Frame Analysis

Frame theory contends that parties or negotiators bring experiences that shape their respective frames for conflict (for additional details, see T. R. Peterson & Franks, 2006).

Riemer (2004) demonstrated how frame analysis can help make sense of intercultural conflict. Reimer interviewed 55 participants in a conflict over Chippewa spearfishing in northern Wisconsin to discover the primary frames used by disputants and offered sugges­tions for how to begin the reframing process. Much of the conflict centered on the increas­ing scarcity of the walleye (a fish sought by sports fishers). Nonnative people framed spearfishing as a fundamentally selfish activ­ity that causes depletion of a natural resource (walleye). They argued that by continuing this practice, the Chippewa are failing to fulfill stewardship responsibilities that should be a condition of receiving the privilege of spearfish­ing. The Chippewa, on the other hand, framed spearfishing as a sacred activity that should continue whether or not there are any wall­eye. From their frame, walleye depletion is an angler problem. Without significant reframing, this conflict remains intractable. Reimer noted that legitimization of multiple possibilities for framing the situation is a basic component of any reframing strategy.

Lewicki, Gray, and Elliot (2003) and Brummans et al. (2008) offered framing as an especially promising approach to appar­ently intractable environmental conflict. Their rationale is that, since frame analysis enables more complete understanding of a conflict’s interaction dynamics, it introduces tractability by paving the way for frame shifts. Third- party interveners can then provide disputants with opportunities to reframe conflicts in more productive ways and provide space for the design of intervention techniques espe­cially formulated for each situation. Fischer and Marshall’s (2010) analysis of landscape frames in Scottish moorlands and Fletcher’s (2009) analysis of language used to frame climate change in the United States identify similar opportunities. Fischer and Marshall (2010) discovered generative ideas for a wide variety of management options for the moor­lands in identity frames that enabled people to maintain important differences, while also recognizing commonalities across difference. Fletcher (2009) identified three contrasting frames for climate change used under the presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2008) in the United States. She noted that the frame of scientific skepticism was used to justify inac­tion, while the frame of security threat chal­lenged the validity of inaction. She argued that the emergent frame of economic opportunity offered a way out of the stalemate, largely due to its strong positive link to technological opti­mism that assumes the continued emergence of new technology that will enable industrial transformation to undo past mistakes.

Dewulf, Francois, Paul-Wostl, and Taillieu (2007) used a large research collaborative centered on conflict over water management to demonstrate how frame analysis can form the basis for more productive interdisciplinary collaborations, which they argue are necessary for improved management of environmen­tal conflicts. Because environmental conflicts require understanding of both human and natural systems, as well as their dynamic connections, their management is especially challenging.

Practical Application. Frame analysis sug­gests that conflict interveners should devote relatively more resources to assisting parties to conceptualize alternative frames and relatively less resources to developing other dispute resolution strategies and techniques. Putnam, Burgess, and Royer (2003) pointed out that intractable conflicts require reframing. They suggest that environmental practitioners can encourage reframing by helping disputants develop more realistic expectations, identify potential shifts within the conflict, and iden­tify potential shifts outside of, yet related to, the conflict. As they learn to interpret their situations differently, disputants become more open to possibilities for resolution. T. R. Peterson (2003) added that practitioners need to develop a deep understanding of con­flict participants’ social control frames before they suggest possibilities for improving the situation. For example, it is counterproduc­tive to extol a conflict management approach that relies primarily on federal regulation to people whose social control frame indicates a strong preference for low interdependence among members of society and requires strong opportunities for individual voice. Conflict participants who prefer high social interdepen­dence, and do not require strong opportunities for individual voice, however, may find such an approach appealing. Dewulf et al. (2007) developed a template that enables research­ers from different backgrounds to engage in joint sense-making activities. The activities they suggest then provide the basis for conflict researchers and practitioners representing a wide range of professional and personal back­grounds to engage in joint learning and knowl­edge construction, with the goal of improved water management. The five “optimal steps” they identified summarize much of the poten­tial for frame analysis of environmental con­flict.

Critical Performance Studies

One of the most innovative approaches to environmental conflict is performance stud­ies, which provides a rich basis for examin­ing questions about the sources and social dynamics of reflexivity with which we might transform environmental conflict (for addi­tional details, see T. R. Peterson & Franks, 2006). Performance approaches to environ­mental conflict are grounded in critical/cul- tural research and offer new possibilities by shifting the attention from external texts to the human body as text.

