J. Walton Blackburn

Environmental mediation is merging as an alternative to litigation in the
settlement of environmental disputes. A literature on the theory and
practice of environmental mediation is beginning to develop as
practitioners reflect upon the techniques and approaches that have worked
best and as theoreticians attempt to synthesize the key elements of
successful environmental mediation.

This research is an effort to develop the theory of environmental
mediation from a "grounded theory" approach. Bailey ( 1982) describes
grounded theory as an approach in which theory is discovered or
generated from data rather than being abstract and tentative. It is
developed by entering the fieldwork phase without a hypothesis,
describing what happens, and explaining why it happens on the basis of
observations.

The author examined the literature on environmental mediation to
identify the activities mediation practitioners performed and the conditions
they claimed were conducive to successful mediation efforts. The
literature search itself was a challenge. Despite a computer search and
examination of indexes and bibliographies, little work on environmental
mediation was found.

In the search of the mediation literature, the author found 63
elements, considerations, and activities of environmental mediation that
were evident in or had been used in different mediation efforts. These 63

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