Cultural and Consensus Models of Climate Change Adaptation for Chesapeake Bay

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Michael Paolisso (University of Maryland), Dr. Shirley Fiske (University of Maryland), and Dr. Susan Crate (George Mason University) will undertake a two-year study of local, cultural models of climate change. The research will be conducted in three communities on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Although there are widely held scientific theories of climate change, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, climate change is also a local construct, interpreted from individuated perspectives that may vary depending on people's cultural, socioeconomic, geospatial, and temporal location. Most information on public understandings of climate change comes from public opinion polls, and not from in-depth community studies. This project will contribute systematic, ethnographic research to understand how diverse groups of people think about, understand, and interpret the phenomenon of climate change, and the policies proposed to adapt to it. The three communities will be chosen to vary in their economic relation to Chesapeake Bay resources (as watermen, farmers, or shore-dwelling retirees), and to be at-risk from climate change effects, particularly sea-level rises. In each community, the researchers will interview residents and collect cognitive domain information about climate change, its impacts, and proposed adaptations for the Chesapeake Bay region. After developing community-level cognitive models from these data, cultural consensus analytical techniques will be used to test the extent of shared knowledge and model overlap within and between communities, and between community understandings and those that underlie remediation programs and policies. Multivariate analyses will be used to assess the impacts of cultural model knowledge, local environmental conditions, and socioeconomic contexts on community understanding and support of climate change adaptation policies. The project addresses the need to understand how diverse communities under severe threat of adverse effects from climate change understand climate change and to what extent and at what levels their beliefs are shared. The project will provide information for local communities, county planners, and state offices as they confront a changing environment; it will deepen our understanding of the public perceptions of environmental issues and public actions necessary to adapt to them; and it will provide theoretical and methodological insights for anthropologists applying cultural model approaches to environmental issues.