Creativity in Environmental Systems Conflict Resolution

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The overall objective is to develop innovative techniques for formally incorporating creativity into conflict resolution in order to obtain responsible outcomes to challenging environmental controversies, which are sustainable and fair. To operationalize the concept of creativity for resolving an actual dispute, two kinds of seminal decision technologies will be designed: learning methods for discovering how a decision maker (DM) may be thinking under conflict and creativity techniques for determining how this thinking can be purposefully directed in order to reach a win/win resolution. In a conflict in which misunderstandings may exist among DMs and for which a surprising result may occur, learning methods will be constructed for ascertaining the correct preferences and intentions of a DM. For example, an environmental agency may mistakenly think that a chemical company is environmentally responsible and is shocked to find out that the company has been discharging more pollutants than allowed into the environment due to financial concerns. When an unexpected outcome does occur, a DM learns from this experience and the conflict enters a new phase founded on a more informed understanding. Moreover, based on observable actions a DM may take in a dispute in which preferences may be largely unknown, various learning methods will be constructed for determining associated preferences. After learning as much as possible about a particular dispute, inverse engineering techniques will be built for calculating the preference changes needed by DMs to reach an attractive outcome. This type of information could be highly informative in a third party intervention in which a facilitator attempts to lead the parties in dispute over a certain issue towards a responsible resolution in which, for instance, a polluting company eventually prefers to cut back significantly in its generation of wastes by adopting more advanced production technologies so that the local community is not adversely affected. The role of introducing attractive options into a conflict to create a more positive attitude will also be addressed, such as offering tax incentives for cleansing and developing polluted land. Large strides will also be made in determining the kinds of behavior needed by DMs to cause specified outcomes to take place in a conflict given the preferences of the DMs in what is called the behavioral engine problem. The ultimate purpose of this landmark research is to make fundamental advancements in learning and creative thinking as part of the long-term goal of benefiting Canadian Society by discovering sensible resolutions to challenging complex conflicts lying at the confluence of society, technology and the environment from a systems perspective, with an emphasis on pollution controversies involving water, land and the atmosphere caused by human activities in energy production, industry and agriculture.