Masters Theses

Date of Award

3-1982

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Planning

Major Professor

James A. Spencer

Committee Members

George Bowen, Pat Fisher

Abstract

Environmental conflicts are disputes over actions which change the interaction between people and the environment. Because environmental conflicts are spreading in location and increasing in numbers and intensity, with consequent increases in delay and cost of proposed government and business actions, their resolution is increasingly important.

There are three types of resolution processes: collaboration, competition, and negotiation. Which of these an agency uses depends on the agency's goals, objectives, and authority and the relationship between the agency and the other parties. Competitive processes, which are the most used, have numerous drawbacks, so collaboration and negotiation have come to receive much more attention since about 1970. This thesis concentrates on collaborative processes, particularly a variant known as joint problem solving.

The joint problem solving process comprises nine specific steps: selecting a process guide; ensuring that all interest groups are adequately represented; confronting fundamentally different values and assumptions and identifying key issues; generating a sufficient number of alternatives; agreeing on the boundaries and time horizon for impact assessment; weighting, scaling, and amalgamating judgements about impacts; identifying possible compensatory actions; securing commitments; and holding the parties to their commitments.

In 1978 and 1979 the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and eight other parties engaged in joint problem solving to resolve a conflict generated by the City's request of TVA to give it some land along Guntersville Reservoir in the Conners Island area for industrial development. TVA hired a process guide, who assisted a Local Citizen Planning Team (LCPT) comprising representatives of all parties to reach a consensus on a Development Concept for the area in question. The concept included industrial development of a large part of the site with certain areas reserved for agriculture, and other areas preserved in their natural state as buffers to protect the nearby unincorporated community of Claysville. To ensure recruitment of only clean industry willing to follow the Development Concept, five Claysville residents were to be appointed to the Guntersville Industrial Development Board.

In general, though there were some flaws, the author concludes that the process used fits the theoretical model fairly well and that it was successful in that it resulted in a consensus to which the public agreed at a meeting afterwards. However, to date no industry has attempted to locate on the site, so evaluation remains incomplete. Also, the process was both expensive and long. Consequently, it appears that joint problem solving, while useful in some cases, is not a panacea. Because joint problem solving is very similar to the planning process, the author believes that planners could be trained to be excellent process guides.

Download
Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS