Environmental Dispute Resolution (EDR) has emerged as a specialty within the larger field of conflict analysis and resolution. Because of the regulatory milieu within which much EDR is practiced and the concomitant need of regulatory agencies for rationally defensible decisions, many environmental disputes are framed as technical problems requiring technical solutions. Defining environmental disputes in technical terms has the following limitations: 1) it limits the types of information and knowledge that will be considered relevant to the dispute, thereby excluding issues of importance to communities or parties that are potentially affected by the dispute; and 2) it overlooks the socially constructed meanings (i.e., worldviews) that parties bring to or create as a result of a dispute situation, including the meaning of the term “environment.” The manner in which environmental risk disputes are framed is emblematic of how many environmental disputes are defined and addressed.
In this research, the author analyzed the narratives of two geographic-cultural communities (Massena, New York, and the Mohawk community Akwesasne) and one environmental regulatory agency (United Stated Environmental Protection Agency) regarding the risks associated with the presence and cleanup of an uncontrolled hazardous waste site. Based on the narratives, the author found each community’s identity was foundational to its construction of risks. Furthermore, each community framed the site cleanup problem in accordance with its identity commitments.
Community understandings of risk extended beyond probability estimates of death or illness from chemical exposure to include concerns about community social health, tradition, culture, and stigma. Based on the findings, the author advocates processes of social learning to address risk disputes. Social learning processes range from the straightforward to the oblique. The form of social learning should be determined by the degree of incommensurability in the parties’ framing of the problem. Because parties view ostensibly technical problems through the prism of their identities, histories, internal and external relationships, and values - in other words, their worldviews - EDR processes need to allow for exploration and articulation of worldview differences.