School of Policy and International Affairs
91±ŹÁÏ

The storm hit us in the afternoon and by nightfall the anchor was dragging. Through relentless sheets of rain, I watched my brother climb into the heaving dingy and maneuver the Danforth anchor out of my sister’s straining arms. She climbed in with him and they began pulling along the hull to the anchor line. Powerful gusts of wind came in prolonged and unforgiving blasts. I remember the feeling of deep fear when I lost sight of them, as they moved out into the pitching waves to set the second anchor.

Hurricane Eloise was just another storm passing through Puerto Rico in 1975, one of dozens our family lived through over a thirty-year period. Seven of us, five kids and our parents, lived on a sturdy Cheoy Lee yawl made in Hong Kong. Transplants from Massachusetts and Vermont, my parents lived out a rare dream, raising us on a floating house in the Caribbean. The ocean was home for us, and the island was our lifeline.

We had a fairly good process for dealing with severe weather events, but a storm like Hurricane Maria would have presented a serious challenge. Fueled by the effects of climate change, the severity of the storm was staggering. Puerto Ricans are passionate, fun-loving people, undeserving of the awkward government that normally forms their leadership. They were catastrophically unprepared for the challenges brought about by such a harsh weather event. In reality, no one could have been prepared. Final estimates place the number of deaths due to Hurricane Maria at 3,059, with 2,975 of those in Puerto Rico. Regarded now as the worst natural disaster to hit the area, recovery costs are estimated at over $130 billion.

Puerto Rico has its own lifeline as an unincorporated U.S. territory. Independent island nations all over the world, however, do not enjoy the support of such a powerful country. With limited resources, they are more heavily impacted by small changes in their ecosystems and biospheres. Rising sea levels, floods, droughts, ocean acidification, and more extreme weather events result in compromised water sources, moving fishing grounds, and increased salinization of arable land, as encroaching waters threaten to consume low lying coastal areas.

Extreme weather events, which are happening at an increased frequency all over the world, can consume entire islands, as in the case of Hawaii’s 11-acre East Island. Hurricane Walaka was just one storm during 2018’s unusually busy hurricane season, yet it wiped the island off the map overnight. If I learned anything from my early days on our sailing boat, it would be to respect the weather and never underestimate a storm.

Some island populations have started to prepare and some have already suffered consequences in profound ways. Tuvalu is a series of nine islands in the Pacific Ocean. Coastal erosion and slowly rising tidal waves are threatening two of their islands, which rise just under ten feet above sea level. Tuvalu is not alone. The large number of islands around the world threatened by climate change is surprising. The Maldives, Nauru and the Marshall Islands are just a few island nations actively dealing with rising sea levels, extreme storms, and other climate change-driven effects. These nations have begun to understand their painful interdependency as members of a single planetary climate.

I reflect frequently on my experience living on the ocean. Both boats and islands can suffer the same fate in extreme weather. But by nature, boats have the capacity to move easily and seek out more sustaining lifelines. Island nations are not so lucky, and they frequently suffer their fate with little assistance. Instead, residents must watch helplessly as their homes, their cultural heritage and the only life they have ever known, are slowly swallowed by the sea, while the rest of the world goes about its business.

Here in Maine, many of us weather our storm-related power outages with the warm comfort of wood stoves and the convenient flick of the power button on the generator. We worry tirelessly about our forest health, the warming Gulf waters, and the responsibilities we owe our Arctic north. Despite this, and unlike residents of the world’s many island-based cultures, we simply will not suffer the dramatic loss of our entire culture or watch land disappear from underfoot without recourse.

There are over 4,600 islands off the Maine coast, many of which are essential habitats for unique and beautiful wildlife. According to the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the effect of rising sea levels here in our state will certainly be dramatic. Vinalhaven, the largest island in Penobscot Bay, spans over 14 thousand acres and boasts a rich history in granite production and lobstering. Estimates project a loss of 8% of landmass from a 1-meter sea-level rise and a staggering 23% from a rise of 6 meters. Deer Isle and the Cranberry Isles will see roughly half that, at 4% and 5% respectively, from a 1-meter sea-level rise. Given that sea levels are rising at an increasing rate, it is tough to predict exactly how much time these communities have to prepare, but for other island communities around the world, time has run out.

It would seem that island nations have already figured out our global interconnectedness, while we remain frustratingly ignorant. English poet John Donne famously wrote in his poem “Meditation XVII”, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” If only this piece of 17th century wisdom could help us understand what island people already know, that we are inevitably linked, if not by land, then certainly by our oceans.

About the Author and Artist

Tilan Copson is a graduate student in the School of Policy and International Affairs, studying roles and responsibilities in the climate change crisis, from a global justice perspective.

The artwork presented here was created using the ancient art of suminagashi where ink is floated on water and “lifted” onto paper.

“As a researcher and artist, I seek out ways to share my experiences and build cohesion in the face of climate change. Floating ink (the literal translation of the Japanese term “suminagashi”) on water can create effects that vary greatly. By layering ink across the surface of water, it is possible to mimic scenes depicting tree rings, topological maps or islands surrounded by moving currents. Controlling the ink carefully results in floating shapes, ethereal and isolated, as unique as any natural form. In this series of prints, theÌęfloating ink process is used as a metaphor for the relationship between land and water. IÌęam always trying to find ways to share my perspective of how beautiful yet fragile our relationship with the sea can be.”

The post Washed Out to Sea: Island Life in Peril appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Ecology and Environmental Science Program
91±ŹÁÏ

April 2020 is a time that none of us will forget. The human world is taking a pause, a collective holding of our breath, as we brace for the worst and hope for the best. In the face of these new challenges, sustainability has come to mean something even deeper to many. Already a remarkably self-sufficient community, accustomed to harsh winters and living close to the land, Mainers across the state are finding ways to utilize their skills and ingenuity to support each other in unprecedented times. The stories included in this issue of Spire will take on new depth for our readers, with the realization that the community climate change groups that have formed in recent years have built greater resiliency for these new and unexpected challenges. An interactive throughout Maine, presented here by a team of undergraduate researchers examining food waste, is particularly timely and poignant. As we built this issue in late 2019 and earlier this year, editing and reviewing submissions, discussing their merits and contributions to Spire’s mission, we could not have possibly imagined where we would be today. But we are humbled by the continued relevance of this work, which further demonstrates the importance of working toward a future together, as a society, one that acknowledges our interdependence and the interconnected nature of each and every choice that we make.Ìę

Spire’s fourth issue is full of stories of resilience, community building, and hope. It contains research by 91±ŹÁÏ scientists examining how best to tackle foreseeable challenges, such as the effects of climate change on our wild blueberry crops. Researchers at Colby College look at the potential for kelp aquaculture to boost the economies of coastal communities now reliant on lobster fishing. A writer watches her son grow up alongside a grove of American chestnut trees, finding renewed meaning in the effort to bring them back from extinction. A reformed environmental studies professor finds a new and satisfying approach to communicating the risks of climate change through fiction. Maine’s poets use verse to explore the delicate balance between the tensions inherent in the anxiety that many of us feel in the face of environmental degradation, and the hope that we must foster in order to persevere. Our artists create stunning interpretations of the natural world, from deep sea creatures to Maine’s historical logging roads.Ìę

My hope is that these pages contain some inspiration for you, a place to help you imagine the brighter future that we must now all work to build together. This journal has given me the opportunity to connect with people across Maine and to bring them together in these pages in order to continue the web of connection to you, the reader. I am particularly proud to have watched Spire grow to include work from our friends at Colby College and from a number of writers throughout the state. Helping Spire to become a resource for this community has been incredibly rewarding, and it has been made all the better by working with our outstanding and supportive editorial board.Ìę

