Focused CoPe: Supporting Environmental Justice in Connected Coastal Communities through a Regional Approach to Collaborative Community Science Grant uri icon

abstract

  • Environmental risks to the health, economies, and ecosystems of coastal populations depend on both local and regional contexts and decision making. For example, the occurrence of harmful algal blooms and degradation of marine habitat in the Albermarle-Pamlico Estuary System due to nutrient releases are problems driven by inland sources, such as waste management practices and agricultural releases, which are also sensitive to episodic perturbation from weather extremes and sea level rise. It is therefore necessary to understand both the environmental and socioeconomic connections between coastal and inland communities that contribute to opportunities for cooperation or conflict in reducing coastal water quality hazards. This challenge also becomes an environmental justice issue when marginalized subsets of the population within these communities are impacted by but are unable to adapt to changing conditions or policies due to socioeconomic, racial, or political barriers. Our study will evaluate how shifting decision making for adaptation from individual community to collaborative regional contexts impacts resilience across a spectrum of socioeconomic classes. This project takes a socio-environmental-engineered systems (SEES) approach across built and natural settings to understand the factors that drive cooperation and conflict between coastal and inland communities with an emphasis on impacts affecting marginalized populations in both upstream and downstream regions. Our overarching goal is to develop and implement a transferable methodology to addressing coastal water quality problems through a regional approach to collaborative community science implemented through an Environmental Justice Institute. Within the scope of the project, we will address problems related to understanding the interactions of socioenvironmental phenomena occurring on different temporal and spatial scales, the role of trust and communication across individual and institutional scales, and ultimately the potential of cross-community collaboration to produce community-tailored engineering and policy solutions to coastal challenges.
  • Research focused on capacity building for mobilizing environmental justice advocacy in Eastern North Carolina.

date/time interval

  • August 2021 - August 2026