The Chesapeake Bay rests on the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States and is very vulnerable to sea-level rise. Located on the lower eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, Deal Island Peninsula is 26 square miles of low-lying coastline and home to approximately 1,000 people. In the 17th century, colonial farmers established communities on the peninsula that would later become commercial fishing centers. Today, peninsula residents include descendants of those early farmers and watermen as well as recent arrivals, including retirees and summer visitors. Much of the peninsula is prone to coastal storms, tidal inundation, roadway flooding, and shoreline erosion. These impacts are already affecting property values, access to homes and schools, and the health of local marshes, which buffer the communities from storms.
Begun in 2010, the Deal Island Peninsula Partnership (DIPP) seeks to increase the resilience of the peninsula’s communities and environment to cultural, socioeconomic, political, and ecological change. DIPP’s goal is to build a diverse network of stakeholders from the local communities, county and state governments, universities, and nongovernmental (NGO) civic and environmental organizations. DIPP relies heavily on collaborative learning as a conceptual framework to tackle potentially contentious social-ecological issues such as climate change. DIPP applied anthropologists integrate participant observation, interviewing, meeting facilitation, as well as qualitative and quantitative data collection to facilitate collaborative learning practices, create and sustain relationships among stakeholders who have little previous history of collaborating. DIPP’s network has expanded over the years to include over 150 members, including peninsula residents; natural, physical, and social scientists; resource managers and planners; and leaders of nongovernmental organizations. The network also includes 12 churches situated on the peninsula and in nearby rural coastal counties, five of which are African American.
Among DIPP’s accomplishments are: restoration of an eroding shoreline that threatens an African American community and an adjoining salt marsh; identification and mapping of areas prone to tidal ditch flooding; and establishment of connections between rural churches, government agencies, and NGOs so church members can learn about different adaptation resources offered by government agencies. DIPP represents a network of diverse views, skills, experience, and access to resources that can be called upon to address social-ecological challenges. DIPP strives to employ this collaborative approach in larger environmental, climate change, and cultural heritage work in the Chesapeake Bay region.