Our amazing and hardworking review team for this issue includes Karina Graeter, Tyler Quiring, Rebecca Champagne, Hana Palazzo, Carly Dickson, Logan Kline, Bowen Chang, Sonja Birthisel, and Rafa Tasnim. As I complete my time here at 91±ŹÁÏ, Rebecca Champagne will step in to serve as Editor-in-Chief along with Clinton Spaulding. Dr. Daniel Dixon continues to guide the journal as our Faculty Director. In better times, we will once again hold our annual release party in order to bring everyone together to celebrate the work of our contributors and editors. For now, we hope you will help us continue to build this community by sharing our work with your friends and family.Ìę

Yesterday, on a walk around the 91±ŹÁÏ campus, I heard a familiar sound. The wood frogs are emerging and making their way to pools of newly melted snow, where they will greet each other after months of . Miraculous in the best of times, I feel an even stronger admiration and kinship with these frogs today, and will be spending many spring evenings sitting by the pools, listening to their ecstatic reunion, and waiting for the day sometime soon when our turn will come.Ìę

Elyse DeFranco
Editor-in-Chief

The post A Letter From the Editor appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

1 Ecology and Environmental Science, 91±ŹÁÏ, Orono ME
2 Nursing, 91±ŹÁÏ, Orono ME
3 Business, Economics, and Legal Studies, 91±ŹÁÏ, Farmington ME
4 Civil/Environmental Engineering, 91±ŹÁÏ, Orono ME
5 Assistant Professor of Nursing, 91±ŹÁÏ, Orono ME
^‡ Corresponding Author. Email: deborah.saber@maine.edu

Introduction: Food waste is a Wicked Problem

As a land and Sea Grant institution, the 91±ŹÁÏ (91±ŹÁÏ) is uniquely positioned to address the complex human-ecological problems impacting communities across the state. 91±ŹÁÏ studies the diverse ways climate change impacts the state, including shifting forest compositions, changes in coastal resources, and waste management challenges (Isenhour et al. 2016; Lazarus and McGill 2014; Teisl Bell and Noblet 2017). These research projects address issues that can be defined as “wicked problems” as the social, political, and environmental conditions shape how these problems transpire and how people collaborate to create solutions (Rittel and Webber 1973). These problems require interdisciplinarity, as the complexity of an issue cannot be solved by a social scientist, engineer, or economist alone (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Consequently, the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at 91±ŹÁÏ has become a collaborative space where disciplines can work together to generate solutions to “wicked problems” (Hart et al. 2015). One of these problems, examined here, is the multiple impacts of food waste on communities.

Food waste as a contributor to climate change illustrates how individual behaviors can have a global and local impact. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that approximately one third of all food globally is wasted- approximately 1.3 billion tons per year (FAO 2019). This fuels climate change as the decomposition of food waste contributes to greenhouse gas emissions (Isenhour et al. 2016). What makes this problem “wicked” is when the issue of food waste becomes connected to other issues, such as food insecurity. In 2018, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that 37.2 million Americans live in food insecure households, which is characterized by lacking food like fruits and vegetables (USDA 2019). With Maine failing to achieve its goal of a 50% reduction in municipal solid waste by 2014, there is considerable room for improvement in waste reduction and recovery (Isenhour et al. 2016). As food waste contributes to this problem, 91±ŹÁÏ is one institution doing collaborative research to generate solutions for communities and businesses across the state.

These “wicked problems” require interdisciplinary approaches because the problems are complex and require groups of researchers from varied backgrounds to work towards creating solutions (Saber and Silka 2020). At 91±ŹÁÏ, food waste as a “wicked” problem has been targeted by researchers at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, and research funding offered the opportunity for undergraduate interdisciplinary teams to work over two years to examine issues of food waste, with enriched educational experiences of applying disciplinary methods to complex problems. The Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Research Collaborative I (IURC-I) team completed their work in 2019. The IURC-II team will end their teamwork in April 2020. This text will primarily focus on the IURC-II teamwork. Through this text, we will: (1) provide an overview of why campuses are creating teams to address “wicked” problems; (2) share undergraduate interdisciplinary team member’s research focus and findings; (3) discuss the challenges of interdisciplinary teams for undergraduate students; and (4) present the concept for an interdisciplinary undergraduate course that could offer students the ability to earn course credit while learning valuable skills.

Interdisciplinary Research and Our Research Team

To mobilize the multiple disciplines needed to help resolve “wicked problems” like food waste, research teams are forming on academic campuses and transforming our thinking about these pressing issues. Many scholars argue that thinking in interdisciplinary settings helps expand our understanding of problems and can help develop innovative solutions to these multifaceted issues (Bark, Kragt, and Robson 2016; Horne et al. 2019; Horton et al. 2019). At the 91±ŹÁÏ, several scholars note that campus dynamics are shifting, leading to the development of teams to respond to “wicked problems” (Horne et al. 2019; Horton et al. 2019). Our team writes about the experiences of undergraduate research working in these settings. As emerging professionals, undergraduates gain valuable experience by developing practical skills that they can apply in real-world settings (Adya, Temple, and Hepburn 2015). Additionally, incorporating undergraduates into research teams expands ideas and potential insights about research topics (Kortz and van der Hoeven Kraft 2016). Thus, forming research teams on college campuses is beneficial for undergraduates through enriching their educational experience, while utilizing their fresh perspectives on team projects to advance our thinking about complex issues.

The first undergraduate team (IURC-I) produced findings to help understand the barriers within municipalities and industries that describe why food waste programs are not implemented, as well as addressed food recovery such as anaerobic digestion and community composting programs (Horton et al. 2019). Our team (IURC-II) extended their research by shifting the focus from stakeholder outcomes to considering our team dynamic with processes to support the growth of research teams on campus.

From the outset, we intended to create an open environment where team members were comfortable sharing their ideas (Horne et al. 2019). Many of our early meetings allowed members a space where individuals could ask for feedback or clarity about their individual project (Horne et al. 2019; Ziwoya and Falconer 2018). This helped to inform topics for our bi-monthly meetings as students worked through issues like stakeholder engagement or how to collect different forms of data. This approach also helped our research team by providing members with opportunities to work with individuals from other disciplines to develop the skills needed for translating disciplinary jargon to reach broader audiences (Horne et al. 2019). This document serves as an example of how students develop skills in interdisciplinary settings. In the next section, we elaborate by sharing one topic we focused on during meetings.

Interdisciplinary Thinking: Defining Success Across Disciplines

Interdisciplinary research offers a certain freedom of thought and increased awareness of all aspects of a problem, which siloed research often misses. Discussion fostered by an interdisciplinary team allows members to understand new perspectives as well as develop their own. Instead of an issue being a one-dimensional responsibility owned by a particular field, it is “…a research problem that more closely represents the reality in which such problems are situated” (Bark et al. 2016, p. 1450). One realization from our meetings was how each student utilized a distinct approach to the same problem. The interdisciplinary process specifically benefits this research team because separate disciplines study different stages in the food waste process, ranging from food production to energy recovery, and by bringing them together, we develop a more complete understanding of this problem.

Undergraduate interdisciplinary research experiences allow students to gather data and disseminate it into the field of science. Working as part of an undergraduate interdisciplinary research team finds several benefits such as learning how to responsibly conduct research, how to gather data, interpret the findings, and work as a team. Although the IURC-II extended the work from the previous cohort, the ways in which research was conducted—as well as the consequent results—were unique. In fact, by working in the IURC-II as a team, we built on the IURC-I work and more clearly understand food waste as a multi-faceted issue. Our interdisciplinary work provided discussions around this topic during bi-monthly scheduled meetings and one topic in particular focused on how each of us discusses solutions differently. Jordan, a nursing student, considered food waste in hospitals. Kendall examined food waste from the perspective of an engineering student working in an anaerobic digestion (AD) lab as a way to recover energy lost through food waste. Lastly, Natalie with a business and economics major, identified barriers to food donations within businesses in Maine.

