As environmental conflicts increase, how to manage them?
Joshua Fisher is director of the Advanced Coalition for Collaboration, Conflict, and Complexity at Columbia University.
Environmental issues such as land use, natural resource management, and laws and regulations often conflict due to different interests and values among stakeholders. Managing environmental conflicts go through Joshua Fisherresearch scientist Columbia Climate School, is a primer on the causes and solutions of such conflicts. The book provides a basic overview of the theory and practice of collaborative approaches to managing environmental disputes.
Fisher explains the core concepts of cooperative conflict management and proposes a practical framework for understanding and responding to environmental disputes.
He discussed the book with him columbia newsand what prompted his research, the work he did at Hiroshima University, and why he wanted to sit Carl Sagan across from Confucius at the dinner.
ask. What inspired you to write this book?
A sort of. Every day we are bombarded with stories of conflict, polarization, and the existential threats of climate change and biodiversity loss. However, there are countless examples of people coming together to constructively solve problems and collaboratively manage their environments—both built and natural systems.
As a research scientist working on biodiversity conservation and conflict management, I’ve learned from hundreds of organizations doing interesting, innovative, and effective work. My goal in writing this book is to provide people with the tools to understand the environmental conflicts they face and build collaborative strategies to manage them.
Read the rest of the Columbia News interview
