February 11, 2025
Environmental Policy Mediation at the Beach
During a hot and sticky fourth of July on the beach almost a decade ago, a group of adults started angrily shouting crow noises at me: “Caw! Caw!” Dressed in my ranger outfit, I was walking along the beach as a shorebird conservation monitor and educator for a local nonprofit in Massachusetts. I focused on coastal urban areas that had a significant Spanish-speaking population, my native language. Piping plovers, and others protected by the Endangered Species Act, lay their eggs on the sand of these beaches, which closes sections during nesting, hatching, and fledging. I’d gotten myself between visitors and the beach they wanted.
Without knowing it at the time, I’d just had one of my first experiences in dealing with conflict resolution over environmental policy. I lacked the conflict resolution tools I have today, but I remember that I deescalated the situation. I managed to stay cool, reminding people that I was the messenger following agency protocol, and that I was happy to talk through issues they had with how the regulations were implemented. I made sure to ask them open-ended questions about why they were upset, reflected key points they made to make sure I was understanding them, and made space for any clarifying questions they had.
Though I didn’t enjoy people “cawing” at me, I enjoyed lowering the intensity of the situation. After some talking, it became clear that the crow-cryers were angry not at me, but about the laws protecting these birds, laws that forbade them from visiting parts of the beach they loved and had grown up using. And, in turn, I conveyed that the return of these shorebirds was a sign of improved coastal health. As parts of the beach are sectioned off so the birds can nest, the coast becomes healthier over time, enabling the public to enjoy the beach for generations to come, just as they had in the past. Not only do the shorebirds benefit, so do people and other wildlife—crows included.
In my time as a shorebird monitor, local beachgoers and policymakers both taught me about the complexities of environmental issues, and about how “people issues” like race, class, education, and access influence environmental policies. Regulations aren’t universal—people with different life conditions, experiences, and backgrounds may understand and be affected by the same set of regulations quite differently. Now, as a Senior Associate at the Consensus Building Institute, I’ve been able to build off that day on the beach and make a career out of understanding complex environmental and public policy issues while holding multi-stakeholder values and interests. So far I’ve focused on ocean and coastal issues, climate and energy work, and working with local community members on environmental justice problems—a common thread in all my work and studies.
CBI deals with an astonishing range of projects and challenges within this field. So far, my work has included building the first Environmental Justice Technical Working Group for Offshore Wind for the State of New York, leading a robust and successful community engagement strategy for the Boston area’s Mystic River Waterfront Vision, mediating a complex superfund site community working group in Long Island, and facilitating the State of Maine’s Community Resilience Working Group for the refresh of the award-winning 2020 climate action plan, Maine Won’t Wait.
As socio-political-environmental tensions escalate around the globe, building consensus becomes ever more important. I’m now eager to expand my environmental conflict expertise in new sectors and geographies. Most recently I’ve taken the biggest leap of my career: I moved back to where I fell in love with people and the environment—my native country of Chile. Returning as a professional to the place I left as a young child has been a life-long goal of mine, which is why I worked hard to obtain fellowships to do my graduate research in Puerto Rico, why I focused on coastal urban communities in predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhoods in the Boston area, and why I was interested in working at CBI, which has become a leader in the mediation space in Chile and greater Latin America.
There are, I’ve realized, continuities across so many of my experiences. That becomes especially clear when I consider how, as a facilitator, mediator, communicator, and community connector in the environmental space in LATAM, I’m still for the kind of work I started on that loud day at the beach.
Melanie Gárate, based in Santiago, Chile, is fluent in English and Spanish and works throughout Latin America and the United States. You can access Melanie’s CV here. For more information, reach out to her at mgarate@cbi.org and connect with her on LinkedIn.