Addressing the Issues: The Choice of Environmental Conflict-Resolution Venues in the United States

Environmental conflicts are the catalyst for policy and institutional changes, and they are expected to increase due to rising populations, economic growth, and climate change impacts. Yet, environmental conflicts and the venues used to address them have not been thoroughly examined. A common-pool resource dilemmas typology is used to categorize environmental conflict issues and to develop hypotheses relating conflict issues to resolution venues. The hypotheses are tested on western water-resource conflicts. The capacity of venues to address the underlying conflict issues as well as how some venues tend to work in tandem are important for explaining the matching of conflict type to venue.