Environmental Decision Making

RECENT  PROJECTS

• Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Tree Ordinance Committee
• Bankhead National Forest Health and Restoration Initiative
• Albemarle Pamlico National Estuary Program Strategic Planning

PAST PROJECTS

STAGES OF THE COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING PROCESS

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Program Description - Through the Environmental Decision-Making program, we provide policy negotiation, facilitation and mediation services to manage conflict over environmental issues and aid collaborative decision-making. The Institute supports these processes by designing, facilitating, and mediating stakeholder processes for state and local government and private organizations. We are undertaking an effort to provide more opportunities for collaborative environmental decision-making by convening and facilitating dispute resolution processes in limited resource communities and/or around issues where funding is problematic or unavailable, and develop a resource network and clearinghouse for environmental mediation opportunities.

Principles of Decision Making - The Natural Resources Leadership Institute assists committees, commissions, and stakeholder groups to develop policy recommendations on a variety of public issues. The staff and faculty of the Institute adhere to eleven principles of collaborative problem solving. Collaboration is an inclusionary process that promotes lateral communication and shared decision-making.

• Purpose-Driven. People need a reason to participate in the process.
• Inclusive. All parties with a significant interest in the issues should be involved in the collaborative process.
• Educational. The process relies on mutual education of all participants.
• Voluntary. The parties who are affected or interested participate voluntarily.
• Self-Designed. All parties have an equal opportunity to participate in designing the collaborative process. The process must be explainable and designed to meet the circumstances and needs of the situation.
• Flexible. Flexibility should be designed into the process to accommodate changing issues, data needs, political environment, and programmatic constraints such as time and meeting arrangements.
• Egalitarian. All parties have equal access to relevant information and the opportunity to participate effectively throughout the process.
• Respectful. Acceptance of the diverse values, interests, and knowledge of the parties involved in the collaborative process is essential.
• Accountable. The participants are accountable both to their constituencies and to the processthat they have agreed to establish.
• Time Limited. Realistic deadlines are necessary throughout the process.
• Achievable. Commitments made to achieve the agreement(s) and effective monitoring are essential.

The principles of collaborative processes presented here were adapted from the Canadian National Task Force model on Consensus and Sustainability. They can be found in Building Consensus for a Sustainable Future: Putting Principles into Practice, by Gerald Cormick, Norman Dale, Paul Emond, S. Glenn Sigurdson, and Barry D. Stuart (National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, Ottawa, 1996).