Needs before Tools: Using Technology in Environmental Conflict Resolution

• Date: 01 October 2014
• Published date: 01 October 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21071
• Author: Amanda E. Cravens

C R Q, vol. 32, no. 1, Fall 2014 3

© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the Association for Confl ict Resolution

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/crq.21071

Needs before Tools: Using Technology in

Environmental Con ict Resolution

Amanda E. Cravens

Environmental confl ict resolution practitioners have become increas-

ingly interested in using information technology to work collaboratively

across sectors. Discussions to date, however, have focused on specifi c tools

rather than the underlying objectives that software can accomplish.

Technology, like any other technique in a practitioner’s repertoire, is a

solution to a specifi c challenge identifi ed through refl ection-in-action.

Explicitly defi ning the needs one wishes software to meet prevents using

technology for technology’s sake, provides criteria to choose between

similar products or evaluate a tool’s success, and helps identify needs for

which suitable tools do not currently exist.

Government agencies and third-party neutrals in the environmental

confl ict resolution (ECR) fi eld have become increasingly interested in

using information technology to work collaboratively across sectors. Practi-

tioners and agency staff have developed broad principles for using software

in ways consistent with accepted practice and implicitly recognized that

the reasons for using technology emerge from the needs of a given confl ict.

Building on these earlier strategic eff orts, this article addresses the process

of choosing which tool is right for a given confl ict resolution application.

I demonstrate how an agency staff member, third-party neutral, or

technologist, working together in any combination and often working

jointly with process participants, should go about deciding which software

is appropriate for a situation.  e key argument is that the choice of which

tool to use does not begin with asking which software is needed. First, the

team must determine exactly which objectives that information technology

needs to accomplish within the collaborative process. Software is a solution

ARTICLES

4 CRAVENS

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to a problem, stated or unstated, and it is diffi cult to choose the right

solution without clearly defi ning the problem one wishes to solve.

Background: Technology in Environmental Con ict Resolution

As formally defi ned by the Offi ce of Management and Budget and

President’s Council on Environmental Quality Joint Memorandum on

Environmental Confl ict Resolution (2005), ECR is “third-party assisted

confl ict resolution and collaborative problem solving in the context of

environmental, public lands, or natural resources issues or confl icts.”  e

term encompasses a range of collaborative approaches to environmental

decision making (Dukes 2004) that fi t within the broader defi nition of

what public administration scholars call collaborative governance (O’Leary

and Bingham 2009; Donahue and Zeckhauser 2011). In this article I fol-

low the defi nition of collaborative governance proposed by Emerson, Nabat-

chi, and Balogh (2011): “ e processes and structures of public policy

decision making and management that engage people constructively across

the boundaries of public agencies, levels of government, and/or the public,

private and civic spheres in order to carry out a public purpose that could

not otherwise be accomplished” (2). For Emerson and her coauthors, the

key distinguishing feature of a collaborative governance regime such as an

ECR process is that it allows each party to carry out work it could not

achieve alone. In an era of increasingly contentious environmental decision

making, “wicked problems,” complex technical data, and democratized

access to scientifi c information (Wondolleck and Yaff ee 2000; Innes and

Booher 2010; Balint et al. 2011), software is seen as a potentially powerful

aid to build bridges across sectors.

Experienced mediators and agency staff believe bringing technologies

developed in other fi elds such as business or education into ECR could

result in greater effi ciency or more timely decisions, wider or more equitable

participation (including for geographically dispersed participants), and

greater ability for participants to grapple with complex information ( US

Institute for Environmental Confl ict Resolution 2009; Center for Ocean

Solutions 2011). Interest has been fueled by promising pilot eff orts in

environmental confl ict resolution (US Forest Service 2010; US Institute

for Environmental Confl ict Resolution 2006) and related fi elds such as

marine spatial planning (Center for Ocean Solutions 2011), collaborative

modeling (Van den Belt 2004; Bourget 2011), and participatory use of