Environmental Dispute Resolution Process 5665: 7/2/90 8 pages @ $12

The purpose of this research is to set forth a review of literature on politics within the environmental disputeresolution process. The plan of the research will be to explore such processes between institutions such as government, industry, and environmental interest groups, and to show how such processes evolve within specific dispute situations.

One aspect of environmental disputes on which most commentators agree is that the issues surrounding them are highly complex. Citing the limited information and limited understanding under which consumer, government, and industry interest groups act and react to environmental issues, Stuller explores the myriad difficulties of recycling plastic packaging and wastes versus allowing them to degrade, noting that even environmentalists do not uniformly agree on the "best" way to recycle plastics. There is a kind of internecine rivalry between interests that wish to be considered proenvironment. Meanwhile, states have rushed to regulate disposal of "environmentally friendly" packaging, although most state laws deal with "only a small portion of the problems surrounding the idea of environmentally friendly products and packaging" (1990, p. 42). The paradoxical good news is that enormous business opportunities exist in plastics recycling because there is a seemingly permanent supply of plastic waste available in the world.

Where environmentally complex issues tread, economic issues are not far behind. This has

ely resolve different opinions on the nature and usage of coal fossil fuel in the economy, to acknowledge that opponents (e.g., environmentalists and coal industrialists) could find some common ground on which to initiate discussions and policy recommendations. A host of methods of dispute resolution where the environment is concerned has been promulgated by such organizations as PennAccord, a nonprofit group specifically organized for the purpose of environmental dispute resolution. A review of the organization's membership materials (which includes a bibliography of a number of conflictresolution monographs and journal articles) reveals its bias in favor of mediation, and it provides what it terms impartial mediators who are trained to help conflicted parties in environmental disputes solve their difficulties. The group, which has no legal enforcement authority, cites its principal goal as consensus, and to the degree it asserts that all participants in mediation have a vested interest in workable solutions, its goals are not inconsistent with those outlined by Gray in regard to collaboration. It is worth noting that certain commentators have suggested that mediation as a form of resolution has the effect of allowing go

Category: Government - E