10.1177/0739456X03256247 ARTICLE Ali Environmental Planning and Cooperative Behavior Environmental Planning and Cooperative Behavior Catalyzing Sustainable Consensus Saleem H. Ali R esource scarcity has often been framed as a leading cause of civil strife and conflict by political scientists, sociologists, and planners alike (Lewicki, Gray, and Elliot 2002; Dobkowski and Wallimann 1998). Poverty as a result of droughts, or a general paucity of natural endowments, has frequently been correlated with a rise of belliger- ence in societies—environmental literature is also rife with terms such as resource wars, water wars, green wars, and so on. 1 Planners have generally shielded themselves from such discourse by relegating these matters largely to the domain of political theorists. However, there is a growing realization among planners that underlying ecological indicators are the means by which communities often express their concerns at plan- ning forums (Beatley and Manning 1997). Even so, the environmental concerns that are expressed in the planning arena are often taken in isolation of the overall sociopolitical conflict that may be undermining the fulfillment of the planning objec- tive. While scholars of planning have a strong literature on collaboration and participa- tion for achieving cooperative outcomes, the focus of these writings has generally been on resolving immediate disputes (Forester 1999; Gray 1991; Healey 1997; Innes 1996; Susskind et al. 1999) rather than on going the next measure to try to use the coopera- tive process for resolving larger conflicts. While some recent writings are beginning to focus on the wider applicability of planning processes in galvanizing adversaries toward peace (Booher and Innes 2002; Mandell 1999), this literature has not focused on envi- ronmental planning as an operational arena. When dealing with environmental crite- ria, issues are usually studied on a technical basis or socio-specific basis rather than using them instrumentally to resolve larger conflicts that would in turn facilitate the proposed plan (Margerum and Hooper 2001). The political science literature has reinforced this approach by focusing on the neg- ative social consequences of resource scarcity. Recently, the confluence of environmen- tal discourse and the literature on international security has led to a persistent hypothe- sis that environmental concerns can very often be at the core of interstate conflicts (Homer-Dixon 1999; Kaplan 2000; Walton 1993). While there are different schools of thought within this area of study, all of them begin with the proposition that environ- mental resources may be initiators of conflict. Indeed, even a study on conflict 165 Journal of Planning Education and Research 23:165-176 DOI: 10.1177/0739456X03256247 © 2003 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Abstract Environmental concerns have been framed in the planning profession as man- ifestations of resource scarcity, and hence a contributing factor in community con- flicts. While mismanaged environmental scarcity can certainly lead to conflict, there is also considerable potential to stimulate cooperation on the basis of environmental scarcity itself. In the language of game the- ory, the latter outcome can be obtained by converting “dilemmas of common com- peting interests” to “dilemmas of common aversion.” The cooperation which would result from the use of environmental con- cerns as a binding element in conflicts among parties, is likely to catalyze a more “sustainable consensus”—a robust con- tract between erstwhile adversaries. Plan- ners are in a unique position to glean the positive attributes of environmental indi- cators since they can bridge technical knowledge of environmental impact with an understanding of sociopolitical context at community consultation forums. This paper attempts to provide the theoretical basis for this approach and develop exam- ples of how such a strategy for conflict res- olution may be implemented. Keywords: environmental security; resource wars; consensus catalysis; common aversions; linkage politics; epistemic community; escalation Saleem H. Ali is an assistant professor of environmental planning and policy at the University of Vermont, School of Natural Resources.