This post is part of our "Top 5 Tuesdays" series.We are pleased to share the following post by Kenneth Cloke, President of Mediators Beyond Borders. Mr. Cloke, pictured at right, shares 5 reasons why he thinks mediators are needed to resolve environmental issues:
5 Reasons Why We Need to Mediate Environmental Conflicts
- As human populations have become more numerous and technologically advanced, we have increasingly wasted precious exhaustible resources, despoiled and desecrated our environment, and created the preconditions for mass extinction and global catastrophe.
- The environmental problems we currently face can no longer be solved by individual nations, or by using military, bureaucratic, or autocratic methods that only increase opposition and delay remedial efforts. These problems now demand the collective attention of everyone.
- To implement sustainable solutions to global environmental problems, all the disparate races, religions, cultures, societies, organizations, political entities and institutions on the planet need to learn better ways of working together to solve our common problems.
- To do so, we need to create better ways of communicating across borders and improved techniques for collaboratively negotiating our differences, engaging in open and honest dialogue, and resolving environmental disputes equitably without warfare or coercion.
- Mediation and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques encourage fair, respectful, participatory, and democratic ways of communicating, solving problems, negotiating collaboratively, engaging in constructive dialogues, and resolving conflicts internationally based on consensus. Without these methods we will be unable to sustainably solve our problems or survive, and for these reasons, it is critical that the world's nations adopt mediation and ADR as the primary methods for resolving environmental conflicts.
Thank you Ken for guest blogging about the importance of mediators in the discussion on climate change!
Stay tuned for Top 5 Tuesday posts from Diane Levin, Victoria Pynchon, and Victoria Van Buren in the upcoming weeks. To participate, contact us for more details.
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