3 - Water conflict management: Theory and practice

Summary

Water is an eloquent advocate for reason.

– Admiral Lewis Strauss

WATER CONFLICT MANAGEMENT THEORY: ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION AND THE FLOW OF BENEFITS

The principles

The field of conflict management and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has brought new insights to negotiation and bargaining, adding much to the theory and practice of assisted negotiations, facilitation, and mediation. It has added practical tools to diagnose the causes of conflict and relate diagnosis to ADR techniques (see Delli Priscoli and Moore, 1988; Moore, 2003; and Shamir, 2003) The ADR field has codified a new language of interest-based bargaining. And much of these insights have arisen from environmental and natural resources cases.

Much of the ADR literature is found among works written by mediators or negotiators themselves about their own work, case studies by outside observers, and a growing body of theoretical work (see, for example, Fisher and Ury, 1981, Fisher and Ury, 1991; Susskind and Cruikshank, 1987; Lewicki et al., 1994; Mnookin, Peppet, and Tulumello, 2000; and Kaufmann, 2002, as representative works that combine the three approaches). One distinction important in ADR is that between distributive (also known as zero-sum or win-lose) bargaining – negotiating over one set amount, where one party's gain is the other's loss – and integrative (positive-sum or win-win) bargaining, where the solution is to everyone's gain. Reaching a collaborative arrangement is the goal of integrative bargaining.