Environmental and Public Policy Dispute Settlement Skills
Alana Knaster and Phil Harter
Effective negotiation and dispute settlement skills are important both for responding to difficult situations and as a positive strategy for effective policy development. Environment and Public Policy Dispute Settlement Skills is designed for public and private sector attorneys, agency staff, elected officials, and NGOs who interact on a regular basis in addressing controversial public policy issues. This course provides participants with the skills and strategies necessary for negotiating collaborative solutions, managing conflict, and resolving litigation.
What you will learn:
- Assessing the appropriateness of a negotiation or consensus-building process
- Identifying stakeholders to participate in the process
- Appropriate process ground rules
- Managing multiparty, multi-issue agendas
- The role of the elected officials and agency staff in mediated negotiations
- Effective negotiations as a private sector advocate
- Creating consensus through compromise and trade-offs
- Balancing legal requirements against problem-solving solutions
- Drafting agreements that survive
Philip J. Harter is the Earl F. Nelson Professor of Law and a member of the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution at the University of Missouri. He was previously director of the Program on Consensus, Democracy, and Governance at Vermont Law School, which was funded by the Hewlett Foundation. He has been a pioneer in the theory and practice of the use of consensus and other forms of dispute resolution involving government agencies. He has mediated many complex matters involving public policy, including EPA's standards for reformulated gasoline, OSHA's fall protection standards in steel erection, and the FAA and NPS's requirements for sightseeing flights over national parks. He is the author of the Negotiated Rulemaking Act and the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act.
Alana Knaster is the deputy director of the Monterey County Resource Management Agency which oversees the activities of the planning, building, public works, and redevelopment agencies of the county. The deputy director coordinates major interagency land-use initiatives including the General Plan and other large-scale development projects. From 1980-2002, Ms. Knaster was the president of the Mediation Institute, a national nonprofit firm specializing in the resolution of complex land-use planning and environmental disputes. Many of the disputes that she successfully mediated involved dozens of stakeholder groups including government agencies, major corporations, and public interest groups. Her cases included national policy negotiations, multi-state resource protection plans and local siting disputes.