Efforts to reduce environmental vulnerabilities --particularly those related to climate change -- often elicit interest from multiple stakeholders, some with conflicting positions on the causes, consequences, and appropriate actions. Collaborative learning is an approach and that helps stakeholders in conflict move from a focus on their differences and towards mutual trust, respect, and increased understanding of each other. In doing so, collaborative learning enables these groups to identify commonalities, accept differences, and develop strategies that meet a range of needs and goals.

 

 

Our Approach: 

Collaborative learning, an approach to facilitate two-way learning and information exchanges, is used by the Deal Island Peninsula Partnership to  build community between a diverse group of stakeholders who live, work, or manage lands and waters on the Deal Island Peninsula  and who want to address complex social and environmental challenges that threaten the Peninsula’s residents, livelihoods, ecosystems, and wildlife. These stakeholders include watermen, residents, faith leaders, county, state, and federal government agencies, academic institutions, and non-governmental organizations. Collaborative learning integrates experiential knowledge with scientific knowledge and expands our pool of resources, skills, and ideas from which to draw from for resilience planning. We believe that coupling experiential and scientific knowledge will provide the best possible outcomes. The implementation and integration of a range of expertise, skills, and perspectives results in projects that are valid, meaningful, and more sustainable due to increased accuracy and stakeholder ownership of the process.

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