Resolving Environmental Conflict Towards Sustainable Community Development

One of the most important challenges facing civilization is how its natural resources will be used and protected. Too often polarization and litigation cause results with which no one is truly satisfied. Enemies are made, lines are drawn and both people and the environment are degraded. Resolving Environmental Conflict explains the transformative approach toward facilitation. It shows how to help parties empower themselves to define the issues and decide the settlement on their own terms and on their own time through better understanding of one another's perspectives. The transformative approach allows a conflict's outcome to be decided solely by the participants even though resolution may not take place for some months after facilitation is complete. Inherent in the solution is a shared vision for the community without which sustainability is not possible. Beyond shared vision, this book examines notions of development, sustainability, and community and the synergism of ecology, culture and economic needs that promote a healthy environment enriching the lives of all its inhabitants.

True progress toward an ecologically sound environment and a socially just culture will be initially expensive in money and effort. The longer we wait, however, the more disastrous the environmental condition will become, the more disputes will arise as a result of our declining quality of life, and the more expensive and difficult the necessary so

Ordinary people, community leaders, and even organizations and corporations still do not fully comprehend the interconnected, “big picture” dynamics of sustainability theory and action. In exploring means to become more sustainable, individuals and groups need a reference in which to frame discussions so they will be relevant, educational, and successful when implemented. This book puts ideas on sustainable communities into a conceptual framework that will promote striking, transformational effects on decision-making. In this book practitioners and community leaders will find effective, comprehensive tools and resources at their finger-tips to facilitate sustainable community development (SCD). The book content examines a diverse range of SCD methods; assessing community needs and resources; creating community visions; promoting stakeholder interest and participation; analyzing community problems; designing and facilitating strategic planning; carrying out interventions to improve

Reuniting Economy and Ecology in Sustainable Development is part of a series on the various aspects of sustainable development, where "community" focuses on the primacy and quality of relationships among people sharing a particular place and between people and their environment. "Development" means personal and social transformation to a higher level of consciousness and a greater responsibility to be one anothers keepers, and "sustainability" is the act whereby one generation saves options by passing them to the next generation, which saves options by passing them onto the next and so on. The vision put forth in this book is one of melding ecology and economy into a unifying concept of social-environmental sustainability. The author suggests that dividing ecology and economy conceptually will destroy society as we know it. Our task as adults is to repair the environment for the children who must inherit it. The link between economics and ecology and the immense potential of that connection to influence the process of change within communities is the focus of this book. The authors theorize that in a healthy, future-oriented community there is a dominant role for sustainability. Each of these four concepts - economics, ecology, community and sustainability - are intimidating on their own. There has been volumes written on each topic separately but very little written on how they are connected in relation to the environment. Reuniting Economy and Ecology makes those connections and provides a base for finding solutions to achieving sustainable communities.

Using a case study of the Trio indigenous peoples in Suriname, Conflict and Sustainability in a Changing Environment presents an inside view of a community facing climate change and on the path toward sustainable development. Smith and Bastidas take the reader beyond an examination of examples from the field of practice and into a thorough case study on climate change. With more than ten years of field experience, Smith and Bastidas present an in-depth, bottom-up analysis of sustainable development, including tools for practitioners, insight for academics and advice to policymakers.

As humans, we make choices. With change as a constant, we are continually presented with a number of choices, and we must choose. The change represented by the divergence of humanity from the rest of the world is rapidly growing, and in need of transformation. Setting the Stage for Sustainable Community Development is a guide for that transformation, which can help to create a sense of "place" where it did not previously exist. This invaluable text looks at resolving environmental conflicts through a "transformative" rather than a "problem-solving" approach. The transformative approach emphasizes the capacity of facilitation for personal growth. The text analyzes good and bad institutionalized social patterns in an ecological sense. The authors believe that through positive thinking and the willingness to take risks, we can become creative forces in our communities and in the world.

Human influences create both environmental problems and barriers to effective policy aimed at addressing those problems. In effect, environmental managers manage people as much as they manage the environment. Therefore, they must gain an understanding of the psychological and sociopolitical dimensions of environmental problems that they are attempting to resolve. In Environmental Problem Solving, Alan Miller reappraises conventional analyses of environmental problems using lessons from the psychosocial disciplines. He combines the disciplines of ecology, political sociology and psychology to produce a more adaptive approach to problem-solving that is specifically geared toward the environmetal field. Numerous case studies demonstrate the practical application of theory in a way that is useful to technical and scientific professionals as well as to policy makers and planners. Alan Miller is Professor of Psychology at the University of New Brunswick.

The emergence of a global and technological world and its accelerating, dissemination before the beginning of the 21st century does not only give rise to technological, economic, social, environmental, political, and educational tasks. Significant philosophical questions, epistemic reflections, and cultural debates result. The aim of this book is to provide information about epistemic, ethical, and cultural implications of sustainable development on an interdisciplinary and international level.