Portfolio IV: Coastal Communities

Our Response

The Maryland Sea Grant College has responded to these complex environmental issues by strategically targeting several key areas, bringing to bear not only science but also philosophy, economics, finance and anthropology. By supporting scholars in the area of environmental philosophy and ethics, as well as innovative natural resource economists and finance experts, Sea Grant has helped provide insightful information into factors that drive community decision making. These factors include not only economic drivers, but also the way that residents feel about who they are and where they live, their "sense of place."

A Vision for the Future

Understanding what is likely or even possible as a community contemplates its future depends on some knowledge of the social and economic drivers that will ultimately propel land use changes, or even the lack of change. By coupling land use data with economic analyses, Sea Grant-supported economist Nancy Bockstael (R/PO-03) has been able to demonstrate how economic changes can be tied to potential changes in land use. Further, she has suggested how changes in land use will have environmental effects, such as increases in runoff - which translate to increases in levels of sediment, nutrients and contaminants.

In addition to land use, how citizens access and use the Bay's waters for recreation also has important economic consequences. In an analysis of the state's recreational boating industry, Sea Grant economist Doug Lipton has documented an impact that exceeds $1 billion annually. This analysis, regularly updated, has helped legislators and others understand just how important the boating industry is to the region's economy. Furthermore, an analysis of the impact of boating fees (taxes) in Anne Arundel County led to the repeal of that tax, and to greater caution on the part of other counties considering the tax.

Social and economic changes are driven by community choices and behaviors. To help shed light on these community dynamics, philosopher Mark Sagoff (R/PO-02) has teamed up with other policy analysts to determine how coastal residents perceive where they live and whether the changes they experience are essentially negative or positive. Staging a series of four focus groups, facilitated by nationally known expert Laurissa Grunig, Sagoff and his colleagues compared the reflections and strong opinions of the following groups in Maryland's largely rural and largely coastal Calvert County:

• long-term Bay residents
• recent arrivals to the Bay shore
• African American residents
• watermen

From these focus groups emerged a powerful picture of the diverging opinions on the benefits of "progress" and what has been lost or gained from the past. Long-term residents, for example, often bemoaned the loss of a "golden age," where life was simpler and more pleasant. African American residents, on the other hand, were more sensitive to the privations of the past, and the prejudices that tainted the "golden" era. New residents often expressed a desire to get it both ways - that is, to enjoy the peace and quiet of a rural setting, but also to have the amenities offered by city or suburban living, amenities they found themselves missing. Watermen poignantly expressed their sense of loss over the disappearing bounty that once supported their families and so many of their forebears who worked the Chesapeake.

A key part of understanding and relating to coastal communities includes diversity - the role of differing groups, varying perspectives and distinct histories. Maryland Sea Grant has worked to take account of these diverse groups, and in particular African Americans. In addition to the African American focus group alluded to above, which provided a rich dimension to the "sense of place" study undertaken in Calvert County, Sea Grant has recently published two original articles in its newsletter, Marine Notes. Authored by Harold Anderson, the first article describes the role of African Americans in the Bay's maritime history, while the second focuses on the menhaden fishery and the rich musical tradition of menhaden chanteys that grew from it. The articles attracted considerable attention, and multiple copies were mailed to schools and others, especially during February, Black History Month. The National Aquarium in Baltimore asked if it could use the title of the first article, "Black Men, Blue Waters," as the title of its series focusing on African Americans and the Chesapeake. Copies of the Marine Notes piece were made available as part of the display for the series, and contacts made during this effort have strengthened Sea Grant's relationship with the African American community in the Bay region.

In addition, the Assistant Director for Communications and Public Affairs has been asked to facilitate a number of meetings in distressed communities, including urban communities, during the past several years. These intensive meetings have focused attention on environmental issues, by bringing in experts from differing fields to help address complex and often difficult problems. These meetings, or "charrettes," have taken place throughout the Chesapeake watershed, and with support from a Sustainable Urban Environments grant from the U.S. EPA, also in Charlotte, Cleveland, San Francisco and Houston.