Jordan: A Nursing Perspective

Although food waste can be thought of as a “wicked problem,” healthcare institutions are often excluded from the conversation. There is a paucity in the literature regarding food waste, which creates a vast void in data considering that there are 6,146 hospitals in the United States (American Hospital Association [AHA] 2020). The IURC-I team studied food waste in acute care hospitals and found that most dispose of food through sink disposal systems and do not use composting (Horton et al. 2019). In the IURC II team, Jordan examined food waste in seven long-term healthcare facilities and found that over 85% of facilities do not participate in composting or anaerobic digestion and that the majority of facilities (71%) dispose of food waste through sink disposal systems, which mirrors the practice of acute care facilities. The amount of food waste going down sink disposals was not recorded in any facilities, which indicates that the amount of food waste can be much higher than estimated (Lamkins and Saber Unpublished Raw Data). Another finding was that hospitals are unable to donate unused food to local shelters due to concerns about litigation. Current laws do not fully protect agencies against litigation from donation efforts (U.S. Congress 1966). These findings indicate that more research is needed to understand the barriers to mitigating food waste in the U.S. healthcare system.

Kendall: An Engineer’s Perspective

Energy recovery from food waste is one way of improving the current food economy, and it takes place after general food intake can be reduced or reused. As part of the IURC II team, Kendall studied anaerobic digestion (AD) as one such method of food recovery in both a laboratory and literary setting. AD is an alternative to sending food waste to landfills; it produces methane biogas, which can be used as a source of clean energy (Laiq Ur Rehman et al. 2019). It is defined as “a series of biological processes in which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen” (Dombrowski 2018, para. 1). The lab where Kendall worked examines optimizing digestion by understanding what types of food facilitates and inhibits the production of methane, which is vital to successfully contributing to solving this “wicked” problem. By learning how to make AD a reliable method of food recovery, facilities and corporations can be encouraged to adopt the process. Discussion with industry leaders could include the success of AD processes, lab results, or articles about chemicals that inhibit digestion. Overall, the contribution of AD to our experience of solving the food waste problem is that it provides “decentralized renewable energy generation within cities, reduced waste transport and the potential for community food-growing initiatives” (Fuldauer et. al. 2018, p. 930).

Natalie: A Business and Economics Perspective

Multiple perspectives add to the problem of “wickedness,” which can complicate the process of developing solutions. To understand barriers to food donation, Natalie distributed 250 surveys to businesses across Maine, with a 20% response rate. Questions were focused on identifying restrictions or barriers of food donation by food industry leaders (businesses that produce food waste such as grocery stores and restaurants). Results found that only 27% of the businesses donate food to food banks on a regular basis. A few businesses reported donating food during the holidays as a charitable donation. However, approximately 50% of businesses expressed interest in increasing donation to food banks. To aid businesses that are interested in finding an alternative way to dispose of food, a website is being created as a guide for increased involvement in food pantry donations, composting, donations to farms, and anaerobic digestion and will be sent out to all survey participants. One feature on the website is a that users can access to find the nearest facilities accepting food and the procedures at each site for accepting food donations or waste.

The Team’s Perspective

Through our interdisciplinary approach to examination of food waste, we realize firsthand that “wicked problems” are indeed complex. Multiple disciplines are required to comprehensively study the amount of waste, the precision that is needed to effectively and safely degrade waste, and the barriers to decreasing food waste. As these examples illustrate, our team members are able to use their disciplinary specialties to address key facets of food waste, from businesses, industries, and food recovery. Bringing undergraduate students together promotes educational enrichment through the practice of authentic and meaningful communication across disciplines during meetings, and through academic outputs such as this paper. By participating in research teams, young researchers can generate findings to work towards solutions for “wicked problems.” Additionally, this experiential opportunity provides a practice environment where often unseen challenges arise that must be addressed to move data into actionable steps. The challenges that our team met and resolved are described next.

Challenges and Barriers

Over the year-long IURC-II, our team overcame challenges demonstrating our commitment to the value of interdisciplinary work and resolving food waste. We found a setting where students had the ability to explore their interest in science, while also creating connections with professors and other peers (Seymour et al. 2004). Critical components to team success include financial backing to conduct research and a strong desire and commitment to working in the interdisciplinary team (Aubé and Rousseau 2005; National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine 2017). However, time constraints pose a real challenge to students balancing course loads and work schedules.

One of the most prominent challenges to our undergraduate interdisciplinary research project was trying to find time when everyone can meet. Because team members were enrolled in different fields of study, weekly schedules differed dramatically, as university departments coordinated largely within themselves when determining class times. For example, nursing labs start early in the morning (8:00 a.m.) and run into the afternoon (1:00 p.m.). Whereas, engineering programs have labs in the afternoon (2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.). In addition, some students were required to work outside of the classroom to fulfill disciplinary requirements, requiring even more balance between class, individual work, and work with the team. Our student athlete encountered a unique challenge because many of her hours outside of the classroom were dedicated to sports team activities (Dahlberg et al. 2019).

Undergraduate student schedules also varied from the senior members of the research team (i.e., graduate student and faculty). Undergraduate schedules were rather rigid, not allowing much room for additional meeting times or workloads. Alternatively, our graduate student attended more meeting times for courses such as lectures, labs and fieldwork than undergraduate students, and his schedule was more flexible with course load and time throughout the day. However, our graduate students’ time was filled with other research commitments and family obligations, making fewer opportunities for team commitments. Our lead faculty member had a combination of the above obstacles to her schedule. Throughout the year, she taught rigidly scheduled classes, advised students, conducted her own research, and participated on committees at the department, college, and/or university level.

Despite challenges, our IURC-II was committed and passionate about the project and found solutions to the barriers. We creatively found solutions using technology through Google Calendar (Figure 1: Example of Google Calendar) to find common “open” meeting times. Additionally, the use of video conferencing was paramount in allowing our remote research member to attend meetings. This technology was also used to allow our team member to participate in a presentation at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainable Solutions from a remote location. Another way that we accommodated the needs of the team was to provide simple meals at the meetings. Our meetings were scheduled at dinner time, and one member of the team volunteered to bring pizza for the meetings. This allowed for more flexibility in scheduling so that team members did not need to worry about dinner plans on the evening of the research meeting. While these solutions helped us during our time, we also discussed how teams going forward could create a course to help alleviate many of these difficulties in undergraduate research teams.

Creating an Opportunity for Undergraduate Students to Participate in Interdisciplinary Groups

ÌęOne way to create more opportunities for undergraduate collaboration with research teams is by creating a university course for student enrollment to receive credit hours. The benefits of course-based research classes are very similar to those achieved as part of an extracurricular research team (Lopatto 2010). These benefits include students taking ownership of their learning and achieving cognitive, personal, and professional growth (Kortz and van der Hoeven Kraft 2016). According to Kinner and Lord (2018), course-based research classes also have a large impact on younger undergraduates, potentially increasing first- or second-year participation in research. Additionally, course-based classes provide increased instruction time, which creates the ability to expose students to the processes of research, from hypotheses to results, and are shown to help students to be better prepared for continuing education and work as change agents (Kortz and van der Hoeven Kraft 2016). A developed course would allow students to create connections between a professor’s teaching and research, which informs the student of the critical nature of research for all disciplines within a research university, such as the 91±ŹÁÏ.

The IURC-II team designed a prototype course that focuses on research that specifically relates to food waste within an interdisciplinary group. Our 5-credit course spans the length of three semesters (i.e., spring [1 credit], summer [3 credits], fall [1 credit]) and enrollment requires commitment to all three semesters. Student cohorts are targeted to begin in the spring semester to build knowledge for research and work within a food waste team. Course objectives include the ability to: 1) Define sustainability and how interdisciplinary research applies to the topic; 2) Classify different categories of research and how they relate to creating progress in sustainability; and 3) Demonstrate an understanding of the circular food system and food recovery systems. During this first semester, lead faculty connect students with professors with research that is focused on food waste. During semester two (summer), students will conduct their research and gather data following their plan created in the spring. During semester three (fall), data from research is analyzed and an interdisciplinary manuscript is developed for submission. The overall course grade for each semester is pass or fail and would be determined by the completion of assignments (e.g., journals, class participation, presentations) as well as the participation of the student within the class.

