Frank Dukes

Director, Institute for Environmental Negotiation, University of Virginia

Interviewed by Julian Portilla, 2003

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Another capacity building type of work is something we call The Virginia Natural Resource's Leadership Institute, which we have as partners Mike Elebraw from Virginia Tech., and Mike Foreman from the Department of Forestry in Virginia, and that brings together up to thirty people for six three day sessions. We take them to different parts of the state so that they are learning about the issues that are being addressed in that state that involve some sort of environment, natural resource or planning issue.

We also have a substantial training component in conflict resolution, consensus building, community involvement, and then a leadership component. It's been very popular and has had a big impact where people were starting to see a lot of people around the state starting to convene, and meet in collaborative problem solving processes. This all happened in their own communities which is what we intended to have happen. We are starting our forth year of that program in September. We are also expanding that to run something called the Southeast Natural Resources Institute, which will be a shorter pilot effort to see if there is some value in doing this for the whole southeastern region of the United States.