In short, addressing important environmental issues requires not only creative and creditable science, but also strategic approaches to real-world problems, drawing on a range of disciplines. A recent publication from the International Center for the Environmental Management of Enclosed Coastal Seas (EMECS), states that: "Today's environmental policy demands that we transcend the natural sciences to include economics, law, ethics and aesthetics. Indeed, the 'sense of place' that coastal seas convey to people who ply their waters or enjoy their resources is one of the strongest factors operating to initiate and sustain coastal seas restoration programs" (Wayne H. Bell, "Our Changing View of the World's Coastal Seas"). This Sea Grant-supported work has helped to bolster a new vocabulary and to foster a new dialogue on the meaning of "sense of place" and its importance as we consider just what we want the Chesapeake Bay region to be.

Benefiting from Other's Success and Failures

In the Chesapeake region, powerful user groups are demanding protection of their interests and restoration of the estuary in ways that will meet their goals. In some cases these goals require information generated by our most sophisticated science - the understanding, for example, of population dynamics for valuable fisheries, or the analysis of oxygen dynamics, based on our understanding of chemical and physical processes in the estuary. In other cases, understanding the precise nature of these goals requires careful consideration of what words like "restoration" mean for groups such as watermen or other users of the Bay. With Sea Grant support, experts from the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs have analyzed such terms, focusing on the large-scale restoration efforts now underway in the Chesapeake Bay and measuring the degree to which environmental laws and programs have - or have not - benefited groups like the watermen.

In short, when considering policies that will address pressing problems in the Chesapeake watershed, an interdisciplinary approach has proven not only valuable but fundamental.

As in any field, work in this policy arena must take account of studies and advancements made in other regions of the country and beyond. To help gauge restoration efforts underway in this region in relation to efforts undertaken in other countries, researcher Wayne Bell joined with philosopher Mark Sagoff to compare major environmental management programs for four coastal or regional seas, including the Chesapeake Bay. The project analyzed how the activities of scientific communities contribute to the success or failure of attempts at environmental governance. It gleaned specific lessons from recent history concerning cooperation among groups that share a regional biological commons - including influential non governmental groups. This project helped to inform discussions leading to the Maryland International Conference on the Environmental Management of Coastal Seas.

As a result of this and other work, Mark Sagoff and his colleagues sponsored a "philosophy" track at the major international EMECS conference held in Baltimore, attended by more than forty different countries. This track was highly unusual for a conventional coastal research and management conference and drew high praise from attendees. The effort resulted

Accessing Much-Needed Assistance

In the Chesapeake region, local and state governments have realized that changes in the land will drive changes in the estuary. State encouragement of "smart growth" is attempting to slow the rapid conversion of open lands to housing and development, and the Chesapeake 2000 Bay Agreement, signed by Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Washington, DC and the Federal government, commit the Bay states to reducing land conversion rates by 30 percent.

Understanding the nature of changes in the watershed takes a sophisticated science. Making wise choices that will help reverse wasteful and unwise practices in the watershed will take a sophisticated understanding of policies and new ways of helping to inform wise decision making. Citizens and their representatives face a number of difficult questions, including:

• How does one balance the need for more housing and industry with the need for open space preservation?
• How can communities, especially small communities that lack sufficient capacity and infrastructure, find the technical and financial support they need to manage their waste water, drinking water and storm water needs?
• How can the research and academic community best communicate with and inform client populations that most need this technical and analytical information?

In order to address pressing watershed problems, Maryland Sea Grant has mounted an energetic research and outreach effort that includes a range of activities aimed at informing wise policy - from studying the attitudes and opinions of coastal residents (noted above) to advising small communities on innovative and effective ways of protecting their part of the Chesapeake watershed. For example, Maryland Sea Grant has become the host for one of the nation's nine Environmental Finance Centers, funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Such efforts help us first to understand the motivations and attitudes of particular stakeholders, and second to devise means for helping them to achieve their environmental goals.