Mediation as a Policy Instrument for Resolving Environmental Disputes

Abstract

In past years some areas of environmental protection have proved to be particularly resistent, or even allergic, to any attempts by environmental policy-makers to exert control. This includes large industrial and public projects in virtually all democratic industrialised countries where people are afraid of their negative consequences on health and the environment. Because as a rule they are facilities and infrastructural projects which are crucial to the functioning of an industrialised society (projects such as landfills, waste incineration plants, airports, motorways, dams, power stations) and which are considered to be fulfilling one of the state’s prime responsibilities (“precautionary policies” to safeguard the economy), disturbances which may be ecological in origin also cause major political and societal conflicts in which powerful economic interests and state institutions are also actively involved. The projects are opposed not only by members of the public who could be negatively affected by them and environmental organisations but also more and more by institutions involved in local administration (local public administrators and politicians), which makes “hard” enforcement of state decisions using the conventional instruments considerably more difficult than if it were a case of dealing “merely” with societal representatives and their organisations. Opposition from parties which understand all the intricacies of the political and legal system must therefore also be taken into account.