How will Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama approach them? Imagine for a moment that we could engage all three candidates in an extended dialogue that goes beyond the sound bites and platform promises we have grown too accustomed to. Here is what I would ask:    2 Comments

Introduction to Eye of the Storm Leadership
In the vast galaxy of leadership practices, the 150 ideas that follow focus on making deals, brokering agreements, and managing the inevitable conflicts that occur in politically charged circumstances. They are about communication, negotiation, problem solving, and “guerilla peace making.” The premise is simple and was best stated by philosopher, psychologist, and educator John Dewey: “Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity and sets us at noting and contriving."

The Ok Tedi Negotiations: Rebalancing the Equation in a Chronic Sustainability Dilemma
Between November 2005 and June 2007, a team from The Keystone Center helped organize and implement a multiparty negotiation process aimed at increased redress for people affected by river contamination from the Ok Tedi Mine in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Ok Tedi is often cited as one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in the world. It is also a true sustainability dilemma. The mine produces 20% of PNG’s gross domestic product, but it has also disrupted the traditional food webs and lives of more than 50,000 people by putting 90,000 tons of rock waste and tailings per day into the Fly River system. After 18 months of effort, a major benchmark was accomplished. Delegates of the nine affected regions along the river, the mining company, the government, and others concluded a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that will ultimately give the people in the impacted area about 1.1 billion kina (roughly US$350 million) in funds, projects, and services.

Giving Politics a Makeover
Politics is a hard business. It has been variously described as war without bloodshed (Mao Tse Tung), the conduct of public affairs for private advantage (Ambrose Bierce), and the art of looking for trouble and applying the wrong remedy to it (Earnest Benn). The word itself comes from the Greek “polis” meaning the collective. Politics is all about all of us “together” and the making of choices about the distribution of power, rights, assets, liabilities, and obligations. If you are a mediator or facilitator, this shouldn’t be foreign territory. It is something we help people do all the time.    3 Comments

Keystone Conference: No, We Are Not A Field and Here is Why the Question Matters
if we really are a profession, then let’s stop dithering about it and get on with the hard political organizing needed to stake it out and lay full claim to it. If we are a profession, let’s make very specific recommendations from this conference to that effect and set in motion an agenda for pursuing it. This means finalizing agreed upon principles and practices, creating licensing and regulatory regimes to prevent any further encroachment of our work by other professions, and even poaching back that which has been nibbled away by others. On the other hand, if we are not a field but part of some kind of multifaceted social movement, then let’s not waste more time on professionalization issues and get on with strategically changing a few more parts of our societies for the better.    3 Comments

Reel Negotiation: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Reflections Of Negotiation And Mediation In Film
The visual experience of watching movie scenes is, needless to say, a great learning tool that helps to illustrate, clarify or frame the discussion not only about negotiation and mediation, strategies, techniques and skills, but approaches to problem solving and leadership as well. Many of our favorites are listed below with brief annotations as to why and how we think they might be helpful, along with references to articles and reviews of a few movies that are especially important.    3 Comments

Some Radical Thinking on Centrism, Politics, And the Future of Conflict Management
In the space of a single generation, it would seem, the idea of using less-adversarial methods of conflict management has come of age. But what of the political culture?    1 Comment

Hope For The Future? Follow The Kids!
Resolving complex, highly political, public policy issues is inherently messy. On occasion, a unique chemistry of effective leadership, good technical information, and principled negotiating actually does the job. It beggars the imagination to think that a bunch of smart high school kids could create inspired political breakthroughs where leaders in government, industry, and non-profits have repeatedly failed. Nonetheless, that is what recently happened.

Dialogue By Design: Sixteen Practical Ideas for Organizing and Convening Policy Mediations
“Policy Dialogues” are a form of conflict resolution. They are used in regulatory, standard-setting, rule-making, and policy forming settings in which multiple stakeholders are struggling with an issue that has political urgency. Meetings are held over a period of time, they are usually guided by a facilitator or mediator, and they aspire to produce concrete outputs, i.e. a guidance to government, a proposed rule or regulation, a plan, or a strategy.

Beyond Cultural Identity: Reflections on Multiculturalism
No one is culture free. Yet, the conditions of contemporary history are such that we may now be on the threshold of a new kind of person, a person who is socially and psychologically a product of the interweaving of cultures in the twentieth century.    7 Comments

The Making of a Mediator: Sun Tzu and the Art of War
Mediators and would-be mediators would do well to examine Sun Tzu because The Art of War is actually all about the art of using skillful strategies of intervention to minimize unnecessary confrontation and maximize gains that are within reach.    2 Comments

Managing Scientific and Technical Information In Environmental Cases: Principles and Practices for Mediators and Facilitators
This effort represents ideas gathered from more than a hundred individuals as well as a review of some, though certainly not all, of the relevant literature. The document is an initial attempt to distill and disseminate those key principles and practices that are relevant to managing scientific and technical information in environmental conflicts. The authors hope to advance both the practice and theory of environmental mediation and to launch further thinking and discussion on the issues raised.

On Revenge
Despite our rage, not out of moral or humanistic belief but from practical experience, we also recognize that our anger unleashed will make the situation worse. The violence— at last count, some 6,714 innocent civilians missing or dead---– cannot be left unanswered. Conversely, we also know that doing what seems most simple and obvious will make matters far worse. It leaves us twisted and confused and stuck on the horns of a profound dilemma.    4 Comments

Water, Science, and The Search for Common Ground
Intrinsically, natural resource disputes, whether they are "upstream" issues that involve policy formation or "downstream" matters that involve enforcement and compliance, pose powerful challenges to civil societies.

Products:

	Peter Adler discusses how conflict resolution is not a field at the Keystone Conference, October, 2006 Article

	Keystone Conference From the Consolidating Our Collective Wisdom Conference of Senior Mediators - Are We A Field? - Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Juliana Birkhoff, Peter Adler - Megatrends for Mediators - Colin Rule, Glen Sigurdson, Kirk Emerson, Ann Gosline, Richard Reuben, Chris Honeyman, Carrie Menkel-Meadow. (2006) ISBN # 1-933857-08-0
Select: Keystone Conference DVD @$39.00

	Adler, Peter Complete hour-long interview of Peter Adler by Robert Benjamin.
Choose: DVD Purchase @$19.95

	Presentation by Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Juliana Birkhoff, and Peter Adler on "Are We A Field?" at the Keystone Conference, October, 2006.

	Eye of the Storm Leadership Eye of the Storm Leadership by Peter Adler, PhD  (2007) Mediate.com Publications - Soft Bound
Choose: Eye of the Storm Leadership @$14.95