Negotiating Enviromental Agreements : How to Avoid Escalating Confrontation, Needless Costs, and Unnecessary Litigation [Paperback]

Paul F. Levy (Author), Lawrence Susskind (Author), Jennifer Thomas-Larmer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1559636335 | ISBN-13: 978-1559636339 | Publication Date: December 1, 1999 | Edition: 1

When business leaders, government officials, and other stakeholders come to the table in an environmental, health, or safety dispute, acrimony often results, leading to expensive and time-consuming litigation. Not only does this waste precious resources, but rarely does the process produce the best outcome for any of the parties involved.For the past five years, the authors of this volume have conducted semi-annual seminars at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology and at Harvard to provide business leaders and regulators with the knowledge and skills they need to more effectively handle environmental, health, and safety negotiations. Their strategy, known as the "mutual gains approach," is a proven method of producing fairer, more efficient, more stable, and wiser results. "Negotiating Environmental Agreements" provides the first comprehensive introduction to this widely practiced and highly effective approach to environmental regulation.The book begins with an overview of the mutual gains approach, introducing important concepts and ideas from negotiation theory as well as the theory and practice of mediation. The authors then offer five model negotiations from their MIT-Harvard Public Disputes seminar, followed by a series of real-world negotiated environmental agreements that illustrate the kinds of outcomes possible when the mutual gains approach is employed. A collection of writings by leading experts provide valuable insights into the process, and appendixes offer both instructions for conducting model negotiation sessions and analysis of actual game results from earlier seminars.This is the only prescriptive text available for the many regulatees and regulators involved inenvironmental regulatory negotiations each year. Anyone involved with environmental negotiation -- including corporate and public sector managers, students of environmental policy, environmental management, and business management -- will find the book an essential resource.

Product Details

• Paperback: 346 pages
• Publisher: Island Press; 1 edition (December 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559636335
• ISBN-13: 978-1559636339
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #918,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Larry Susskind (born in New York City in 1947) heads the Environmental Policy and Planning Program (web.mit.edu/dusp/epp) and the MIT-USGS Science Impact Collaborative (scienceimpact.mit.edu) at MIT where he has been teaching since 1970. His work as an environmental planner focuses on the mediation of environmental disputes and strategies for involving large numbers of groups with very different ideas and interests in managing natural resources together. Negotiating Environmental Agreements, Environmental Diplomacy, Better Environmental Policy Studies, and Transboundary Environmental Agreements explain how this is possible. Through his writing and practice as a mediator with the Cambridge-based not-for-profit Consensus Building Institute (www.cbuilding.org), he has helped to establish the field of public dispute resolution. Breaking Robert's Rules, Breaking the Impasse, Dealing with An Angry Public, Negotiating on Behalf of Others, Built to Win and the Consensus Building Handbook offer insights into the techniques and strategies that have made Professor Susskind a much sought-after trainer and teacher. He has supervised more than 60 doctoral students at MIT and Harvard, many of whom now teach in universities around the world. In 1983, with Roger Fisher, Howard Raiffa and Frank Sander, he founded the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (www.pon.harvard.edu) which continues to play an important part in shaping negotiation and dispute resolution theory.