Hamilton (2003) analyzed the rhetorical strategies participants in the Fernald (Ohio) radium debate used to articulate tensions between technical and cultural understand­ings of risk. Hamilton’s analysis revealed that technical and cultural rationalities acted as competing sources of rhetorical invention. As such, they influenced participants’ inter­pretation of the situation, the strategies they used to develop persuasive messages, and their receptivity toward messages developed by other participants. She argued that, prior to attempting facilitation of public participation processes designed to resolve environmental conflicts, interveners should critically examine the rationalities in play, as well as fundamen­tal process assumptions of all participants. Similarly, M. N. Peterson et al. (2002) used critical ethnography to explore how moral culture (see Littlejohn & Cole, this volume) applies to environmental conflict. They found that temporary solutions to superficial prob­lems that were maladapted to the moralized nature of the conflict exacerbated it.

Schwarze’s (2006) essay on environmen­tal melodrama makes potentially useful links between critical and performative research. He argued that melodramatic performance may transform environmental conflicts in ways that bring new inventional resources to public con­troversy. Critical analyses such as these remind us that participation in the environmental policy context is intensely political and always linked to power relationships and deeply felt values. Although they highlight how participa­tion venues privilege some interests over oth­ers, they rarely suggest ways to respond to this challenge. Performance provides spaces where disputants may speak the unspeakable about power imbalances, experiment with alterna­tive identities, and imagine others’ values.

By foregrounding embodiment, perfor­mance approaches enable radical reframing of environmental conflict (Carolan, 2009). For example, Hobson (2006) argued that activists in Singapore expanded the sphere of possibil­ity by bringing a performative rather than analytically oriented rights-based approach to conflicts over environmental justice. Perreault and Valdivia (2010) found that struggles over hydrocarbon governance in Ecuador and Bolivia both relied on and contributed to evolving meanings for human develop­ment and national identity.

McGill (2006) illustrated the potential of performative practice by describing her “discovery” of the Gerbode Valley (California). She noted that performance enables people to recognize environments as “multidimensional intersection[s] of time and space” (p. 400). Her experience framed environments as impro­visations and disputants as players within a “living theater” (p. 401). J. Gray (2010a, 2010b) extended McGill’s insights regarding the shifting boundaries between humans and nature to explore related boundaries between humans and to prompt reconsideration of how those boundaries “may prompt the emergence of new possibilities for previously intractable conflicts. In “Trail Mix,” J. Gray (2010b) hikes through a forest and provides opportuni­ties for his audience to try playing the roles of a diverse gallery of human and extrahuman per­formers. Temporary engagement with scenes, such as those created by Gray, encourages disputants to explore experiential dimensions of conflict that other approaches tend to bury.

Practical Application. Given that manage­ment of natural resources increasingly depends on securing cooperation of culturally diverse groups of people, it is essential to develop cultural understanding. Toward this end, environmental conflict practitioners can use performance to help design responses to the conflicts that emerge out of concern for how to prevent, minimize, dramatize, or focus the risks and hazards to human bodies that are systematically produced as part of modern­ization. Conflict management practitioners should not look to this approach for formal algorithms, so much as for guiding principles. Performative dimensions of conflict challenges disputants to experiment with options within complex situations. By attending to the indi­vidual person and event as part of a cultural milieu, performance responds to the practi­cal necessity of minimizing polarization and establishing a collaborative pursuit of accept­able (and necessarily) temporary resolutions to environmental disputes.

Systemic Approaches

Systems analysis offers a promising approach to environmental conflict that is grounded in an integration of biophysical processes and social practices that converge in environ­mental conflict (T. R. Peterson et al., 2004). Despite increasing awareness of the complex­ity inherent to environmental conflict, envi­ronmental policy is often compartmentalized and fragmented into economic versus envi­ronmental versus social and cultural spheres. The bigger, integrated picture gets lost, and potential trade-offs are difficult to discover.

Responses to these challenges include the development of public participation processes that incorporate integrated assessment, eco­system management, and adaptive environ­mental management (van den Belt, 2004). Policy is viewed as a hypothesis-driven experi­ment that is informed by learning. One of the most important assumptions of the approach is that understanding system-level behavior is essential for designing better policy. The stress on taking a systemwide perspective leads to consideration of ecological, social, economic, and cultural factors early in environmental decision making and the management process. By way of illustration, we now explain two distinct yet closely related approaches to man­aging environmental conflict through systems analysis.

