This page will be extended with syntheses of case studies from different aquatic habitats / fishery types.
However, a lot has been learned about good practice in addressing human wildlife conflicts. We know that there are many possible strategies that organisations can use, and many conflict management styles that individuals can adopt. A key aspect of good practice is being open and flexible to exploring different strategies and styles.
The question is – how do we know which approaches work best? People can get used to using the same strategy and style over many years. How can we support ourselves and other stakeholders to engage with different strategies and styles that might bring us closer to solving the problem? Textbooks on conflict management would describe cormorant-fish-fisheries conflicts as a multi-stakeholder conflict where collaborative strategies might be most useful. For this reason, this part of the Platform looks mainly at good practice in a collaborative approach to problem solving.
First, though, a word on ‘styles’. The style we adopt individually or as an organisation (through habit or choice) often influences the strategies we use to address a conflict. The diagram (below) considers how people may approach a conflict, and they will be influenced by a number of factors. Groups or people each have their own interests or goals. But how they respond to situations depends also on how important they feel it is to maintain a relationship with the other person or group. This will also be influenced by the degree of power people feel they have, their preferred style, their normal approach to conflict, and their degree of flexibility in working with different approaches.No single style is the ‘right’ one. Each style depends on circumstances and on how comfortable people feel with adopting a given style given particular relationships, goals and context. If neither the goal nor the relationship(s) are important, then withdrawal might make sense. But withdrawing completely can make it impossible to achieve lasting solutions for all parties.
Accommodation, if always used, can lead to discontent and the risk of a ‘flare up’ (e.g. “Why is it always me who gives in?”).
Forcing needs to be carefully chosen because relationships and power balances often are more important than we think they are. In some situations, ‘forcers’ may be met with costly and unexpected force in return, rather than the withdrawal or accommodation they expected.
Compromise can help build rapport but there often are situations where a compromise leaves both sides unhappy (“Could I have got more out of this negotiation – did I give them too much?”).
Co-operation and collaboration (consensus building) emphasises creativity and positive, mutually satisfying outcomes. This style may hold the greatest promise in many natural resource conflicts. However, the style can require careful handling and skillful facilitation, mediation, or other third-party support.
A number of conflict management ‘good practice guidelines’ have been developed. Two frequently cited Guidelines are the OECD-DAC (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - Development Cooperation Directorate) Guidelines “Helping Prevent Violent Conflict” (OECD-DAC, 2001), and International Alert’s 1998 “Guiding Principles for Conflict Transformation.” These can be adapted for human-wildlife conflicts. One effort to indicate how this might be done may be found on pages 19-23 of Jones et al (2005, Biodiversity Conflict Management, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (NERC).
Of course, collaborative approaches are not the only way to approach human-wildlife conflicts. In fact, some approaches can be anything but collaborative. For example, legal approaches, some customary approaches, lobbying, and some institutional approaches can be highly adversarial – even combative.
Perich-Anderson asks “…are there ever circumstances when collaboration is not appropriate at all?” The answer is yes … “…when a quick response is needed, … key stakeholders refuse to collaborate, or one party has unchallenged power to influence outcomes, when conflicts are based on deeply held values, or where there are intractable adversarial relations.”(Perich-Anderson, P. 2004. ‘The only game in town: managing multi-stakeholder conflicts,’ Chapter 12 in Pammer, WJ and Killian, J (eds), Handbook of Conflict Management, 272pp, Marcel Dekker Inc., New York).
Here the work of Roy Lewicki, Barbara Gray and Michael Elliot is useful. They describe as ‘intractable’ those conflicts that are characterized by “… considerable intensity, persist indefinitely over long periods of time, and cannot be resolved through consensus-building efforts or by administrative, legal or political solutions.” (Lewicki, R., Gray, B. and Elliot, M. (eds) 2003: Making Sense of Intractable Environmental Conflicts).
This is where it is helpful to consider conflicts in different ‘Frames’ – working with people’s different interpretations of the issues (a) to develop a common frame for the conflict (‘interpretation’ of it), and (b) to acknowledge, create and adopt approaches that can promote tractability (improve the chances of developing and implementing solutions).
In the CorMan project, though, it is the underlying approaches of collaboration and working with different stakeholders’ ‘frames’ or interpretations, that guide and underpin much of the facilitation work and the Project as a whole.
The figure below shows a ‘clock’ of 12 key principles for good practice in collaborative approaches to multi-stakeholder human-wildlife conflicts.
Good Practice Principles of Building Collaboration and Consensus