An Anthropologist and An Economist Walk Into a Document
: Reflections from the Maine Climate Council’s Scientific and Technical Subcommittee 

By Dr. Jessica Reilly-Moman

When I was asked if I would help organize and write the report that is the scientific backbone for climate decision making in Maine, I hesitated. Every four years, as mandated by state law, a group of scientists come together in the to write a report that wraps up all of the latest climate-related science for Maine. I love writing reports, but corralling over forty scientists and practitioners to write one document sounded daunting. Plus, when asking the question, “how technical should a technical report be?,” I often find myself pressing for limiting jargon as much as possible, which is not always the way that scientists want to go (and this includes me in my own field!) 

But after meeting with the three co-chairs of the STS, I decided to give it a shot. I love making science as accessible as possible, and I was excited to learn from this group of researchers on the cutting edge of applied climate knowledge. In addition, there would be a new chapter on the “human dimensions” of climate change in Maine. I hoped to help the people tasked with this broad focus to set a precedent for future STS reports. I wasn’t sure how we would develop a report that would be useful not only to technical experts, but also the working groups who make recommendations to the Maine Climate Council, the Maine Legislature, teachers and instructors across the state, and anyone interested in learning more about climate change in Maine. But by the end of our nine months together, we had created a document unified in its tone and message, and I’m proud to bring it to Maine communities and beyond. 

When I contemplated how I could best summarize my experience, I realized that the report structure could lead the way. Thus, in the style of the report, here are some insights from the process. I hope that these can be useful to anyone working on a collaboration across fields, sectors, and topics to generate a synthetic report, and demystify this process through my experience, inviting others into these important tasks. And, if nothing else, I hope to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for myself in future projects. 

Keep the technical, but lead with simplified language. One of the first things that I did was become familiar with the most recent versions of other comprehensive climate reports, such as the U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment. We knew we did not have time for anything nearly as comprehensive, but since I had read previous versions of these reports, I was able to glean what they had learned. The NCA, for example, had moved towards a more simplified, readable language that braided in important basic information about the topic they were covering. I also examined how other documents presented technical information, and found a trend: the first sentence would be simple and bolded, followed by a paragraph that elaborated on the details. This made a document easy to read quickly if needed, and to dive in for the details if desired. 

Communicate constantly with leadership, and learn from their styles. I had the great privilege of working with three savvy and experienced scientists, the STS co-chairs, who also serve as thought leaders in the state. Their styles of communication all differed, but they were always available to me, and I kept in near constant communication. I provided weekly updates, and even more frequent updates as the deadlines approached. Although it was extra time, staying in close communication with the leadership streamlined the process and allowed us to make important changes on the fly. 

Archive multiple versions, have a “key” for finding folders and documents, and track and organize references from the start. File organization could have been a real challenge, but we set up a shared drive from the start. I kept a shared document that linked to the folders for each subcommittee, and this became a point of constant reference for anyone who was not in the drive every day as I was. Then once we had outlines of chapters, it could be tough to track who changed what, especially if people forgot to work in “suggesting” mode, which identifies the writer. As a result, I archived each round of edits, in case we needed to go back. Finally, getting all of the references correct is critical for this kind of document. Some subcommittees dropped all their references into a digital folder, which was helpful. I used a bibliographic software to keep track of the references, and we consequently have an organized library in perpetuity if we ever need one. That said, I always wish that I put in the ten or twenty minutes at the start to get all the references compiled and cleaned, because it ends up being arduous hours later to track them all down and check that all the material for each is input properly in the reference manager. 

Make yourself known as the open outsider, and enjoy the different personalities of each group. There was one subcommittee that was done in November–six months early–and another group that really only started getting organized after the deadlines. This ended up being fine, since it staggered my work. My role as a consultant was also a space in which I found my outsider status to be critical–if authors were not comfortable bringing up thoughts, problems, or insights with the leader of their group, they could bring them to me, and I could make the needed changes without ruffling feathers. 

Trust everyone to get the right content included, and use a plagiarism checker. At times, chaos reigned as authors dropped notes and paragraphs into each section. Across versions, quotes from papers would be lost and integrated directly instead of being rewritten. Proper attribution makes this less egregious, but we used the checker Turn It In to find material that needed to be either directly quoted or rewritten.     

Conflict makes the document stronger. The Human Dimensions group had what felt like an impossible task–summarize all of the impacts of and adaptations to climate change in Maine. As a result, this small subcommittee had people from the sciences that might as well have been dogs and cats trying to speak with each other. Conflict arose from the different perspectives and positions. Sometimes I felt like we were in the beginning of a joke: “An economist and an anthropologist walk into a document
”, and I wasn’t sure of the punch line. Yet even as it took much more time, consistent meetings and remaining open to feedback helped this group bring all the best evidence to the table and hone the points they wanted to make. 

