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Overcoming the Obstacles and Capitalizing on the Incentives for Climate Change Adaptation in Coastal Environmental Justice Communities

Faculty Associate Michael Paolisso and colleagues examine how diverse communities under severe threat from climate change impacts view climate change

Faculty Associate Michael Paolisso and Dr. Shirley Fiske, in collaboration with Dr. Susan Crate (George Mason University), are engaged in a two-year study, funded by NOAA through the University of Massachusetts, of cultural models of climate change for communities on the Eastern Shore of Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. Although there is general consensus on scientific theory and explanation for climate change, (i.e. UNFCC’s IPCC process and reports), the phenomenon of climate change is also, fundamentally, a local construct, interpreted from highly individuated perspectives depending on the cultural, socioeconomic, geospatial and temporal coordinates in which people are situated. Most of the domestic information on public knowledge and attitudes on climate change comes from public opinion polls, and not from in-depth community studies. Systematic ethnographic research is needed to understand how diverse groups of people think about, understand, and interpret the phenomenon of climate change and what adaptation policies they are most likely to support.

The project's research objectives are to collect ethnographic information on community-level cultural understandings of climate change, impacts, and adaptation for the Chesapeake Bay region. This project will take an in-depth approach to collect, systematically analyze, and identify cognitive models from local understandings of and adaption to climate change in three diverse and at-risk communities on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. After developing cognitive models, the project will engage cultural consensus theory and methods to test for the extent of shared knowledge within and between communities and ultimately with programmatic and policy models inherent in sea level rise programs and policies themselves. The study undertakes multivariate analyses to assess the impacts of cultural model knowledge, local environmental conditions, and socioeconomic contexts on community understanding and support of climate change adaptation policies and programs.

The project addresses the need to understand how diverse communities under severe threat of climate change (e.g., sea level rise) understand climate change and to what extent their beliefs are shared and at what levels. The project will provide information for local communities, county planners, and state offices as they confront a changing environment; it will deepen understanding of the public perceptions of environmental issues and the public actions necessary to adapt to them; and it will provide theoretical and methodological insights for anthropologists applying cultural model approaches to environmental issues.

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