Portfolio IV: Coastal Communities

Managing for Success

A key to addressing wide-ranging research and policy issues, such as those connected with the sprawling Chesapeake Bay watershed, is building powerful partnerships. Maryland Sea Grant has worked hard to do this, forging strong ties with, for example, the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. Scholars at the School, and especially at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, have helped to tackle difficult and sophisticated issues surrounding complex human communities. For example, Maryland Sea Grant played a pivotal role in staging the large international conference in Baltimore on the Environmental Management of Enclosed Coastal Seas. During the planning and staging of this conference, Sea Grant worked closely with the Office of the Governor of Maryland, key state agencies, and members of the academic community, including the School of Public Affairs and the Center for Environmental Science, to help build a team capable of mounting an impressive national and international effort.

Maryland Sea Grant has also played a key role in assisting the Chesapeake Bay Program's Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee with an ambitious project entitled Chesapeake Futures. The Futures project is drawing on the expertise of technical experts throughout the region, whether from academia, government or the private sector, to help define likely scenarios for the Bay's environment, depending on what choices the citizenry makes. Specifically, this effort, headed by President Don Boesch, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, is tracking likely outcomes by the year 2030 if the region (1) remains on its current course, (2) implements programs to which it has already committed, but with population pressures still growing, and (3) employs feasible alternatives and technical advances aggressively. This activity has not only brought together a wealth of useful information, but has also helped to spur intense interaction among numerous technical and policy experts in the region.

In addition to the strong partnerships that Sea Grant has enjoyed with state agencies and academic institutions, we have worked hard to forge partnerships on the Federal level as well. During the past year, for example, Maryland Sea Grant worked with NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research to explore ways to partner in the area of coordinated outreach efforts. As a result of this partnering, Sea Grant outreach personnel from different programs around the country have begun visiting NOAA laboratories. The goal here is to explore ways of using data and information generated by NOAA - and specifically OAR and the Environmental Laboratories - in ways that will be useful and meaningful at the community level.

As mentioned above, a unique Federal partnership nurtured during the past eight years has been the establishment and running of an Environmental Finance Center (EFC) with support from the U.S. EPA. The EFC has aided and advised communities on how to pay for much-needed environmental protection. The director of the EFC is the Sea Grant Assistant Director for Communications and Public Affairs. The EFC Coordinator, responsible for day-to-day operation of the center, has extensive experience in the banking and finance sector, as well as academic training in environmental policy (at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs). The EFC is of special value in that it provides a forum for direct contact with communities throughout the Chesapeake watershed. Using an intense roundtable format known as a "charrette," the EFC brings together local community representatives with experts in the environmental, finance and technical sectors to help solve difficult financial and planning challenges. This has proven to be a remarkably successful means of "two-way" communication, which provides the communities with assistance they need and the academic programs with valuable case studies, observations and feedback on what problems citizens face as they try to comply with environmental regulations while providing for their infrastructure and other needs.