Conclusion: Future Directions

Research at the 91±ŹÁÏ is an important aspect of educational opportunities. In the past, there has been an emphasis for undergraduate students to participate in existing research, which provides a positive experience, yet creating more small extra-curricular research groups may not maximize the potential of the university (American Association for the Advancement of Science 2011). As undergraduate researchers, we understand the value of learning the research process within an interdisciplinary team. Through a three-semester course, students would have dedicated time and expanded opportunities to participate in research projects and grow as scholars. We hope to demonstrate through our experience that this model could be expanded to other complex research topics across the university, allowing undergraduates to conduct sustainability research and develop skills that will help prepare them for advanced degrees and entry into the workforce.

Acknowledgements:

This IURC-II Project was supported through the 91±ŹÁÏ 2018-2019 Research Reinvestment Fund Student Awards Competition.

We would like to extend a sincere thank you to the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the 91±ŹÁÏ for all the support during this interdisciplinary undergraduate research project.

Resources:

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Saber, Deborah A., Linda Silka. 2020. “Food Waste as a Classic Problem that Calls for Interdisciplinary Solutions: A Case Study Illustration.” Journal of Social Issues. 0, no. 0: 1-9. https://doi:10.1111/josi.12372.

Seymour, Elaine, Anne-Barrie Hunter, Sandra L. Laursen and Tracee DeAntoni. 2004. “Establishing the Benefits ofÌęResearch Experiences for Undergraduates in the Sciences: First Findings from aÌęThree-Year Study.” Science Education 88: 493–534. https://doi-org.wv-o-ursus-proxy02.ursus.maine.edu/10.1002/sce.10131.

Teisl, Mario F., Kathleen P. Bell, and Caroline L. Noblet. 2017. “Special Issue on the Economics of Changing Coastal Resources: The Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. 46, no. 2: 175-185.

U.S Congress. “Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, (To accompany H.R. 2428)”. 104th Cong., 2d sess., 1996, H. Rep. 104-66. Accessed February 1, 2020. .

United States Department of Agriculture. 2019. “Food Security in the U.S.: Key Statistics and Graphics.” Accessed March 26, 2020.

Ziwoya, Fletcher and John Falconer (2018). “Designing Mentorship: Exploring the Challenges and Benefits of Undergraduate Research.” College Student Journal 52, no. 4: 532+. https://link-gale-com.wv-o-ursus-proxy02.ursus.maine.edu/apps/doc/A572402031/AONE?u=maine_orono&sid=AONE&xid=306fcdaf.

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91±ŹÁÏ, Orono
Bachelor of Fine Arts Undergraduate Student

Artist Statement

My name is Sarah Lafontaine and I’m an ink artist of both printmaking and drawing mediums. Over time I’ve explored naturally occurring patterns and forms. Through the research I do for my projects I found the work of Ernst Haeckel, a German zoologist who created elaborate illustrations based on his findings. His work has inspired me to work at a fine level of detail that captures the otherworldly quality of these alien-like forms. I like to mesh these natural/biotic concepts with vast and atmospheric spaces that have a flow or direction to them, incorporating design elements into my work as well.

The work that I do more often than not depicts textures or creatures from the ocean. I have a deep rooted fascination with the deep sea as well as crippling thalassophobia. These factors have motivated me to take a closer look and study some of the specimens you see in my work. I’ve always tried to capture how beautiful, while also delicate, these specimens are in my line work. These are creatures who have long predated humans, and yet we could easily become their demise. There is no adaptation these creatures could make in time to protect themselves from human interference.

It’s our responsibility to maintain a balance that our oceans have managed for millions of years, as well as with all other ecosystems on Earth. I believe that before any substantial changes are made to our level of ocean sustainability we need to recognize it as vulnerable, which has yet to be entirely acknowledged. Efforts towards a fully sustainable future need to continue, and so does our mission of education, awareness, and knowledge.

In “Ocean Interweave” I took some of the oldest and most fascinating ocean life forms and put them within the tentacles of a jellyfish. I created this piece when I first came across the work of Ernst Haeckel and I was so intrigued by how all sea creatures operate within an ecosystem simultaneously and have managed to adapt to their surroundings for millions of years. I tried to highlight some of the patterning and shapes you would find on these creatures. In the print you can find a jellyfish, feather star, horseshoe crab, fan coral, seahorse, kelp, sea urchin, anemone, and zooplankton. Many of these specimens are ancestors of some degree or have remained the most fit for their environments. This is a copperplate etching with aquatint.

“Micro Nomos” is a print I created in an effort to exhibit some of the ocean’s most intricate and beautiful microorganisms, . ‘Nomos’ comes from the Greek term “law”, which I included because of the nature of these heterotrophic microorganisms. They feed on phytoplankton, zooplankton, and bacteria. Their shells are actually a silica skeleton, which can come in an enormous variety of shapes. I find it incredibly fascinating how each of their shells appear to be randomly generated and yet always intricate and beautiful. It’s the law of nature that they always take these elaborate shapes. This is a copperplate etching with aquatint.

I typically work with ink, whether it be through the printing process or simply a pen. I love the rich contrast and detail you can achieve with ink. I’m interested in printmaking in particular because it allows me to experiment in many ways, as well as in a format where I can replicate and revise my work with different colors. My prints are mostly copper plate etchings, which requires ‘biting’ an image into the surface of a copper plate with ferric acid. The copper plate serves as a template which I can then use to produce multiple copies of the image.

Editor’s Note

Sarah Lafontaine’s Micro NomosÌęwas the winner of this issue’s cover art contest. Our review team felt that the piece was a visually striking representation of siliceous oceanic organisms at risk of . As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise and are absorbed by the ocean, the pH of the sea becomes more acidic, which places a . As the foundation of the marine food chain, plankton such as the Radiolaria represented here are critically important to the health of our marine ecosystem.

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School of Food and Agriculture, 91±ŹÁÏ, Orono ME

Introduction

Globally, agriculture accounts for approximately 30% of greenhouse gas emissions (Vermeulen et al. 2012). Beyond our decisions to drive a hybrid car, turn down the thermostat or recycle, we make multiple choices about sustainability every time we sit down to a meal. In the context of food production and consumption, the concept of sustainability encompasses aspects of the ecological implications of production, processing and transport; nutrient density and contribution to a healthy diet; accessibility and affordability; yield and ability to meet global demand. In Organic and Natural Foods (FSN 555), a 91±ŹÁÏ food science course, graduate students studying different facets of food and agriculture (sustainable agriculture, nutrition, food science) learn about and discuss consumer trends in the food industry’s “natural channel.” Students are encouraged to form and defend individual, research-based opinions about movements such as “local” and “non-GMO” food and to discuss the merits of their positions within the context of the larger food system as well as how their research into these topics has affected their personal consumption behaviors. What follows is a synthesis of abbreviated writings focused on food-related topics. Each topic is addressed by multiple students, combining summaries of peer-reviewed literature and personal commentary with direct quotes from their classmates about the role that our food choices play in minimizing our environmental impact.

Topic: Meat consumption

It is widely recognized that meat and dairy products represent the most resource intensive production chains of any food (Godfray et al. 2018). Reducing demand for, and consumption of, animal products is one of the most widely cited strategies for increasing dietary sustainability and has been called for by non-governmental task forces focusing on human and ecological health (Macdiarmid et al. 2011). Students (none of whom identify as vegetarians or vegans) discussed this issue particularly with reference to the “plant protein” trend that has recently exploded in packaged goods and restaurant dining.ÌęÌę

Americans, on average, consume a much larger quantity of red meat per capita than people in any other part of the world (Pan et al. 2012). Whether this is a consequence of culture or convenience, there has been an increase in consumption during the past several decades (Daniel et al. 2011). Despite the scientific knowledge and research illustrating the dangers of red meat consumption with regard to human health (Pan et al. 2012) and the environment (Godfray et al. 2018), consumers seem unwilling to change dietary intake. Meat consumption has been rising swiftly all over the world primarily due to rapid population growth and an increase in wealth. Meat consumption is projected to double over the next 30 years, increasing particularly in low income countries as wealth throughout the world redistributes (Godfray et al. 2018).

