Intractability in Environmental Disputes: Exploring a Complex Construct

Abstract

Planners are finding it increasingly helpful to use conflict resolution techniques to manage conditions of uncertainty and conflict endemic to environmental and land use planning, and public policy making. Some disputes in these areas, however, are by their very nature unusually resistant to resolution, rendering them especially difficult for planners to manage without significant mediation training and skill. By exploring the literature on dispute intractability, this article maps for planners characteristics of intractable environmental, land use, and public policy disputes and discusses the usefulness of the transformative mediation approach for managing intractable disputes. Empirical research on dispute intractability, now in its nascent stages, could be productively applied by planners in making conflict assessments and applying dispute resolution techniques in planning practice.