Conflict Competence

Integrating conflict management into environmental policy

 Date: 27 February 2008

Environics polling found that 29 per cent of Canadians see the environment as our most pressing problem today. Second on the list of most important issues was war/peace at 28 per cent. Canadians are smart to put the two issues together, ahead of the third place concern by a large gap of 15 per cent. Environmental problems have both direct and indirect connections to peace and security. When the environment degrades, people behave in foreseeable yet unpredictable ways that, intentionally or otherwise, create conflicts. Panic can have that effect.

Our leaders should be paying attention to those connections now, when formulating environmental policies. As well as sound environmental management, Canada will need complementary strategic policies for conflict management. Consider the simplest and most obvious policy conflicts that could arise from environmental issues, such as climate changes.

Topping the list is environmental refugees, which might seem simple and obvious, but will likely be one of the hardest to manage. When water runs out in one place, people will migrate to where there is a supply. When food becomes scarce or bugs overrun someplace, people will search for hospitable locations. A planning decision, such as Calgary’s one year development freeze, could take on sinister significance if it restricts the migration of Ontarians seeking houses that have water in the taps. Conversely, if Calgary’s water source melts away as some suggest, a migration east would further strain the already falling water levels of the Great Lakes. Adaptation to environmental degradation must address the potential for emotionally charged, difficult to resolve conflicts over scarce resources that will arise from mass voluntary population displacements.

Another possible source of environmental conflicts will be the pressure on land use. Land use conflicts go to intrinsic values, worldviews and beliefs, which are among the most intractable conflicts to resolve. Canadians are justifiably proud of and attached to parklands. If prairie farms become nonviable and people are hungry, there could be policy crises over protected natural lands. The conflict might be a forced choice between keeping parklands as a bastion against further environment degradation; or, overturning parklands’ status because they are needed for growing crops and grazing domestic herds. Conflict over food reduces life to its most basic.

Another likely conflict may be over health care services, which will make current complaints about long wait times and inadequate numbers of health care practitioners seem trivial. The medical system will be dealing with quantities and types of patients it is badly equipped to handle. Health administrators have feared being overwhelmed by flu pandemics that sweep through, devastate, and leave, after which life returns to normal. Climate change is not likely to behave that neatly. Unpredictable messiness may be the new long-term normal for public health.

Finally, the forms any of these potential policy conflicts take will depend on the totality of the conditions at the time. Conflicts are nonlinear dynamic systems that are dependent on their initial conditions. Conflict reacts to what happens to and around it. If the initial conditions of the conflicts are well managed, the outcomes for people are more likely to be tolerable and productive. The outcomes for governments are, on the other hand, slightly more predictable but far less comforting. Most states, whether democratic or totalitarian, whether successful or failed, are solely mandated to apply force; although violent and failed states may have competing non-mandated forces. Canadian governments have used force against citizens in various policy conflicts but it really ought to be the very last resort, when all other policies are inadequate. In the absence of strategic plans and policies to manage climate change conflicts, there is a risk that government sanctioned and citizen self-organized forces will become the available choice.

This list barely begins to itemize the many sources of potential conflicts that scarcity, change, turbulence, and uncertainty might bring. Conflict resolution would be useful after such conflicts arise, but it is not necessary to wait for that harm before thinking about the policy applications of fair and wise conflict management strategies. Those conflict management policies will need to be long term and systemic, or the conflicts may escalate over who gets what, how much, and when.

Some of the conflicts can be seen on the horizon, and ought not to be ignored. In fact, ignoring them, while at the same time having a discussion about, for example, adaptation to climate change, detracts from the strategic value of that discussion. Conflict management policies ought to be a necessary adjunct to the climate change policies already being developed.  The point is to have in place policies to address how to manage climate related conflicts as they become known or anticipated.

The Premiers have agreed to get scientific studies to aid strategic policies for adapting to climate changes. Hard sciences are not a complete solution, since policy will then be used to interpret those scientific findings. It is almost guaranteed that there will be competing interpretations of that scientific data; that is normal. All information is subject to having its meaning interpreted. Conflict management also helps set policy directions in anticipation of whatever disagreement over the science may occur. When developing plans to manage the environmental risks, it is prudent to include plans to manage the risks of environmental and public policy related conflicts.