Embrace the joy and partnership in the technical. As I mentioned, I struggle to condone technical language and jargon in reports. But in multiple instances, I watched writing and research partnerships turn almost giddy in their embrace of the minutiae. As with any report, so much of the experience is about bringing great minds together and letting them spin up something beautiful into the world. The value for them and their colleagues is in the nuances, and I made it my role to make sure we highlighted and included what they knew was important.  

Let stuff go. This is a tough one for me, but ultimately I learned just how much I could push back before I realized that my vision was less important than create continuity within the groups. For example, I frequently provided an outline that could serve as the structure for content. Most of the groups appreciated that they did not have to come up with this scaffolding, but the leader of one group struggled to see my logic. After a few rounds of edits, I realized that the lumping didn’t matter as much as communicating as clearly as possible and providing cohesion within the group. In the end, I think their structure made the chapter more useful for future writers, as well as for readers. 

Trust makes it all come together. All of this collaboration was possible because of the light hand of the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future (GOPIF), which trusted the scientists and me to provide a useful report. I have found that trust can be difficult to understand and build in political spheres if I don’t put myself in the shoes of the governor’s team. It was only through years of listening to the perspectives of GOPIF that I came to understand the many challenges they face, since their position differs from that of a scientist by structure and necessity. By honoring those challenges, they gave me their trust, and I upheld it in return.

It’s all about the people. I feel incredibly grateful to have been able to work with and learn from this extraordinary group of people with deep passion for their work. There were many long nights, but I was often on the screen working simultaneously with scientists who were open to my suggestions and feedback as we strove towards a common goal–highlighting the science that Mainers need to know. Although I primarily focus on ocean-related climate research, I have found that learning from other disciplines greatly improves how I think about my own research. I’m proud of the document we created, and the relationships and collaborations that were built through this process. Much of the success hinged on the magnanimity and open-heartedness of all involved. Individuals gave whatever time they had, and I was able to bring everything together in tone because the information was all there. Those engaged, and especially those leading, had the experience to know when and how to pursue or dissolve conflict or disagreement. They also listened to me, provided thoughtful and kind feedback, and supported me to take care of my physical and mental health. I am grateful for their examples, and hope to work with such a fine group of people again in the future.  

Dr. Jessica Reilly-Moman is an affiliated researcher in the Leslie Lab at 91±ŹÁÏ’s Darling Marine Center. She works at the nexus of climate, oceans, and justice, with her current research focused on participatory methods to equitably engage Maine’s coastal communities in ocean renewable energy siting. Jess holds a PhD in Ecology and Environmental Sciences from the 91±ŹÁÏ, an MS in Energy and Resources from the University of California – Berkeley, and a BA in Ecology from Brown University. Read her PhD dissertation, , or contact her at jessica.reillymoman(at)maine.edu to learn more about her current projects and potential collaborations.

I was grateful to be able to travel with a close colleague and friend, Hudson; my daughter, Eva; and my graduate student, Sarah. With them, I saw places I had been before with new eyes. I also was fortunate to visit some new places.

Hudson introduced us to El Pardito, a small fishing community that has engaged in a revolutionary approach to ocean management over the last 15 years. We were the guests of Doña Clara and Don Pablo and their sons, Juan and Felipe. Doña Clara cooked meals for us that included one of the fish in season, jurel or yellowtail, and she taught Eva to make tortillas to wrap around the fresh fish.

We had the chance to explore the rocky reefs surrounding the island, snorkeling. The shoreline sloped gently away from the island, providing easy entry to the sea, even with wind and waves. Broad boulders interspersed with smaller structure and some sandy areas provided homes for wide diversity of fishes, hard and soft corals, and other invertebrates.

In the afternoon, when the wind blew fiercely and the sun shone hot, we sat in the shade and talked. Hudson and Juan and Don Pablo traded fishing stories. They talked about how different species behaved, the ways that different fishes move underwater and how as fishermen, the distinctive behaviors of the fishes influenced how they found and fished for different species.

“What happened to the squid?” Juan asked. “We rarely see them now.”

Hudson replied that another member of our research team, Dr. Tim Frawley, had studied this dramatic ecosystem change, the disappearance of jumbo squid. With the decline in squid abundance, fisheries in some of the remote and rural communities of the Gulf, particularly Santa Rosalia, also were much diminished. This had happened more than once in recent memory, but after the most recent decline, corresponding with the El Niño years of 2015-16, the squid never returned, at least not in commercially viable numbers.

Hudson explained that while squid still swam in the Gulf, they were smaller than before. The environment had changed – tropical conditions dominated, which meant not only warmer ocean waters but also less food for squid and other pelagic species.¹ The smaller form of squid now dominant in the Gulf ecosystem also is less catchable, at least in the ways that fishermen had caught them before.

