolve contentious environmental issues. Previous research often treats environmental negotiation as a static phenomenon and has not addressed how changes in the process impact resolution. Utilizing a dynamic model of negotiation and analysis of detailed case chronologies, this book explores how substantive and procedural moves by various actors – including parties, mediators, and enforcers – prompt key turning points in environmental negotiations, and the consequences for negotiators’ progress toward agreement. The study compares the typical patterns of process change in a set of domestic and international environmental cases, and offers potential implications for future research and empirically based recommendations for practice.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Process, roles, and case-related factors in domestic environmental negotiations
3. Turning points in environmental negotiation: A framework for analysis
4. Twenty-nine domestic environmental negotiation cases
5. Precipitants, turning points, and consequences: Identifying turning point sequences within the cases
6. Comparing process dynamics, roles, and case-related factors in domestic environmental negotiations
7. Comparing the process dynamics of domestic and international environmental negotations
8. Lessons learned for environmental negotiation theory and practice and recommendations for further inquiry
Appendices
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

William E. Hall, Ph.D. (2008) in Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, leads evaluation research for the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Conflict Prevention and Resolution Center and is an adjunct assistant professor in Georgetown University's Conflict Resolution Program.