In the history of the modern American diet, repeated attempts have been made by corporations and government policy to popularize alternative diets (Wheless 2004, 31-50). Low fat diets were commonly adopted in the 1940s for weight reduction, and became more popular in the 1950s when medical and government agencies began promoting this approach for heart health, causing this incredible stigma that fat (true to its name) made one fat (La Berge 2008). The use of “Fat-Free” as a marketing tool peaked in the 1980s while the obesity epidemic exploded (Mitchell et al. 2011). Fast forward to the 1990’s, and we find the exact opposite became true (Wheless 2004, 31-50). Carbohydrate consciousness, perhaps earliest and most notably espoused by Dr. Robert Atkins entered the public consciousness and “Sugar Free” was the new buzz term (La Berge 2008; Wheless 2004, 31-50). Another diet that has become widely adopted in recent years is the flexitarian diet. The term “flexitarian” was coined in 2009 and is commonly adopted as a way to reap the health benefits of a vegetarian diet while still eating meat when the cravings hit (US News & World Report, n.d.).

“Veganism does address animal agriculture issues, but … it does not address migrant worker rights and mistreatment.” – Student perspective

Modifying a diet or changing a person’s established schedule and routine is extremely difficult, especially in the minds of fully developed adults (Vilaro et al. 2018). Taking away hamburger and replacing it with a chicken or turkey patty, for example, has some positive effects on health, but the environmental impact is still relatively high (Pan et al. 2012). Food also has “guilty pleasure” qualities associated with it; eating is a social pastime and a way to de-stress for many individuals (Meule and Vögele 2013). If someone wasn’t already predisposed to chicken or turkey, and preferred it to red meat, the desire to consume red meat still exists, driving the development of “meat analogues” meant to look and taste like the real thing. This desire to simply substitute, without making any grandiose or lasting changes, paves the way to creating food items best suited to meet that need.

Activity in the “plant protein” arena has exploded in recent years, arguably culminating in the national release of what many believe to be the most convincing beef substitute to date. The “Impossible Burger” was created by Dr. Patrick Brown, in his own company known as Impossible Foods (Fellet 2015). Its production began in 1990, and only recently came to a point of public acceptance, after several consumer trials and safety evaluations. Dr. Brown has stated that the meat industry is extremely damaging to the planet and that people should absolutely eat less meat (Fellet 2015; Roos et al. 2013).

“From personal experience, if an Impossible burger and a conventional beef burger were placed in front of me, I would not be able to tell the difference.” – Student perspective

Often, the goal is simply to reduce, not to eliminate, the consumption of unhealthy food or a problematic behavior, but the extent of the reduction is frequently the point of contention. Some may consider replacing their daily hamburgers and hot dogs with chicken one day each week a reasonable solution for reducing red meat consumption, yet this does not have a strong impact on health or environmental sustainability (Meule and Vögele 2013; Pan et al. 2012; Roos et al. 2013; Vilaro et al. 2018).

“The benefit of living in the US is that we have access to a vast variety of foods. Food choice is a privilege, and those that have the luxury to choose should be mindful.” – Student perspective

For health and environmental reasons, red meat should be consumed far less than the current rate of per capita consumption in the U.S. The flexitarian diet has the potential to reduce the environmental impact of the standard diet by reducing the proportion of calories coming from animal products. Although this diet was originally created to capitalize on the health benefits of the vegetarian diet, it has been recently marketed towards increasing the sustainability of the planet by reducing meat consumption. Whether that means a couple meals a week without meat or reducing meat consumption to once a week, the goal of the flexitarian movement is to encourage more of the population to cut down on meat and to raise awareness about the importance of adopting a less resource-intensive diet to increase environmental sustainability (Wolfson 2019).

Topic: USDA Organic food labeling and sustainability

USDA Organic refers to a set of standards governing the production of agricultural products including, but not limited to, fresh produce, meat, dairy and packaged foods. Despite growing demand for organic foods, requirements related to organic certification are not well understood by consumers (Aarset et al. 2004). While organic agriculture is generally recognized to result in fewer negative ecological impacts, when compared with large scale conventional farming, strict adherence to the National Organic Plan does not guarantee this result. Students discussed the potential impacts of growth in the organic sector on the validity of values commonly associated with the word “organic.”

Consumer demand for organic products has skyrocketed in recent decades and continues to grow every year. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, consumer demand increased from just over $10 billion in 2005 to almost $35 billion in 2014 (USDA ERS 2019b). To many consumers, the organic seal means no pesticides, no artificial chemicals, eco-friendliness and highly nutritious (Bourn & Prescott, 2002). The motivations for choosing organic products vary from country to country. For example, in Germany, people choose organic based on health and ecological issues (Beharrell and MacFie 1991, Woodward and Meier-Ploeger 1999). In the Netherlands, “occasional organic buyers” patronize mainly for health reasons while “heavy organic buyers” do so for environmental reasons (Wandel and Bugge 1997). The word organic has been misconstrued to mean several things to consumers, such as small-scale, locally produced, and pesticide free.

“I think people need to understand that organic food production is not always small-scale.” – Student perspective

However, today’s organic food industry is a complex array of small- and large-scale food producers, local and global distribution networks, and a wide variety of products, including fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, and processed foods. Those who shop at local farmers’ markets know where their organic produce is coming from; consumers who purchase organic certified products in larger grocery stores or chain stores must carefully read labels to see where the food is produced. Additionally, with the surge in consumer demand this past decade, organic farms have not remained the idyllic small-scale backyard farm that many consumers imagine. For example, organic producers Earthbound Farm in California started as a two-and-a-half-acre farm in the mid 1980’s; today, they occupy about 30,000 acres and are one of the largest organic produce growers in the United States (Whitney, 2007). The explosion of consumer demand drives the scaling-up of operations like Earthbound, which results in greater consumption of inputs, such as water and fertilizer, to keep yields high and consumers happy.

“When you think about organic foods, you automatically believe you are benefitting the environment positively. It’s important to look more into the processing and sustainability of these organic ingredients as well.” –Student perspective

By definition, organic production is defined as an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biological activity. It is based on the minimal use of off-farm inputs and management practices that restore, maintain, and enhance ecological harmony. In organic production foods are grown without synthetic pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, modern genetic engineering techniques (including genetically modified crops), chemical fertilizers, or sewage sludge (USDA AMS 2018; Winter & Davis 2006). In order to be certified organic, farms must utilize some sort of crop rotation (USDA AMS 2018). The goal of this practice is to help promote the biodiversity of crops grown on the farm, mimicking a more natural ecosystem and moving away from the large monocultures often seen in conventional systems. Having a variety of crops can also promote diversity of beneficial insects, break pest cycles, and provide greater income for the farm. A meta-analysis of the scientific literature found that 327 of 396 publications pointed to higher biodiversity on organic farms over conventional farms (Rahmann 2011). And because organic farms do not use conventional herbicides, off-target effects on wildlife and local fauna could be little to none, helping increase species abundance and richness (Hole et al. 2005).

Organic certification also cannot be obtained unless a farm uses only non-synthetic fertilizers. This may include products such as animal manure or organically approved fertilizers like compost, fish meal, and seaweed extracts. Synthetic fertilizer uses in the United States, especially nitrogen fertilizers, have increased at an order of about 150% over the past few decades (Smith et al. 1998; USDA ERS 2019a) as conventional agriculture continues to grow larger and become more resource intensive. For example, use of a commonly used nitrogen fertilizer, anhydrous ammonia, increased from just under 1 million tons in the early 1960s to 3.8 million tons in 2015 (USDA ERS 2019a). Similarly, urea [nitrogen] fertilizer use grew from under 500,000 tons to 7.03 million tons during the same time period (USDA ERS 2019a). Research has found lower disease occurrence in soils amended with organic, as opposed to synthetic, fertilizer sources because of fertilizer source interactions with soil properties and soil health (Liu et al. 2007). Additionally, research has shown that use of synthetic fertilizers increases harmful insect populations. Yardim and Edwards (2003) found that pests such as aphids and invertebrate herbivores had higher populations where synthetic fertilizers were applied, likely because crops had decreased resistance to pest attacks via increased plant nutritional quality, and a reduction of metabolite concentrations that would allow the plant to better resist pest feeding.

