The Consensus Building Institute

The Consensus Building Institute (CBI) is a not-for-profit organization created by leading practitioners and theory builders in the field of dispute resolution. CBI serves public agencies and private sector clients worldwide by providing dispute resolution services, training in negotiation and consensus building techniques, and evaluative research. We specialize in environmental and natural resource management issues, and also work on economic development and social service issues.

Since 1993, CBI has worked in 12 countries and 26 states to provide consensus building advice and assistance to more than 100 agencies, corporations, community groups, and non-governmental organizations. CBI has played a key role in helping to build the intellectual capital in the dispute resolution field through our pioneering work on global environmental treaty-making, documentation of "best practices" in the dispute resolution field, joint training in negotiation, design of simulations and other advanced training techniques, and the mediation of multi-party, multi-issue public disputes.

CBI is associated with the Public Disputes Program of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Environmental Policy Group at the Massachusetts institute of Technology.