Reykjavík, July 11th, 2001
Report on participation in the Leonardo da Vinci mobility exchange project: “Guidance Exchanges”
Last June I spend a week in Paris, visiting an institute called IRENE, Institute for Research and Education on Negotiation in Europe. During this time, I also attended the annual conference of The International Association for Conflict Management (IACM), but this year IRENE was the host institute for this conference. The visit lasted one week, from June 21st to June 28th.
Background
I work as a project manager for the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) of the University of Iceland. This includes assisting the director in initiating research projects and overseeing some of those projects. I also lecture about environmental policy in a master programme in environmental studies, but the ERI coordinates this programme. My background is in international relations, more specifically in International environmental policy and International negotiation and conflict resolution. Thus, my lectures in the master programmes, and research for the ERI, have focused on natural resource management, environmental conflict and methods that are available to resolve those types of conflicts.
Purpose of work exchange
The purpose of my visit was twofold. First, I wanted to gain insight into new ideas in the field of conflict resolution. Second, I wanted to make contacts with people in Europe working in the field of conflict resolution, especially if I could find someone engaged in work related to natural resource management, environmental conflict, and other kinds of public disputes. I studied the subject of conflict resolution in the United States, and most of the literature originates in North America. However, decisions-making procedures in Europe and North America differ in some crucial ways. This is because of differences in the judicial systems, and the administrative systems. Thus, conflict resolution methods that work well in North America need to be adopted, if they are to be used in the European context.
About IRENE
The institute I visited is called IRENE, meaning “peace” in Greek. The objectives of the IRENE are threefold: First, IRENE is engaged in both theoretical and applied research in negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, the institute offers training for practitioners through cases and simulations. The third objective is to disseminate information to as many people as possible about the best conflict resolution practices and renewed approach to deal-making.
The institute was established in 1996 and already has a number of projects going on, both locally, nationally and internationally. I found Alain Lempereur, the director of IRENE, to be very enthusiastic about this institute and it was very encouraging for me to learn about the things they were doing there, and find out that there was a growing interest in many European countries to put more emphasis on the study of negotiation and conflict resolution.
What did I learn?
Most of my time in Paris, I spent attending various lectures and discussion forums related to the IACM conference. The participants of the conference were about 300 in total, and the range of topics was wide. About half of the participants came from the US and academics from the States are still dominant in the field, but there were about 100 participants from Europe, and then a few from Asia, Australia and Africa. The lectures I attended included a session on “The role of emotions in negotiations”, “Comparative approaches to negotiation”, Theory-practice exchange”, “Issues in international conflict resolution” and “Culture and conflict.” The two most useful sessions, however, were sessions on “Environmental conflicts” and “Mediation effectiveness”.
I would have liked to see more emphasis on negotiation and conflict resolution related to public policy, but the few lectures that were related to the subject I found very helpful. It was interesting to hear that the European representatives that were engaged in research on environmental conflicts, had been exploring the same questions that I had come across (namely, how to adopt the North American models so that they could be useful in Europe).
Contacts made
I met with a number of people during this week, and enjoyed talking to many people whose names I knew from reading their books. In addition to the contacts with people working for IRENE, I made at least two contacts that could be particularly useful in the future. One was with a French mediator that works for an NGO that specializes in environmental mediation. The second contact was with a team of Norwegians that came to the conference to present findings of a study about the usefulness of mediation in the Norwegian land consolidation court.
Conclusion
Overall, I found the visit to be very useful. This is the first time an Icelander has participated in an IACM conference, but hopefully this visit will be only the first step in making international contacts that could be helpful in gaining knowledge about negotiation and conflict resolution methods related to natural resource management.
Auður H Ingólfsdóttir
Project manager
Environmental Research Institute
University of Iceland
Tel. +354 525 5871
E-mail: aingolfs@hi.is | 
