About the EFC Project
The Environmental Framing Consortium (EFC) is comprised of researchers from seven U.S. universities who are studying environmental conflicts that are resistant to resolution. This group of researchers joined together in 1998 to study the dynamics that render some environmental conflicts intractable or resistant to resolution, and have been working to understand how the stakeholders in these conflicts make sense of what is going on in their respective conflicts.
"Framing Theory" lies on the cutting edge of efforts to understand and more constructively handle difficult environmental disputes, by examining how others make sense of complex environmental policy disputes. We refer to this sense-making activity as "framing" — the various ways in which disputants interpret what the dispute is about. Research on environmental disputes has shown that parties develop considerably different frames about what the dispute is about, what should be done about it, and by whom (Vaughan & Siefert, 1992; Gray, 1997).
In its various case studies, the Consortium focused on whether and how the framing of these disputes contributed to their perpetuation. Our research investigates not only how the stakeholders are framing these conflicts, but how their frames may contribute to the persistence, or intractability, of the conflicts over time. The Consortium's research is designed to address a variety of environmental conflicts, including those concerning natural resources, water, growth issues, and toxic hazards. The research sites can be reviewed by clicking here.
Our research has several overall objectives:
- Devise a typology of frames typically underlying environmental conflicts.
- Identify the frames in use in several different intractable environmental disputes across the U.S., and what precipitates frame change.
- Examine whether these frames differ between stakeholder groups.
- Assist communities, local government officials, and interveners in understanding the multiple frames in use, and the potential for frame analysis as a vehicle for more constructive management of these conflicts.
- Explore the role of the media in framing these conflicts and contributing to their intractability.
- Disseminate information on framing and its implications for environmental dispute resolution to other academics, practitioners, policy-makers and media representatives.
