define our relationships to our families, communities, and to home. When we face change in our everyday lives, we often turn to these stories and lessons -- parts of our heritage -- to guide our thinking about how to respond to change in ways that sustain the core parts of who we are. As such, heritage is an important cultural resource for enhancing the resilience of communities, giving us the tools we need to adapt to change in culturally and socially-grounded ways. How heritage gets used can also be problematic, as different people’s understandings about what’s important from the past come into conflict. Certain uses of heritage can also create vulnerabilities for others by disconnecting them from important parts of their heritage and cultural identity.

To date, cultural heritage has not been widely looked at in the context of climate change adaptation decision-making, but is an area that needs to be better understood, particularly in terms of developing strategies that effectively reduce community and environmental vulnerabilities to climate-induced changes. I'll be using the ICRA process to collect ethnographic data to better understand how heritage is used in climate-change adaptation planning on the Deal Island Peninsula. My hope is that this research will give DIPP and other coastal communities and decision-making groups important insights into how cultural heritage influences the way people think about and respond to environmental change. It will also illuminate the role of heritage in shaping whose voice is heard in adaptation decision-making processes, and what repercussions this potentially has for the wellbeing of certain social groups. Better understanding the uses of heritage will help DIPP and other coastal adaptation planning projects more effectively support community needs in resilient ways.

To get in touch with Liz about her future research, email her at vandolah@umd.edu.