August 30, 2013
A recent article entitled “Strategies and Tactics for Managing Environmental Conflicts: Insights from Goldman Prize Recipients,” was recently published in the Journal of Natural Resource Policy Research.
The article breaks down the work of the Goldman Prize recipients into six broad strategy categories: organizational creation and engagement; law and policy; education, training and awareness-building; changing incentives; civil disobedience; and research and technology.
The study found that the most frequently used strategy was “organizational creation and engagement,” which the authors defined as “actions to build new organizational capacity to address the situation, or enhance an existing organization.” Within that category, the most frequently used tactic was “non-profit creation.”
The abstract of the article appears below. For a link to the full article, click HERE.
Disputes over minerals, forests, wildlife, water, and other natural resources continue to rise in frequency and intensity across much of the world. Few scholars have described specific approaches to addressing these disputes, and none have done so systematically across multiple locations with a uniform nomenclature. This article fills part of that gap by analyzing approaches taken by Goldman Environmental Prize recipients. Based on 126 cases spanning 78 countries, 21 years, and 588 actions, we classify environmental conflict management strategies and tactics embodied in this rich data set. The resulting typology offers scholars a systematic lexicon for understanding, describing, and comparing conflict management strategies and tactics, with an emphasis on grassroots efforts. It also provides policymakers and practitioners with a rich tool box of proven approaches for addressing natural resource conflicts.
