Session 3: Justice, Conflict and Environmental Needs

Judith Morrison - Practical Applications of Conflict Theory
Institute for Sustainability & Technology Policy, Murdoch University, South Street, Murdoch, WA 6150

Legal processes focus on judgements about 'rights' and 'wrongs' according to law, rather than on re-shaping present relationships and future possiblities, and legal determinations and political decisions alone don't necessarily translate into efficient and stable outcomes in practice. Consensual processes such as Alternative Dispute Resolution, which allow for new possibilities, are increasingly being favoured over win-lose legal judgements to settle environmental conflicts and address social and environmental change. However, even consensual decision-making can be prone to bias if it focuses on incorporating settlements into existing laws and policies. Conflict Analysis is one way of addressing potential bias because it focuses on practical pre-negotiation training to actualises all parties' capacities to consensually resolve conflicts of interests.

Conflict studies start from a basic definition: "Conflict arises when parties disagree about the distribution of material or symbolic resources and act on the basis of the perceived incompatibilities." The expertise derived from theories relating to Conflict Analysis and Conflict Resolution supports the facilitation of problem-identification and problem-solving. It assists prospective participants to contribute to actually formulating a process capable of allowing them to present issues most effectively to others, and developing a common identification of problems requiring resolution. Using Conflict theories pro-actively encourages awareness of how processes can stay open to recognising different viewpoints, identify impediments to agreement, and stay on track to search for resolutions. 'Process' issues are as relevant as substantive issues to achieve 'psychological' settlements as well as 'material' settlements.

Conflict theories are critical for determining whether sustainability issues and majority/minority issues in the broader global community-at-large are being adequately scoped. Differences in conflict theories often relate to scale - theories vary for scoping inter-personal, local, regional, national, international and global conflicts. Appreciating the differences allows for greater discernment and flexibility in order to take into account the scale of the problems and the scale at which it is possible to seek resolution. Unacknowledged conflicts can create non-productive and unsustainable 'cultures of non-cooperation' when people are forced to compromise about beliefs to do with power, legitimacy and recognition. Conflict theories can acknowledge the realities of contemporary disparities of power that maintain unsustainable practices, but can contribute most practically by assisting parties to respond constructively when circumstances hold promise of problem-solving through consensus. They provide a framework to enable parties to verify, through a commonly understood analytical appraisal of the process, whether it allows them equal bargaining power.

Su-ming Khoo - Global & Local Justice: Environmental Activism & the Democratisation of Development on Malaysia
Department of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland

The paper examines environmental activism in developing countries, using a case study of environmental activism in Malaysia from the 1970s to the present day. The analysis considers both national and global contexts and explores some of the tensions between the state and civil society groups involved in articulating demands for more democratic and alternative forms of 'development'. The paper examines the origins and development of organisations such as SAM (Friends of the Earth Malaysia), EPSM (Environmental Protection Society of Malaysia and WWFM (Worldwide Fund for Nature, Malaysia) together with campaigning alliances such as the Anti-Bakun Dam Coalition.

Environmental activism has sprung from two major sources. The growth of such local organisations reflects a growing global consciousness about the need for sustainable resource use, pollution abatement and species conservation. The Malaysian case also shows that environmental activism has emerged as part and parcel of more generalised citizen responses, forming 'oppositional coalitions' against state authoritarianism, 'money politics' and anti-democratic development. Protests against deforestation, dams and toxic waste plants are also protests about the lack of accountability and demands for participation and social justice. Environmental activists have worked within broader citizen coalitions to actively contest the state's attempts to limit or erode the structures of democratic participation. Environmental activism in Malaysia thus forms part of wider citizen efforts to support and protect the very structures of democracy as well as aspiring to widen and deepen the meanings of democracy and social justice to include future generations and the non-human environment. The paper concludes that some limited opportunities arose during the 1990s for development to move in more politically and environmentally sustainable directions, but there has been very little opportunity to effect real change, and even less so following the deep economic and political crises of 1997-98.

Bonnie VandeSteeg - Conservation, Land and Power: The Need for Environmental Justice
Goldsmith's University, London

I carried out research in the Cairngorm region of the Scottish Highlands from August 1999-July 2000. The aim of my research is to show how people's sense of place (Basso: 1996) and their 'practical engagement' with the natural environment (Ingold: 1995, 1996) result in often conflicting values, perceptions and attitudes about land and land use. I found three main approaches: livelihood, recreation and conservation. During the course of my fieldwork, I witnessed a number of debates and controversies that brought these three approaches into conflict with each other. Primarily, 'local' livelihood interests were pitted against 'outside' recreation and conservation interests.
In this paper, I would like to give some examples of these conflicts, looking at the struggle over the building of the mountain railway and the debates about the structure of the planned National Park in the Cairngorms. However, I will go on to show that the apparent divergence of interests between the different approaches is not as entrenched as might first appear. There is in fact much common ground between many who might identify strongly with one approach or another. The hostility that exists has been exacerbated by economic, social and political inequalities. I will examine the process by which landowners (both private and conservation organisations), local political and business elites, as well as government agencies, have helped to create and reinforce the bounded identities of the three approaches, thus making the debates over land use issues more divided and bitter than they might otherwide be. I will argue that a reduction of these inequalities, in other words environmental justice, is essential if the values and goals of the ecological movement are to be integrated into our society.