As I listened to this conversation, I thought about the fishers’ deep and geographically specific knowledge of the habits and ecologies of so many different species. Local ecological knowledge like theirs often is not well-represented in government-led fisheries management. Fortunately, in the case of the Corridor, the geographic region within which El Pardito sits, local knowledge has been integral to recent management strategies, and specifically to the development of a series of fishery refuges that were later recognized by both the state and federal governments.²

Juan and his brother are unique among fishers in the region in that they not only fish for a living, they also work with researchers, studying sharks, sea lions and some of the many other marine organisms that live in the diverse ecosystems that surround El Pardito. They showed us some of the places that are important to them – not so much for fishing but for the biological diversity that can be experienced there.

At dusk, we made our way by boat to Isla San José, a larger island just north of El Pardito. We motored through a shallow saltwater channel into the estero, or estuary, on the southwestern tip of the island, where flocks of pelicans, terns, and other seabirds fed in the shelter of a dense mangrove forest. A mangrove warbler sang nearby, bright yellow against the green leaves of the mangrove. Fish jumped on the edge of the channel, prompting the pelicans to launch back into the sky and try their luck at fishing. The brothers told the story of exploring the mangrove forest as kids, trying to make their way to an abandoned house on a high point in the desert that we could just see above the seaside forest.

The estero ended against a gravel berm, protected from the waves of the Gulf. We talked about what this place had looked like a generation ago, when the brothers first visited this spot. They described an islet open to the ocean, and how the gravel had filled in the passage through time, for reasons no one could quite explain. We could see small mangrove trees growing on the edge of the gravel bed, a sign that the forest might continue to expand in the wave-protected reaches of the estero.

Time scales of ecosystem change

This talk of ecosystem change over years – in the case of squid generations and fishing seasons – and then over decades – in the case of shoreline movement and human generations – got me thinking about time. Humans have been challenged by ecosystem changes on these time scales for a long time, much longer than people have ‘managed’ fisheries or other interactions that people have with marine species and ecosystems.

What are the time scales that we need to understand, to enable people in coastal communities like El Pardito to engage in ecosystem-based responses to climate change and other threats to people and nature?

I would say that we particularly need to understand the time scales at which people can take action strategically and collectively – several years or decades into the future. That is the scale of community planning and policymaking and also the scale at which people are thinking not only about what the future may hold for themselves, but for their children and the places and more than human world that they cherish.

Researchers have forecasted how marine species have or will respond to different climate change impacts,^3,4 and how in turn fishers adapt to climate change impacts.⁵ This is an important area of study and requires both observations from the field as well as sophistical models of human-nature interactions. But these forecasts and retrospective studies of climate impacts, even the empirically grounded ones, can only illuminate so much. They often fall short when it comes to modeling the heterogeneity of social-ecological systems, particularly spatial heterogeneity. The diversity of ways different fishers fish in the Gulf, even for the same species;⁶ the variation in how different fished species respond to changing water temperature, chemistry, and currents;³ and how this variation plays out across a biophysically and socioeconomically diverse seascape^5,7 challenge our science. More often than not, our results are illustrative rather than predictive.

But there’s hope – here is where linking local knowledge with the full toolkit of social-ecological system science tools, drawn from anthropology, ecology, economics, geography, oceanography, sociology, etc. – can make a difference. My conversations on El Pardito last month newly inspired me to think about how we can do this, in Mexico and in Maine.

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by the US National Science Foundation through CNH2-S award .

Related Reading

1.             Frawley, T. H. et al. Impacts of a shift to a warm-water regime in the Gulf of California on jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas). ICES J. Mar. Sci. fsz133 (2019) doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsz133.

2.             Quintana, A., Basurto, X., Rodriguez Van Dyck, S. & Weaver, A. H. . Biodivers. Conserv. 29, 3899–3923 (2020).

3.             Cisneros-Mata, M. A. et al. . PLOS ONE 14, e0222317 (2019).

4.             Aburto-Oropeza, O., Paredes, G., Mascareñas-Osorio, I. & Sala, E. . Mar Ecol Prog Ser 410, 283–287 (2010).

5.             Frawley, T. H. et al. Self-governance mediates small-scale fishing strategies, vulnerability and adaptive response. Glob. Environ. Change 84, 102805 (2024).

6.             Pellowe, K. E. & Leslie, H. M. Heterogeneity among clam harvesters in northwest Mexico shapes individual adaptive capacity. Ecol. Soc. 24, art25 (2019).

7.             Leslie, H. M. et al. Operationalizing the social-ecological systems framework to assess sustainability. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 112, 5979–5984 (2015).

Learn more about the study łó±đ°ù±đ.Ìę

Jess would greatly appreciate your feedback and questions. Specifically, do you understand the care framework and metrics that she has developed? How might these be improved / easier to understand? Do you have examples, from your work or others, of the application of resilience metrics?

Write to Jess directly with your thoughts at jessica.reillymoman(at)maine.edu.