Mediated modeling, which is based on dynamic systems thinking, has grown out of an increasing awareness that humans are a part of the ecosystem and are capable of irre­versibly damaging it (Costanza & Jorgenson, 2002; van den Belt, 2004). van den Belt (2004) described mediated modeling as a tool for overcoming problems inherent in linear thinking and compartmentalized, nonpartici- patory decision making. It provides a struc­tured process for including the most important aspects of a problem in a coherent system simulation model. This structure enhances management of complex environmental con­flicts by integrating culture, ecology, econom­ics, politics, and other relevant dimensions. It enables participants to envision the system as multidimensional, dynamic, and interactive. Rather than experts’ dispensing answers or a discussion about the perceptions of a group of stakeholders, mediated modeling aims for a collaborative team learning experience to raise the shared level of understanding in a group as well as fostering a robust consensus. Dynamic systems thinking and supporting software is used to construct computer-based simulation models at a scoping level. The model construc­tion process is used to structure the discussion and the thinking of stakeholder groups and foster team learning. This structure enables participants to avoid some of the pitfalls asso­ciated with consensus-building processes.

Yearley, Cinderby, Forrester, Bailey, and Rosen’s (2003) empirical analysis of public processes in three cities in the United Kingdom demonstrates how mediated modeling can be used as an effective means of obtaining and interpreting this information. Participation in mediated modeling enabled local residents to evaluate their individual perspectives against those of their neighbors and led to an inte­grated assessment of the problem. In all three cities, the modeling activity provided a struc­ture within which high-quality public con­tributions to local governance of air quality were produced. Maguire’s (2003) evaluation of stakeholder interactions with water quality models and modelers in the Neuse River total maximum daily load (TMDL) process clarified the limitations of the TMDL process, identi­fied which limitations were most problematic, and suggested structural improvements that could enable a facilitator to respond more effectively to stakeholder interests.

van den Belt (2004) found that medi­ated modeling enhances public involvement in controversial and complex environmental policy issues. No environmental topic gener­ates more policy conflict than climate change. The Tyndall decarbonization scenarios project (Mander et al., 2008) responded to these conflicts by asking U.K. citizens to generate and evaluate credible and consistent scenarios for decarbonizing the U.K. energy system. Thompson, Forster, Werner, and Peterson (2010) designed, facilitated, and analyzed results of a series of workshops where scien­tists, decision makers, and other interested stakeholders living within an urban airshed constructed a model of urban ecosystem pro­cesses. They demonstrated that participation in systems modeling enabled stakeholders to gain a greater understanding of the system dynamics related to their airshed. Building and manipulating a simulation model enabled stakeholders to (a) perceive interconnections across sectors; (b) connect their own past, present, and future actions; and (c) respond systemically to the intrinsic complexity of environmental management. Participants reframed their understanding of controversies and developed multiple options that promised benefits to all stakeholders.

Systemic approaches to environmental con­flict are not limited to quantitative modeling. As articulated by Daniels and Walker (2001), soft systems approaches to environmental conflict refer to combining multiple ideas, without reducing them to a single disciplinary perspective, to enable a public process with the emergent properties required for effec­tive management of most environmental con­flicts. They synthesized theory from systems thinking, adult learning, and ADR to derive principles and strategies for creating a social climate that enables participants to learn from each other and cooperate across diver­gent perspectives. Their emphasis on debate among diverse viewpoints responds directly to critiques of consensus approaches. Through case studies drawn from several locations in the United States, they demonstrated that collaborative learning enables stakeholders to achieve measurable improvements in both biological processes and social practices involved in natural resource management. Brogden and Greenberg (2003) argued that apparently intractable environmental conflicts might actually be emergent properties of com­plex systems. They analyzed conflicts between grazing and urban growth in Arizona to illustrate this claim. Their analysis suggests that conflict management professionals should develop conflict resolution processes that sys­temically incorporate integrated assessment into existing decision-making structures. To be successful, such processes should foster collaboration and knowledge sharing between disputing stakeholders.

Researchers used narrative scenarios as a tool for engaging diverse stakeholders in plan­ning for the National Elk Refuge in the United States (Neff, 2007). They found that story lines provided negotiable terms that helped residents build a common understanding of the system dynamics most central to management goals for their ecosystem. Fernandez-Gimenez, Ballard, and Sturtevant (2008) found that social learning was basic to community-based monitoring teams in U.S. forests. They found that systemic approaches were important for strengthening the link between social and eco­logical systems. Two agency-based planning efforts that used soft systems to bolster public engagement in environmental planning were organized as collaborative learning projects (G. B. Walker, Senecah, & Daniels, 2006). Researchers found that stakeholders prefer active engagement, access to information and events, and clearly defined decision space.