Compared to conventional agriculture, there are some factors that make organic farming systems better for the environment. These systems do not use synthetic fertilizers or genetically modified seeds and have much greater biodiversity. However, organic food production may not be as environmentally friendly as some may believe. It is heavily reliant on soil tillage, has lower yields than conventional farming practices (Seufert et al. 2012), and may use organic pesticides (USDA AMS 2018). Additionally, not everyone has equal access to organic products or the means to purchase these more expensive goods. What is encouraging is the amount of research in organic systems being conducted around the United States, and the increased funding for agricultural research over the past few years. Organic farmers realize the need to make these systems more sustainable so that production can increase, and demand can be met.

Topic: Crop yields and access

The term “sustainability” is most often associated with minimizing ecological impacts. However, holistic discussion of dietary sustainability must integrate other concerns, including sufficient yield for the population and equity of access to a healthy diet. Students discussed the apparent conflict among these attributes of “sustainability” in the food system and how to strike a reasonable balance in their own lives.ÌęÌę

From a historical point of view, the Green Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, which comprised the widespread adoption of improved crop varieties in conjunction with use of synthetic fertilizers and greater mechanization, has increased agricultural production on a global level, resulting in higher outputs and lower prices for consumers (Evenson and Gollin 2003). But unfortunately it has done so at the cost of the degradation of the environment and natural resources, most notably contributing to decreases in soil fertility and runoff of excess agro-chemicals (Pingali 2012). Even after all these efforts, the FAO estimated that about 805 million people, or one out of nine, around the world were undernourished in 2014 (UN 2019).

Many opponents of conventional farming argue that organic agriculture should be the future of farming in the United States so that we can move away from genetically modified seed use and heavy herbicide reliance. But the reality is that organic farms tend to have lower yields—meta-analyses of comparisons between organic and conventional farms point to 5-34% lower yields in organic systems (Seufert et al., 2012). Organic farming would require more land to produce the same amount of food now supplied by conventional farms (Seufert et al., 2012). This tradeoff may result in more deforestation and clearing of land for farming. In extreme cases, the lower yield of organic farming could result in food shortages and an increase in the number of food-insecure people.

Another concern is that organic food can be very expensive. Access to organic food is not equitable, especially in low-income, urban areas where grocery stores tend to be small and do not stock a wide variety of products. Consumer demographic analyses currently show that a majority of organic food shoppers are white, have a higher level of education, and are in a higher income bracket (Dettmann and Dimitri 2010). Changing this demographic to be more inclusive could require better food education and food distribution to help lower income and minority groups have more purchasing power. Many Americans lack food education and would need assistance to learn how to properly prepare and cook some types of food.

“As someone who does research in organic farming systems, and who is also a college student with limited funds, I tend to fall in the middle of this argument. I love supporting Maine’s farmers and shop at the local market whenever possible. I believe organic farmers truly care about their production practices and want to meet the rising consumer demand in the best ways possible. However, I do not always have the means to have a 100% organic diet, and I know many, many others do not either.” – Student perspective

In the current circumstance of a changing climate, a more integrative approach to farming is needed, one that combines the productivity of conventional methods and the sustainability of organic methods. The goal is to produce enough food for the growing world population, while ensuring that our food production has minimal impacts on the already fragile ecosystem.

“What we spend our money on reflects our values, and if we are actually concerned with our current environmental crisis, we are responsible for making more informed decisions and lifestyle changes, despite any inconvenience.” – Student perspective

ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę The factors that contribute to dietary choices are complex and capricious. We very often talk, in both academic and informal settings, about the impact that these choices have on personal health. It is much less common for us to engage in conversation about the ecological ramifications of our eating behavior, despite the potentially huge impact of sustainable diets on the health of the planet. The students whose perspectives are presented in this piece spent a semester reconciling their own food consumption patterns and beliefs with objective science while considering how the values and opinions of their classmates might lead them to make different, but justifiable decisions. Their thoughts and combined writings demonstrate the sense of accountability that comes from exploring these topics in a cooperative setting.

Bibliography

1. Aarset, Bernt, Suzanna Beckmann, Enrique Bigne, Malcolm Beveridge, Trond Bjorndal, Jane Bunting,Pierre McDonagh, et al. 2004. “The European Consumers’ Understanding and Perceptions of the “Organic” Food Regime: The Case of Aquaculture.”Ìę 106, no. 2: 93-105.
2. Beharrell, Brian and J.H. MacFie. 1991. “Consumer Attitudes to Organic Foods.” British Food Journal 93, no. 2: 25-30.
3. Bourn, Diane and John Prescott. 2002. “A Comparison of the Nutritional Value, Sensory Qualities, and Food Safety of Organically and Conventionally Produced Foods.” Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 42, no. 1: 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408690290825439
4. Daniel, Carrie, Amanda Cross, Corinna Koebnick, and Rashmi Sinha. 2011. “Trends in Meat Consumption in the USA.” Public Health Nutrition 14, no. 4: 575-583.
5. Dettmann, Rachael and Carolyn Dimitri. 2010. “Who’s Buying Organic Vegetables? Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Consumers.” Journal of Food Products Marketing 16: 79-91.
6. Evenson, R.E. and D. Gollin. 2003. “Assessing the Impact of the Green Revolution, 1960 to 2000.” Science 300: 758-762.
7. Fellet, Melissae. 2015. “A Fresh Take on Fake Meat.” ACS Central Science 1, no. 7: 347-349. doi:1021/acscentsci.5b00307
8. Godfray, H. Charles, Paul Aveyard, Tara Garnett, Jim Hall, Timothy Key, Jamie Lorimer, Ray Pierrehumbert, Peter Scarborough, Marco Springmann, and Susan Jebb. 2018. “Meat Consumption, Health, and the Environment.” Food Security 361: 1-8.
9. Hole, David, Anthony Perkins, James Wilson, Henry Alexander, Philip Grice, and A.D. Evans. 2005. “Does Organic Farming Benefit Biodiversity?” Biological Conservation 122: 113-130.
10. La Berge, Ann. 2008. “How the Ideology of Low Fat Conquered America.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 63, no. 2: 139-177.
11. Liu, Bo, Marcia Gumpertz, Shuijin Hu, and Jean Ristaino. 2007. “Long-term Effects of Organic and Synthetic Soil Fertility Amendments on Soil Microbial Communities and the Development of Southern Blight.” Soil Biology and Biochemistry 39: 2302-2316.
12. Macdiarmid, Jennie, Janet Kyle, Graham Horgan, Jennifer Loe, Claire Fyfe, Alex Johnstone, and Geraldine McNeill. 2011. “Livewell: a Balance of Healthy and Sustainable Food Choices. Report commissioned by World Wildlife Fund UK.
13. Meule, Adrian and Claus Vögele. 2013. “The Psychology of Eating.” Frontiers in Psychology doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00215
14. Mitchell, Nia, Vicki Catenacci, Holly Wyatt, and James Hill. 2011. “Obesity: Overview of an Epidemic.” Psychiatric Clinics of North America 34, no. 4: 717-732.
15. Pan, An, Qi Sun, Adam Bernstein, Matthias Schulze, JoAnn Manson, Meir Stampfer, Walter Willett, and Frank Hu. 2012. “Red Meat Consumption and Mortality: Results From 2 Prospective Cohort Studies.” Archives of Internal Medicine 172, no. 7:555-563. doi:
16. Pingali, Prabhu. 2003. “Green Revolution: Impacts, Limits, and the Path Ahead.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 31: 12302-12308.
17. Rahmann, Gerold. 2011. “Biodiversity and Organic Farming: What Do We Know?” Agriculture and Forestry Research 61: 189-208.
18. Roos, Elin, Cecilia Sundberg, Pernilla Tidaker, Ingrid Strid, and Per-Anders Hansson. 2013. “Can Carbon Footprint Serve as an Indicator of the Environmental Impact of Meat Production?” Ecological Indicators 24: 573-581. doi:1016/j.ecolind.2012.08.004
19. Seufert, Verena, Navin Ramankutty, and Jonathan Foley. 2012. “Comparing the Yields of Organic and Conventional Agriculture.” Nature 485: 229-232.
20. Smith, Keith, Iain McTaggart, Karen Dobbie, and Franz Conen. 1998. “Emissions of N₂O from Scottish Agricultural Soils, as a Function of Fertilizer N.” Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems 52: 123-130.
21. US News & World Report. n.d. “Best Diet: The Flexitarian Diet.” Accessed December 11, 2019. .
22. USDA AMS. 2018. “National Organic Program Handbook.” Accessed December 3, 2019. https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/handbook.
23. USDA ERS. 2019a. “Fertilizer Use and Price.” Accessed December 6, 2019. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/fertilizer-use-and-price.aspx.
24. USDA ERS. 2019b. “Organic Market Overview.” Accessed December 3, 2019. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-environment/organic-agriculture/organic-market-overview.aspx.
25. Vermeulen, Sonja, Bruce Campbell, and John Ingram. “Climate Change and Food Systems.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34: 195-222.
26. Vilaro, Melissa, Sarah Colby, Kristin Riggsbee, Wenjun Zhou, Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, Melissa Olfert, Tracey Barnett, Tanya Horacek, Morgan Sowers, and Anne Mathews. 2018. “Food Choice Priorities Change Over Time and Predict Dietary Intake at the End of the First Year of College Among Students in the U.S.” Nutrients 10, no. 9: 1296-1308. doi:3390/nu10091296
27. Wandel, Margareta and Annechen Bugge. 1997. “Environmental Concern in Consumer Evaluation of Food Quality.” Food Quality and Preference 8, no. 1: 19-26.
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Colby College

