Resources
305 Resources found
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Back to the Future
Colin Rule, recently appointed chair of CBI’s Board of Directors, speaks to the unprecedented challenges that have surfaced in our society in recent years and the importance of consensus building to finding a path forward.
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A Time to Follow
After nearly 20 years, Patrick Field is stepping down as Managing Director at CBI and passing the torch to Stacie Nicole Smith. Pat reflects on his time leading the organization and why he decided to make this transition and continue his work as a Senior Mediator at CBI.
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Leading CBI: Looking Back and Ahead
As Stacie Nicole Smith stepped into her role as Managing Director at CBI, she took some time to think about what drew her to consensus building two decades ago, landmark developments in the field over the years, and what this era is demanding of practitioners – and CBI.
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Reflections on Injustice, Consensus Building, and CBI
It is rare that we begin CBI Reports with a statement. Since our last newsletter, COVID-19 has underscored the persistence of deep inequities in our health and economic system. Recent killings of Black Americans by police and civilians have sparked a national movement to transform the criminal justice system and root out structural racism in our society. We are not neutral on these issues.
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Engaging Local Stakeholders in the Climate Investment Funds
For more than 20 years, CBI has been working with multilateral development banks and local stakeholders to address concerns about the impacts of development projects. A recent evaluation of local stakeholder engagement in the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) – a global partnership to help developing countries address climate change – has revealed some new insights. Read Managing Director David Fairman’s account of the challenges he has observed in effective stakeholder engagement and key lessons from the CIF’s experience.
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Making Coastal Adaptation Personal
As communities across the U.S. and the globe grapple with how to adapt to the looming climate crisis, CBI Senior Mediator Bennett Brooks' recent work with a small community just north of New York City suggests an approach that may hold promise: translating risk into the simplest and most personal terms and creating a safe space for neighbors to begin talking with one another about promising adaptation strategies.
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Public Participation in the Throes of Coronavirus
CBI Latin America Director David Plumb reflects on the unique challenges posed by convening while social distancing in the wake of Coronavirus.
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Using Online Tools to Empower Collaboration
In this post, CBI offers more specific tips about the kinds of online tools you can use to generate participant input, both when participants are online together, and over time.
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10 Tips for Improving Our Online Meetings
CBI West Director Gina Bartlett shares a few tips that can help ensure that you are able to be productive and create value in an online environment.
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Extractives & Climate Change: The Unspoken Community Impact
Large-scale international projects hold promise for local community development; yet promises sometimes fall flat, and communities are left worse off. Climate change often compounds these negative impacts on communities, particularly in extractive projects. CBI Senior Mediator Merrick Hoben and Larry Dixon, Senior Consultant for Triple R Alliance, reflect on the structural factors impeding meaningful community engagement around project impacts, especially climate issues, in the extractives industry and the resulting implications.
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Pipeline Construction: When Safety Goes Global
CBI and its partner Environmental Resources Management embarked on a project to determine better practices for addressing conflicts related to pipeline construction. The results of this project – practical, actionable approaches to addressing conflict – are outlined in our recently released report, "Stakeholder Engagement and Conflict Mitigation in Pipeline Construction."
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Breaking Through to the Table: New Thoughts on a Perennial Problem
CBI is employing four critical elements of its breakthrough collaboration framework – trust building, creativity, negotiation, and joint action – to support stakeholders who are facing what seem like intractable disagreements on a public issue. These ingredients are powerful catalysts for collaboration, but they beg the question: how do we get stakeholders to the table in the first place? Using a challenging case in a New Jersey community as an example, CBI Managing Directors David Fairman and Stacie Smith discuss enabling conditions and catalysts needed to bring parties together to consider the possibility of collaboration.
