By Patti Anderson, Ann Fisher, and Robert O'Connor, The Pennsylvania State University

People usually think of global climate change as something that affects the entire world. While this is true, the impacts of climate change will be different in different regions, and people will experience these impacts where they live. The first Mid-Atlantic Regional Assessment (MARA) of climate change impacts, which is being coordinated by Penn State University, will investigate many types of impacts from global change at a regional level. The assessment will include potential beneficial and detrimental impacts on forests and farms, human health, and the extensive rivers, bays, and coastal waters of the Mid-Atlantic Region which includes all or parts of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia.

To maximize its usefulness, the assessment needs to integrate stakeholder insights into its design and implementation. In one sense, everyone in the region is a stakeholder in the MARA project because all of the regions citizens could be affected by climate change. In seeking to identify stakeholders to participate in the assessment process, MARA is paying special attention to groups likely to be particularly affected by climate change and to groups that have expressed an interest in the issue. MARA stakeholders represent a myriad of perspectives (Table 1), and are improving the assessment in four ways:

• Early in the project, they explained what kinds of information they need to help them make decisions in the context of regional climate change.
• During implementation of the project, they are reviewing chapter outlines and potential scenarios to be used in writing the report.
• At completion of the draft assessment report, they will review the document and suggest ways to improve it.
• They are advising the MARA team regarding ways to disseminate the results in the region.

The stakeholders have already helped us refine the research questions. For example, participants at the October 19-20, 1998, Advisory Committee meeting made sure that the assessment would be responsive to climate-related issues most important to the people who live and work in the region, such as the need for reliable seasonal climate projections by water system managers and farm operators. They also expressed concerns about the implications of climate change for insurance coverage and the insurance industry. Stakeholders are scheduled to meet again on May 2-3, 1999, to review the draft assessment and offer advice about developing materials and disseminating the assessment results to a wide audience.

In addition to coming together for working meetings and reviewing draft documents, many stakeholders have maintained informal communications with team members working on particular parts of the report. In our view, successful stakeholder involvement must be ongoing, two-way, and substantive. One part of the two-way communication is making sure stakeholders understand how their participation makes a difference in the assessment process. Ongoing contact between researchers and stakeholders facilitates this understanding.

For more information, contact:

Patti J. Anderson, Earth Resources Research Institute, Armsby Building, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802; phone: (814) 865-9903; email: pja5@psu.edu

Table 1: Backgrounds of
MARA Advisory Committee Members