From the Artist

Crosscut (2019)Ìęis a digital compilation of two polyester plate lithographyÌęprints that observe the history and prevalence of logging. I am struck by how even remote landscapes bear the squiggly, erratic scars of logging roads, and how one can walk deep into the woods and find the sawed off stumps of once-giants. The deeper one looks, the more extensive our human impact on US forests seems to be. The patterns of this development take interesting forms. USFS maps of logging roads seem to emulate dendritic patterns. Some of these networks resemble sporadic clods of roots, following resource-rich veins in the landscape.

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¹Colby College Environmental Studies Program
²Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Colby College, Waterville ME
^‡Corresponding Author. Email: loren.mcclenachan@colby.edu

Abstract

Climate change poses a major threat to human society with a disproportionate effect on young people. Although youth involvement in climate action is increasing, there is a lack of youth voices in the climate change narrative. Therefore, documenting youth perceptions of climate change is important for incorporating these key stakeholders, and improving social mobilization for climate action. We used interviews and surveys with high school students in Waterville, Maine to evaluate how students perceive climate change and engage with climate action. Over half (61%) of surveyed students ranked the importance of climate change as 8 or higher on the 1-10 scale. One quarter (26%) indicated that climate change is “the most important issue facing [their] generation” and 58% of interviewees reported thinking about it daily. Overall, students associated the current state of the environment with more negative than positive emotions, but the Maine environment was perceived more positively than that of the globe. While interviewees identified small-scale environmental actions that they took in their everyday life to reduce climate change, such as reducing waste or increasing personal energy efficiency, they felt they had no ability to influence or make necessary large-scale changes. Many narratives demonstrated a disconnect between personal action and local or global environmental issues. Students expressed interest in learning about climate change problems and solutions, but communicated a notion that their high school curriculum lacked substantial integration of this subject area. Almost half of survey respondents reported that they were interested in participating in an organized climate action event in the future, such as a climate strike. Students in Waterville appear to be invested in the issue of climate change and they have an important voice to contribute to the discourse regarding action and policy.

Keywords: Community-based research, Climate Action, Climate Change, Emotion, Maine, Youth

Introduction

Anthropogenic-induced climate change is increasingly disrupting earth system functions and human society (Antilla, 2005; Leiserowitz, 2006; Egan & Mullin, 2017). In recent decades the US public’s support for acknowledging the existence of climate change and recognizing that action is necessary has grown. In 1986, 39% of the national population admitted familiarity with the concept, growing to 90% in 2006. In 2010, 28% of the population reported worrying about climate change “a great deal” (Brulle, 2012; Nisbet & Myers, 2007). However, understandings of climate change differ based on various sociodemographic factors, including cultural influences, education, access to media/communication, geographic region, and the environment and industries in which one is surrounded (Brechin & Bhandari, 2015; Lee et al., 2015).

Maine is a state known for its natural resources and relative lack of development, with 89% of its land covered by forest (Butler, 2017; Frumhoff et al., 2007). Despite having a large amount of protected land and few emission-heavy industries which gives the impression that environmental threats are low, Maine is at the forefront of many climate impacts. For example, the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than other parts of the world’s oceans (Mills, 2013), which will lead to changes in economically important fishing and tourism industries (Steneck et al., 2011; Maine Office of Tourism, 2018). In addition, climate change is predicted to have an impact on the forest ecosystems that make up a large portion of the state, decreasing biodiversity and changing distribution of forest types (Tang & Beckage 2010).

As climate-driven environmental changes occur, youth are realizing that they will soon be faced with the negative effects. Including those who will bear the brunt of climate change is a key component of citizen action efforts, as they will be tasked with taking climate action for future decades (Mitchell et al., 2008; MacDonald et al., 2013). Environmental and health issues attributable to climate change are increasingly common, and in a business-as-usual scenario are likely to become more persistent in the future (Costello et al., 2009). This positions youth to have a stronger cause for minimizing damage that will affect them for years to come, more so than any other generation. However, youth are largely excluded from most climate conversations across all demographics (Haynes & Tanner, 2015). One way to involve youth is through developing and disseminating personal narratives, a powerful tool for social mobilization for climate action that also contributes to the field by filling gaps that are often overlooked by the research community (Harper et al., 2012; MacDonald et al., 2013; Moezzi et al., 2017; Hedley, 2018).

To aid in filling this gap in youth representation in climate conversations in Maine, we set out to determine the perceptions of climate change and action held by high school students in the central Maine municipality of Waterville. We interviewed a subset of students from Waterville Senior High School, and surveyed the population of the entire school to evaluate the perceptions of the state of the environment and climate change discussion in local youth. This project aims to provide a model for youth perspectives to be added to climate research efforts and determine if youth have seen the impacts of climate change in their daily lives and lifetimes. We also intend to highlight the means and topics that motivate youth involvement based upon their understandings of climate change and what aspects of the issue they are most passionate about.

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Methods

Our research data was gathered via two methods: a survey administered to the entire Waterville Senior High School population (n=499) and in-person conversational interviews (n=19) with a subset of students recruited from the school. The survey was used to obtain broad information about the student population’s overall perceptions of climate change and climate action, while the interviews were used to obtain more in-depth responses. Our survey and interview questions were approved by the Colby College Institutional Review Board (IRB).

The survey asked students to indicate their opinion of how important they believe climate change to be on a scale of 1 to 10 (little to utmost importance), and asked participants to list emotions attributed to the current state of the environment (Appendix 1). We compiled all responses and consolidated terms by combining different conjugations of emotions and combining synonyms (Appendix 2). For consolidation of synonyms, the term that received the most responses is the term into which others were consolidated. For example, a large proportion of students said they were “angry,” though many said they were “mad,” and some replied “furious.” All were categorized under the emotion of “anger.”

