Climate change and conflict... specifically conflict resolution. This is an overwnelming concept to my unique and tiny perspective. Let me break it down. 

       Climate Change is debatable, in essense, process and in how it should be dealt with. Conflict is much the same. Now, if, as Ken Cloke says, the way to deal with climate change is with conflict resolution (mediation and educated negotiation), then we need to work on a collaborative negotiation between the two concepts first.

       Essentially, we can argue about the existance of climate change,and the existance of conflict. In conflict resolution, conflict is valid when one party feels a wrong has been done, or there is a percieved injurious experience. Has there been a percieved injurious experience that the climate has undergone? Since it is not widely acceptable to ask the climate weather or not if is disvalued, we're going to have to reach deeper into our training and see if there is a consensus regarding a relationship between the value and perception of the percieved conflict (MacFarlane). In other words, does the majority of the global population feel that the climate has been done a wrong? Well, so far, we have established in this forum (and countless others) that there is not a consensus. So, basically we are, by looking at Climate Change and Conflict Resolution, looking at a case without cause because there won't be a consensus about the earth's voice soon enough.

      What is our cause for this conflict resolution process then? It must have to do with ourselves.

I think we need to first get this giant barrier out of the way, so that we can get to the flesh of the matter; that which there is consensus about as percieved injurious experiences that people have undergone as a result of changes in individual climates. Once we get to these problems (interests of the people; of those in conflict) we can shift from the useless debate as to weather or not our climeate is changing and/or does human practice, ie industrialization, have a significant impact on the acceleration of this process.

     Now, we can all agree that with the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing to climte change, we can even have a hypothetical grounds for raising conflict with direct causes of the change. For example, if certian factories are emmitting co2 at unnessasary levels, and we know that co2 does not allow light to be reflected out of the earth's atmosphere which results in ice mealting itself and releasing more methane into the air, which is 25X more harmful than the co2 that got it there, then the region injuriously effected by those unessary emissions are actually in conflict and can thereby benefit from a conflict resolution more quickly and effectively than a treaty or UN concilliation can be enforced with the current system. So, that really means that anyone can enter into a dispute whose life is effected by a change in the whether, but can we be sensible? Can there be a facet of conflict negotiation which focuses on disputes regarding direct effects of climate change and will that generate interest in both issues as a whole. Well, I'm thinking about it and I think it will take an educated community to go for it. In other words, it takes knowing about the problem to get engaged like this... but hey, can't that be part of our job?

     I look forward to this exciting surge in the conflict resolution field.  What would be the second, and perhaps more attainable thing I would address? A simultaneous bottom up, top down (continued) movement of ADR. Bernard Mayer talks about it in Beyond Neutrality; the idea that i order for conflict resolution (engagement) to be sucessful, we must work from the grassroots (getting people to discuss the impacts hurting them specifically as a result of changes in the whether) and from the top down (engaging the international community in the same way). And, it is not an exact science of right and wrong figures to go after. I think it is getting to whoever will listen, with the most influential figures in mind first, like China and the United States, the factories in a small town and the farming communities that wish to take up the injury they ha