In our increasingly polarized society, there are constant calls for compromise, for coming together. For many, these are empty talking points-for Lucy Moore, they are a life's work. As an environmental mediator, she has spent the past quarter century resolving conflicts that appeared utterly intractable. Here, she shares the most compelling stories of her career, offering insight and inspiration to anyone caught in a seemingly hopeless dispute.
Moore has worked on wide-ranging issues-from radioactive waste storage to loss of traditional grazing lands. More importantly, she has worked with diverse groups and individuals: ranchers, environmental activists, government agencies, corporations, tribal groups, and many more. After decades spent at the negotiating table, she has learned that a case does not turn on facts, legal merit, or moral superiority. It turns on people.
Through ten memorable stories, she shows how issues of culture, personality, history, and power affect negotiations. And she illustrates that equitable solutions depend on a healthy group dynamic. Both the mediator and opposing parties must be honest, vulnerable, open, and respectful. Easier said than done, but Moore proves that subtle shifts can break the logjam and reconcile even the most fiercely warring factions.
This book should be especially appealing to anyone concerned with environmental conflicts; and also to students in environmental studies, political science, and conflict resolution, and to academics and professionals in mediation and conflict resolution fields.
"An environmental and public-policy mediator, Moore has managed conflict resolution across an impressive and impassioned array of controversial subjects. Offering specific case studies from nearly a quarter century on the front lines of civic confrontations, Moore engagingly profiles the qualities required to help individuals and groups make critical choices and come to consensus, painlessly and respectfully." "Moore's examples are varied and compelling, and offer instructive lessons on resolving the critical issues that face the West as population and mobility increase and resources dwindle. Her voice is passionate, reasoned and articulate, yet seasoned throughout with the vulnerability she deems so essential to conflict resolution." "...inspiring...hybrid instruction manual and memoir..." "To read Common Ground on Hostile Turf: Stories from an Environmental Mediator is to pass many delightful hours 'being there' with Lucy Moore....It doesn't hurt that much of the turf is the spectacular terrain of New Mexico, captured beautifully in Lucy's simple, unobtrusive prose" "engaging and thoughtful... teases out some of the lessons she has learned about getting people with sometimes radically different backgrounds and perspectives to come together and undertake change." "follows the gratifying and sometimes frustrating twists and turns inherent in Lucy Moore's career as an environmental mediator....the stakes are high and the conflicts dramatic enough to make it thought-provoking for a general readership....Moore offers a series of stories of her own that are often riveting as they unfold." "[Common Ground on Hostile Turf is] about successes, failures, and outcomes that contain elements of both. It's about helping to build relationships of trust in order to undertake collective action to further a common purpose, but also-not incidentally-for the sake of the relationships themselves." "Alternative dispute resolution is one of the main impulses in American law today, and this is notably true in environmental law. Lucy Moore, a creative and successful mediator, takes us inside the negotiating rooms and shows how listening, respect, and opening up are not homilies-they are the sturdy foundations for building true and lasting results."---Charles Wilkinson, University of Colorado Law School "For three decades, Lucy Moore has opened my heart and mind with her stories. She brings t
