NIFK17002U Conflict Analysis and Negotiation Design

Most MSc candidates working with sustainability, the environment, land use, forestry, global development, urban planning, natural resource management, nature conservation and climate change - will professionally be part of contentious public policy decision making. In public policy decision making scientific knowledge will be negotiated against values, concerns and conflicting interests of the public. Oftentimes power, deeply held values, vested interests, heavy institutions, strong incentives - and even violence will be part of the game. To competently manouver in such complex decision spaces one must handle relevant theory and tools to analyse the situation and identify the critical features to be addressed. Conflict/situation analysis forms the basis for meaningful design of multiparty negotiations, mediation and/or other actions/interventions. The course imply efforts to innovate inclusive decision making processes as a basis for creative solutions and new ways forward in complex social-environmental conflict situations.

Competent analysis, agile manouvering, skillfull process design and facilitation in/of such complex environmental conflict situations is at the core of contemporary sustainable environmental and natural resource management. Balancing the many different interests and deeply held values in a multi-cultural, institutional setting through constructive multi-party negotiation processes is at the core of sustainable development, land-use and management. 

This course presents relevant theories across disciplines and integrates them into a comprehensive, analytical framework (the Unifying Negotiaton Framework, published by the course designers in 2012). The students will use the framework on a real-life environmental conflict case of their own choice. The student will identify the critical features of the situation and design a balanced negotiation process proposal tailored to address the specific challenges of the chosen conflict situation.

The course content is distributed at two distinctly different levels: A) the personal level, and B) the process level:

A) The emphasis on the personal level comes from the recognition that the environment, land use/urban planning and natural resource management professions involve an inevitable component of conflict-laden decisionmaking. Often they act in conflicted situations be it as part of political decision making, public or private management or in relation to an involved, often antagonistic general public - which requires certain personal skills and self awareness. The course presents current theory and an analytical framework on how to constructively manage complex and conflict laden public policy and planning situations - as seen from a public planning or private organization or stakeholder perspective.

The course address the following specific themes: Discourse, Culture, Institutions, Power, Capacity, Incentives, Cognition and a number of Social Psychological Factors - all of importance for process design and personal development of facilitation skills. Further, the role of learning, expert knowledge as well as local/indigenous knowledge is imphasized. The course provides theory, analytical tools and personal skills for the students. The students project work starts with an initial context assessment by use of the analytical framework. Guided by their assessment the students get a personal experience with selected theories and tools in order to analyse conflicts - and develop appropriate strategies and design culturally sensitive processes for the specific situation at hand. To supplement this hands-on experience from project work a series of lectures presents an overview over the course theory, analytical frameworks and tools. Student seminars, group-exercises, discussions or role plays in combination with individual work and reflection provide a basis for students personal development and awareness of own skills, capabilities and potentials with regard to conflict analysis, intervention and negotiation.

B) The second level that this course operates on addresses culturally appropriate process/negotiation design. The participants in this course will come from many different countries with many different political systems. It is not possible to teach them a universal approach to conflict management that will be equally successful in all of the countries in which they may be employed. The second major focus of the course is therefore to develop in the students the awareness of political culture and the ways in which that context must inform their efforts to design processes. Processes that can integrate complex scientific issues and sensitive social values in a way that leads to innovative outcomes in natural resource decision making. The course uses concrete cases from natural resource management in Euro-American as well as developing countries contexts. Through exercises and project work the students can try various tools and approaches to conflict assessment, context analysis and development of context specific management strategies. Part of the analysis also concerns social psychological factors as well as cognitive aspects of the situation and the peculiar groups/individuals involved. A series of broad principles will be a focal point of the course, but the students’ core learning task will be to apply those principles in a creative, flexible and integrative fashion to a case of their choosing.

The course design and objectives have been constructed to response to the unique challenges and learning opportunity that a broadly international student population creates. The specific content will to some degree be adapted to the expressed learning needs and particular interests of the actual group of students and the political and institutional cultures they represent.