Applying Consensus & Cultural Models to Improve Environmental Decision-Making

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A large number of national environmental initiatives being launched at the end of the millennium call for increased integration of socio-cultural information into policy and program decision-making. This research seeks to strengthen the capacity of national and state agencies and local communities to better incorporate stakeholder interests, beliefs and values into environmental decision-making. Specifically, the research uses consensus and cognitive theory and methods from environmental and cognitive anthropology to identify and model environmental stakeholder views related to ecology and pollution. The resulting cultural models are formal representations of shared explicit and implicit knowledge, interests, beliefs and values that members draw upon when responding to the environmental challenges facing their communities, industries and ecosystems. The research requires ethnographic fieldwork in the communities of environmental stakeholders of the Chesapeake Bay in general, and the Pocomoke watershed more specifically. Situated on the lower eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, the Pocomoke watershed is receiving intensive state and national environmental attention due to the recent toxic bloom in the lower Pocomoke River of the dinoflagellate Pfiesteria piscicida. In recently-completed exploratory research of the cultural consequences of Pfiesteria, the researchers identified a number of key stakeholder groups for the Pocomoke River watershed, including farmers, watermen, environmental professionals, poultry industry representatives, bioecological scientists and community leaders. The proposed research continues to work with these stakeholder groups, and adds additional stakeholders based on fieldwork results. The research will combine consensus and cultural models to produce complementary analyses of the breadth and distribution of beliefs about environmental issues, and an understanding of how these issues are interpreted by key stakeholders. Methodology and findings will be relevant to research on environmental controversies, as well as to agencies and groups interested in developing dialogues and programs to improve the environment. In addition, the project will provide valuable experience on how to improve graduate student training in anthropology.