Public Involvement, Conflict Management: Means to Eq and Social Objectives

Abstract

Engineers, scientists, and even some social scientists prefer to look at water resources planning and management as primarily analytical. However, more and more of the water professionals' analytical work depends on peopleoriented techniques either to relate their activities to outside interests or to build better internal team relationships. Frequently, the major problems that engineers and scientists face are not technical. They are problems of reaching agreement on facts, alternatives, or solutions. Public involvement and conflict management techniques are keys to servicing such needs. After briefly describing public involvement and conflict management techniques, seven observations on why incorporating social and environmental objectives into water resources planning and management require these process, techniques are presented.