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*Simone Tielesh is a CoRe student board member who is on an exchange semester as a visiting student at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law.
A few weeks ago I sat down with Professor Diana Ginn to speak with her about a great initiative that has been going on at Dalhousie University. In 2004 the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) agreed to fund a five year project between Dalhousie, and partner universities in the Philippines and Vietnam. The project was called Principles In Practice (PIP) – and is focused on a principled approach to coastal zone management.
All three countries have large coastal areas, and wanted to share insights about regulation and management options. The program started with an environmental and regulatory focus, but partners in the Philippines and Vietnam requested that an ADR component be added. Professor Ginn, and her colleague Professor David Blaikie joined the PIP team to bring expertise on ADR methods in North America.
Professors Ginn and Blaikie, worked with the PIP partner professors to identify goals and found there to be a lack of ADR resources available in these regions. Their work then focused on training the trainers through providing techniques for teaching ADR, the theory of conflict management (focusing on hypotheticals which were culturally relevant), and lecturing on conflict management.
CIDA funding ended in 2009, but the three PIP partners were left feeling that strong relationships had developed and more work could be done. Since then, Professors Ginn and Blaikie have worked to keep these connections strong, and with a grant from the Schulich Fund, will be going back this summer to teach more conflict management classes, aid in drafting a national policy for Vietnam on coastal zone management, and collaborate with professors from PIP partners in Vietnam and the Philippines on a book on conflict management in Southeast Asia.
There is a huge appetite for resources and teaching on North American approaches to conflict management in the partner institutions – but the learning has gone both ways! Professor Ginn came away with five take away lessons from her ADR experiences abroad.
- First, we shouldn’t assume that there is one typically “Asian” way to negotiate or mediate, given the differences in culture and history between each Asian nation.
- Second, the idea of ADR being ‘alternative’ to enforcement of rights in court does not necessarily apply where there is a lack of law and regulation (and so a lack of court protection), conflict management may be the only avenue to dispute resolution.
- Third, in Canada we often think of ADR as between two individuals/corporations engaging in an individualized process. Generally, but specifically in terms of resource management, the disputes could be between community groups (ie. traditional fisheries and aquaculture) or between a community or individual on one side and the government on the other, rather than simply between individuals.
- Fourth, the most frequent questioned asked by PIP partners was, do any of these principles work when there is an imbalance of bargaining power?? This is an issue we also grapple with in the Canadian context, but is exacerbated when neither the law, nor the money is available to balance the negotiation/mediation table.
- Lastly, the political realities in both Vietnam and the Philippines, which have very centralized government with significant control, affect public and private dispute resolution and can imbalance the negotiation table.
One lesson was definitive, these countries were eager to learn North American approaches (like interest based negotiation and mediation) to ADR, and given the increasing levels contact between boarders and around the world – this field is going to grow, it’s just a matter of in what direction.
