Environmental conflict: Engaging with scientific information and community activism

Key Points
• Land and water use planning often involves managing environmental
conflict.
• Environmental conflicts are complex and can involve a wide range of
substantive, procedural and psychological issues. They share one key
characteristic: scientific evidence often plays a key role.
• Successful management of environmental conflict requires carefully
considering how to ensure that scientific evidence is brought to bear
in a way that supports dialogue, rather than deepening divisions and
differences of view.
• This can be achieved by ensuring that agreement is reached between
the parties involved in environmental conflict on the shared values that
underpin the interpretation of scientific evidence, what is considered
to be good-quality science (and the thresholds used to assess this)
and how future ‘unknowns’ (in the form of new and emerging issues)
will be dealt with to reduce the likelihood of conflict continuing to
re-occur over time.