ENR / ADR Joint Efforts

Environmental Conflict Resolution Course
Professors Tim Hicks, conflict and dispute resolution master's program, and Adell Amos, director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center, examine the use of collaborative approaches to conflicts over environmental and natural resources and environmental decision-making. The class looks at the history of environmental decision-making, the legal context of environmental disputes, and explores the risks and benefits of collaborative and adversarial approaches to the challenging issues of development and environmental protection.

Basic Mediation Training
ADR sponsors biannual basic mediation training sessions emphasizing communication, uncovering disputants' interests, and crafting solutions. The spring 2008 training was the first in public policy dispute resolution and collaboration and led to local internship/externship opportunities.

Public Interest Environmental Law Conference Panel Discussions and Workshops
The Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, known as the world's most important environmental law conference and the premiere annual gathering for environmentalists worldwide, is held each spring. The conference is organized by volunteers of Land Air Water (LAW), a student environmental society, and sponsored by Friends of Land Air Water.

Panels and workshops that covered both environmental and natural resources and appropriate dispute resolution topics at the 2008 conference include:

• Panel Discussion: "Perspectives on Collaboration: What Have We Learned? How Can We Do It Better?"
  
  This panel featured three diverse cases of collaborative problem solving and environmental conflict resolution, including a forest management case, local transportation planning case and urban noise encroachment case. Panelists presented their own perspectives on these cases and what they learned about collaborative processes in general.
• Workshop: Alliance Building: Cross Cultural Organizing
  
  With the level of environmental racism and injustice that exists today there is a need for diversity and cross-cultural competency when organizing. Through a native lens strategies for organizing cross-culturally were shared in this interactive workshop. An environmental justice issue from a tribal community was also presented. Through alliance building we strengthen our ability to collaborate and establish meaningful relationships with other activists, advocates, professionals and educators who represent the "choir."
• Panel Discussion: "Environmental Dispute Resolution Techniques: When and How They Work and How You Can Apply Them"
  
  As the complexity of environmental disputes continues to rise, the use of alternative dispute resolution techniques continues to be applies to reach the finish line. This panel explored the use of mediation and facilitation techniques in environmental permitting, litigation and facility siting. Panelists included Oregon's top environmental mediators and experts in environmental conflict resolution, including Tim Hicks, director of University of Oregon's Conflict and Dispute Resolution Master's Program.
• Workshop: "I am Collaboration (And so can YOU!)"
  
  This workshop focused on how environmental advocates can make collaborations work, how to initiative useful collaborations, engage the partners that should be there, insure collaborations are truly collaborative, support collaborations so they don't go south and even try to fix collaborations that are going south.