Practical Applications. Whether using formal modeling or soft systems approaches, systemic approaches to environmental conflict pro­vide conflict professionals with opportunities to clarify linkages between decision mak­ing, environmental impacts, and planning. They enable diverse groups of stakeholders to explore options for integrating biological, cultural, ecological, and economic aspects of environmental conflicts. Habron (2003) suggested the systemic use of adaptive man­agement for addressing entrenched tensions within both community- and watershed-level approaches to natural resource management. He maintained that agencies could encour­age public cooperation by understanding and working within landowners’ preferred cul­tural systems. For example, by conceptual­izing watershed policy within the constructs supported by landowners, agencies could capi­talize on landowners’ belief in environmental resilience and acceptance of experimentation. They could then construct a framework for environmental policy that simultaneously honors landowners’ independence and fear of government intrusion, acknowledges the benefits of community cooperation through watershed councils, and enables ecological assessment of landowner-preferred practices.

Conclusions

People involved in environmental conflicts invariably face difficult problems concerning the complex interactions between human sys­tems and ecosystems (G. B. Walker & Daniels, 2004). Environmental managers, dispute reso­lution professionals, industry leaders, and concerned citizens regularly deal with existing or anticipated conflicts over alternative uses for natural resources, their economic implica­tions, and the distribution of social impacts. Although many people’s preferred visions of the future include sustainability of both natu­ral and social systems, these visions often con­flict. Successful approaches to environmental conflict facilitate integration of these diverse preferences into a holistic vision. Neither a single, simple answer nor a single discipline is capable of adequately addressing these complex problems. However unwillingly, those who study biophysical processes both influence and are influenced by environmental conflict, just as those who study environmen­tal conflict both influence and are influenced by biophysical processes.

Traditional organizational command-and- control strategies are not necessarily well suited for the interdependence within environ­mental conflicts. Interdependence implies that the parties in conflict need each other in some way, they have interlocking goals and every­one’s actions affect everyone else. The public needs natural resource agencies to protect its interests. This need is interlocked with agency goals to manage natural resources effectively. Agencies need the public to provide input on projects to satisfy their legal requirements. Beyond this minimal level of interdependence, an agency’s ability to manage natural resources depends on public cooperation and support. The public can create such intense opposition to a regulation or even an entire program that an agency may be forced, at immense cost, to change its plans.

The widespread requirement for public participation in environmental decision mak­ing has developed out of an expanded aware­ness that environmental policy cannot achieve legitimacy (or success) without broad pub­lic involvement. Awareness of the need to involve the public in decision making does not necessarily translate into successful process, however. Public hearings, the most common method for involving the public in environmen­tal issues, have not proven successful. Faced with open hostility, environmental managers have turned to consensus-building processes, often facilitated by conflict resolution profes­sionals. Research pointing out potential pitfalls associated with overuse of consensus-building processes has led some to differentiate collab­orative from consensus-building approaches. Promising approaches to environmental con­flict have come from a variety of research and practice traditions. Frame analysis, critical performance studies, and systemic approaches offer innovative ideas for the practice of envi­ronmental conflict resolution.

Environmental conflict is woven into human society. These disputes have the poten­tial to tear communities apart and draw them together. The three research trajectories identified in the last section of this chapter all indicate how concepts drawn from ADR can be used to enhance our ability to man­age conflict more effectively. This juxtaposi­tion offers numerous untapped opportunities for assisting in the creation of a more just society. We are not suggesting that com­munication can resolve all environmental conflicts. Unfortunately, unsustainable devel­opment practices and severe inequities are deeply ingrained in human society (Amnesty International & The Sierra Club, 2000). M. N. Peterson, Birckhead, Leong, Peterson, and Peterson (2010) argue that attending to how environmental conflict is articulated through communication encourages us to critically reimagine how our human practices and political institutions might facilitate coex­istence among humans, as well as between humans and the larger environment.

By their very nature, environmental conflicts pit people against strangers—the Northern versus the Southern Hemisphere, east against west, urban against rural. Within this milieu, researchers and practitioners in environmental conflict communication would do well to recall Peters’s (1999) recommen­dation that “instead of being terrorized by the quest for communication with aliens, we should recognize its ordinariness”; indeed, “there is no other kind of communication” (p. 257). Littlejohn and Domenici (2001) listed three requirements for developing healthy dialogue among people united only by their diversity: (1) taking time to explore experi­ences, ideas, concerns, and doubts; (2) listen­ing for both differences and commonalities in the experiences and stories, as well as values expressed by all parties; and (3) asking open, nonjudgmental, and curious questions to learn more about the other. If management of environmental conflict is to contribute to an increasingly sustainable and just world, it must be transformed into a joint venture wherein the knowledge of citizen stakeholders and experts is integrated into the develop­ment, implementation, and continued moni­toring of environmental policy.