Winning Together: The Natural Resource Negotiation Playbook

by Bruno Verdini Trejo

Overview

Strategies for transboundary natural resource management; winner of Harvard Law School's Raiffa Award for best research of the year in negotiation and conflict resolution.

Transboundary natural resource negotiations, often conducted in an atmosphere of entrenched mistrust, confrontation, and deadlock, can go on for decades. In this book, Bruno Verdini outlines an approach by which government, private sector, and nongovernmental stakeholders can overcome grievances, break the status quo, trade across differences, and create mutual gains in high-stakes water, energy, and environmental negotiations. 

Verdini examines two landmark negotiations between the United States and Mexico. The two cases—one involving conflict over shared hydrocarbon reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico and the other involving disputes over the shared waters of the Colorado River—resulted in groundbreaking agreements in 2012, after decades of deadlock.

Drawing on his extensive interviews with more than seventy high-ranking negotiators in the United States and Mexico—from presidents and ambassadors to general managers, technical experts, and nongovernmental advocates—Verdini offers detailed accounts from multiple points of view, on both sides of the border. He unpacks the negotiation, leadership, collaborative decision-making, and political communication strategies that made agreement possible.

Building upon the theoretical and empirical findings, Verdini offers advice for practitioners on effective negotiation and dispute resolution strategies that avoid the presumption that there are not enough resources to go around, and that one side must win and the other must inevitably lose. 

This investigation is the winner of Harvard Law School's Howard Raiffa Award for best research of the year in negotiation, mediation, decision-making, and dispute resolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262534376
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	12/15/2017
Series:	The MIT Press
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Bruno Verdini is Executive Director of the MIT-Harvard Mexico Negotiation Program, Lecturer in Urban Planning and Negotiation, and Founder of MIT's Concentration in Negotiation and Leadership. He created and teaches MIT's popular courses on The Art and Science of Negotiation, and leads training and consulting work for governments, firms, and international organizations around the world.

Table of Contents

Part I Beyond Hard Bargaining 1

Examining Transboundary Negotiations 1

Embracing an Interdisciplinary Approach 4

Part II Gulf of Mexico Negotiations 17

1 Introduction to the Gulf of Mexico Negotiations 19

Overview 19

Summary and Scope of Agreement 21

2 Setting the Stage 27

Getting the Other Side to the Table 27

Getting Your Own Side to the Table 35

3 Changing the Mindset 41

Building Trust by Sharing Information 41

Analyzing Precedents to Define a Roadmap 46

Switching from an Adversarial to a Mutual-Gains Approach 48

4 Exceeding Zero-Sum 57

Finding the Zone of Possible Agreement 57

Overcoming Preconceptions by Defining a New Narrative 60

Involving Concerned Stakeholders Preemptively 61

5 Exercising Leadership 65

Building in Incentives Rather than Requirements 65

Creating Better Outcomes through Relationships of Trust 75

Part III Colorado River Negotiations 81

6 Introduction to the Colorado River Negotiations 83

Overview 83

Summary and Scope of Agreement 85

7 Back to the Drawing Board 93

From Litigation to Cooperation 93

Turning Crisis into Opportunity 97

No Negotiation without Representation 101

8 Broadening Perspectives 107

Seeing Is Believing 107

Sharing Tools for Better Understanding 113

Putting Yourself in Their Shoes 116

9 Tearing Down Walls 123

Bringing More Issues to the Table 123

Adding Value in Process and Product 130

10 Protecting and Perfecting 137

Dealing with Spoilers 137

Leading through Ingenuity 145

Testing the Ways to Agreement 150

Part IV Strengthening Negotiation Practice 155

11 Enhancing the Prospects for Finding Agreement 157

Dispute Resolution 158

Adaptive Leadership 163

Collaborative Decision-Making 169

Political Communication 176

12 Steps to Effective Transboundary Negotiations 183

Afterword: Building Negotiation Skills 191

Appendix A The Gulf of Mexico Case Background 197

Appendix B The Colorado River Case Background 215

Appendix C List of Interviewees 233

Appendix D Interview Conversation Topics 251

Notes 255

Bibliography 285

Acknowledgments 307

Index 313

What People are Saying About This

Duncan Wood

Although Winning Together focuses on bilateral natural resource negotiations, suggesting that finding mutual gains for both parties is essential to a successful outcome, the book has implications far beyond the natural resource domain.

William Ury

There is perhaps no more important task today in the field of negotiation than learning how third parties can help resolve long-standing, seemingly intractable disputes. Drawing on rich case studies and detailed interviews with the negotiators themselves, Bruno Verdini shows us practically how we can overcome a zero-sum mindset and find mutual gain even in the most challenging negotiations. These insights are valuable not only for academics and practitioners of natural resource management, but for anyone studying collaborative negotiation strategies.

Endorsement

This is simply a masterful work that carefully leads the reader step-by-step through the various stages and dimensions of the case negotiations and then methodically links the diplomatic behavior to the transformative practices and principles that produce these positive-sum outcomes. The evidentiary base is superb, anchored in many lengthy interviews of key participants in the negotiations at various levels of government and civil society as well as a solid command of the applicable municipal and international law and literature. The quality of the prose is excellent and contributes to the narrative flow and the book's readability.—Stephen Mumme, Professor of Political Science, Colorado State University

From the Publisher

There is perhaps no more important task today in the field of negotiation than learning how third parties can help resolve long-standing, seemingly intractable disputes. Drawing on rich case studies and detailed interviews with the negotiators themselves, Bruno Verdini shows us practically how we can overcome a zero-sum mindset and find mutual gain even in the most challenging negotiations. These insights are valuable not only for academics and practitioners of natural resource management, but for anyone studying collaborative negotiation strategies.

—William Ury, coauthor of Getting to Yes and author of Getting to Yes with Yourself

Although Winning Together focuses on bilateral natural resource negotiations, suggesting that finding mutual gains for both parties is essential to a successful outcome, the book has implications far beyond the natural resource domain.

—Duncan Wood, Director, Mexico Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center

This is simply a masterful work that carefully leads the reader step-by-step through the various stages and dimensions of the case negotiations and then methodically links the diplomatic behavior to the transformative practices and principles that produce these positive-sum outcomes. The evidentiary base is superb, anchored in many lengthy interviews of key participants in the negotiations at various levels of government and civil society as well as a solid command of the applicable municipal and international law and literature. The quality of the prose is excellent and contributes to the narrative flow and the book's readability.

—Stephen Mumme, Professor of Political Science, Colorado State University

Stephen Mumme

This is simply a masterful work that carefully leads the reader step-by-step through the various stages and dimensions of the case negotiations and then methodically links the diplomatic behavior to the transformative practices and principles that produce these positive-sum outcomes. The evidentiary base is superb, anchored in many lengthy interviews of key participants in the negotiations at various levels of government and civil society as well as a solid command of the applicable municipal and international law and literature. The quality of the prose is excellent and contributes to the narrative flow and the book's readability.