7965

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7965
• Author: Brown, C.
• Title: Handling Confrontation
• USFW Year: 1993.
• USFW - Doc Type: Negotiated Adaptive Management.
• Copyright Material: YES

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resolution process that is outside of the courts is difficult. There
are many psychological barriers to overcome. One of the most
difficult barriers is that this approach requires leaders to look for
emerging conflict and to devote resources to it, to raise that
conflict up. That is usually exactly the opposite of what managers
want to do. They fight many brush fires and conflagrations, so it
is very hard to convince them that they ought to take resources
away from those things that are at a crisis point and put them in
to long-term conflict management. It is hard to get all the parties
involved until things are at a crisis stage. It is also difficult to
negotiate over what people view as their rights; and much of the
endangered species work involves both rights and symbols of
much larger issues that are hard to negotiate.
Also, people and politicians want to solve a problem, they
want to settle something, they want to take care of it and be
done with it. That is not really what resource management is
about. Mick Hollings's early work in adaptive resources
management recognizes that we will always need to be adjusting
our management practices.
Another problem is the political problem. Often, politically,
it is more advantageous to interest groups for them to be
involved in a major league battle than to engage in quiet
negotiation. It helps fund raising. Being in court has a lot a
visibility; it is not as good for the organization to be involved in
long-term, low-visibility negotiations. The Nature Conservancy is
an exception and has been remarkably successful. A lot of other
interest groups are beginning to take a different perspective on
this.
There are a lot of hurdles to get over, but I do think that
things are changing. Weare seeing a lot of changes in
institutional barriers to conflict resolution. We are getting more
and more tools, particularly in the water resources area, to
manage water, to move water around, and to compensate people
that hold rights so that they can give water up to other purposes.
That is a hopeful sign. BA TNAs of key players change rapidly
and they are seeing that their best opportunity for meeting their
needs may not any longer be going through the courts, but
entering into some long-term negotiations. I think environmental
groups are beginning to see that Section 7 suits, while they may
win the battle, lose the war. They are seeing that it is more
important to find some way to engage in proactive, ahead-of-the-
fact negotiations at the watershed level, the broad habitat level,
and the ecosystem level.
!\fy recommendations are to avoid letting things come to a
point where one-shot, final decisions have to be made. This type
of approach heightens the conflict and polarizes the issues. Try
to get parties involved in a dialogue as soon as possible. Slart
with whomever will participate and build from there. A lot of
parties in these disputes will say that they can't or they don't
want to enter into negotiation or a dialogue, but my experience
is that if you get some of the players involved, many of the rest
will come if only to keep an eye on what the others are doing.
Critical mass can build rather quickly.
There are a lot of things that can be done with groups to
start building trust. Data sharing or joint data collection is an
important way to build trust. Also, getting the groups to agree to
try to seek funding for the activity is a way to have them work
together. Once funding for the activity is received, all parties

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have something invested and they will defend it against
budget CUlling. If nothing else, people can usually agree to
start collecting base-line data, which is very important for
long-term management. Parties should be rewarded for
negotiated approaches. Agencies, particularly, can do this.
Many interest groups need flOancial assistance simply to
allend meetings, or begin collecting data. And an amount of
money that a public agency would consider trivial can be a
boon to an interest group, and a major incentive to
negotiation.