We recruited interview participants during the meeting of the school’s environmental club (called the Green Team). The club’s faculty advisor also invited all high school students interested in participating to be interviewed. These interviews were semi-structured, with a mix of questions with a fixed set of possible responses, and open-ended questions (Appendix 3). We followed up where appropriate with additional questions. The interviews were transcribed with the help of the online transcription program Otter.ai, developed by Liang and Fu (2018), and then analyzed by examining key words, phrases, and emotions associated with the state of the environment and climate change. Our goal was to capture the most common ideologies offered by students to weave a collective narrative of Waterville youth discussing the environment. This included broad concepts, emotions, specific actions, and hopes for the course of future plans. We quantified our results by counting each time specific keywords were mentioned across all interviews in order to highlight the most common terms in student lexicons when discussing the environment in conversation (Appendix 4). This gave an understanding of various buzzwords, developing terms, and existing trends that are currently most used by surveyed youth when considering the climate. We followed the methodology of MacDonald et al. (2013) to create flowcharts connecting and describing youth perceptions of climate change impacts, emotional responses, and their perceived ability to affect climate action.

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Results

We received 285 completed surveys, which accounts for 57% of the student body. Additionally, we received 99 partially completed surveys, which we also included for the subset of answered questions. We conducted in-person interviews with a total of 19 students, 15 of which were recruited through their participation in the Green Team, and 4 were recruited through the general invitation to the student body.

Student concern for climate change

The schoolwide survey revealed climate change is a highly important issue to most students. When asked to rank the current importance of climate change on a 1-10 scale, 10 was the value with the most responses, 26.6% (n=74), and was labeled “the most important issue facing [their] generation.” Of the responses to this question, the mean rank was 7.4 and the median was 8; the majority, 61% (n=173), of students ranked climate change at 8 or higher on the 1-10 scale (Figure 1a). Interviews supported this view of the importance of climate change; of the 19 students interviewed, 11 interviewees mentioned constantly thinking about climate change. Only 1 interviewee stated not thinking about it often, while the other 7 think about it at least weekly (Figure 1b). Many students attributed the reason for thinking about climate change often to its constant presence in the news and on various social media platforms.

When asked if students experienced changes in the environment over their lifetimes, 11 of our 19 interviewees expressed observing changes (Appendix 5). Five students responded that they had not experienced change, but referred to hearing about and discussing such occurrences with those who had directly experienced change. The remainder (n=3) reported not experiencing or hearing about changes. Most often, students cited noticing seasonal irregularities including snowfall pattern (n= 4) or extreme temperatures (n=4). Seldom were ecological changes observed, such as habitat loss (n=1), or fluctuation in wildlife populations (n=1) (Appendix 5). Individuals also expressed a heightened sense of environmental concern among their peers in recent years. A student speculated this increase correlated with Green Team membership more than doubling since the previous school year. When asked to identify key climate change topics, interviewees cited significant global burdens like rising temperature (n=9) and melting ice (n=6). Responses also included changing weather, sea level rise, and pollution.

Climate change elicited a wide variety of emotions among students, the majority of which were negative (Appendix 2). Just 5.5% (n=40) of responses involving the status of the world’s environment were positive. When students thought about their emotions concerning the status of the world’s environment, the most common responses were ‘sad,’ ‘anger’ and ‘scared’ (Figure 2a). In contrast, 20% of responses were positive concerning Maine’s environment. When thinking about Maine, ‘sad’ and ‘anger’ were still in the top three, but ‘happiness’ was also associated with Maine’s environment (Figure 2b). Surveys and interview responses revealed many students associated happiness with Maine’s environment because they believe it is in better standing than other places globally. Of the 19 students interviewed, 6 described Maine as cleaner and less polluted compared to the world, while China and New York City were examples mentioned (n=7) of less environmentally clean locations. Some interviewees believe Maine is effective in addressing environmental issues (n=4).

Climate actions

Some emotions students associate with climate change led individuals to act against climate change in their everyday life (Figure 3). Activities on a personal scale like recycling, waste reduction through reusable products, and increasing energy efficiency were determined as the climate action they take in their own lives. Some interviewees shared that although they believed their impact to be small, they were devoted to making these changes in their own lives: “There’s not a lot I can do, but I will do as much as I can, even if it’s just the small roles…” When asked about their thoughts on climate action in interviews, students also mentioned these smaller personal scale activities as what climate action meant to them (n=9). Other interviewees associated climate action with protests and specifically, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (n=4). When discussing climate change and action, students also emphasized the need for global and domestic institutional changes. Individuals stated climate change is “not being addressed enough,” yet they expressed frustrated sentiments that they lack authority or agency to effect change (Figure 3). Specifically, an interviewee said:

“…things really need to change, but people who have realized that don’t really have the power to do it. Be it like me or people around my age
 because we don’t really have [the] power or the means to really do much.”

Students’ broad perceptions of climate change impacts led them to an impression that they had the inability to make influential changes (Figure 3). The interviewees frequently mentioned they are “only” in their teenage years and therefore could not create meaningful change to help with large scale problems. One student stated, “…the issue…is [that] making immediate change [in] one’s life is difficult…change is not instantaneous, it’s a progression. It…doesn’t happen, you know, right now. It takes time.” Some interviewees did mention small scale initiatives they were interested in (e.g., helping to reduce waste at the restaurant they worked at over the summer) but still thought they couldn’t implement their ideas because they were too young for people to listen to them. Although interviewed students cited taking small climate actions in their everyday lives such as recycling, which were inspired by their understanding of climate change impacts, they thought these actions to be largely insignificant (Figure 3). For example, one interviewed student stated:

“I try to waste…as little as possible…and…not use as much electricity, [but] as of right now, there’s not much I can do other than in my household…, unless I like went out and…worked for a company or something…to make…a large impact.”

While these students recognized that the initiatives they partook in were examples of climate action, they also defined climate action as being something larger than their personal action and something necessary at the global and domestic institutional levels (Figure 3). In particular when asked about thoughts on climate change one interviewee stated, “…global policy is needed. I…think about how it’s not just a United States problem or even a North American problem it’s everybody’s problem.”

While a few interviewees mentioned protests as a form of climate action, the survey revealed students are split almost evenly on the desire to participate in a climate action event like a strike (Appendix 6). Only 5% of surveyed students reported that they have participated in a climate action event although many reported interest in attending such an event in the future.

Influence and education

Students responded that they were influenced by and influential to various sources. Commonly cited influences were friends or parents, school faculty, members of the Green Team, and news outlets. Some students (n=4) named the Green Team faculty coordinator as their main inspiration (Appendix 7). When asked about their impact on others, students mentioned having an effect on their friends, parents, and faculty. Many respondents added that Green Team’s efforts, such as the “green tips” they give out once a week during homeroom are a strong outlet for personal impact. A small proportion of interviewees (n=2) responded indicating that they do not influence others to act against climate change, but expressed that they wished they could be influential.

While most interviewees recognized their influence as a Green Team member, they also expressed a need for further participatory action and education, wishing more people understood climate change’s importance. One student said, “[Climate change] is a really, really big problem that some people are working on, but I feel like as a whole, we don’t think about [it].” Most students (n=14) believed climate change was covered infrequently and insufficiently in biology or chemistry class. Although they reported a lack of an environmental class offered at school, a majority (n=14) stated learning about important environmental issues online or through social media. Some students discussed following news accounts on platforms such as Instagram. Interviewees also expressed news in various formats such as TV, online articles, or social media accounts as main sources of environmental information (n=10).

Discussion

High school students in Waterville, Maine were acutely aware of recent media narratives regarding climate change. They frequently mentioned large-scale, more abstract concepts when asked what they associated with climate change. Along with this awareness, they also ranked climate change as one of the paramount issues they currently face and will navigate in the next few decades. In terms of climate change impacts in Maine, most students believed that their state was a good example of a healthy environment, often citing the abundant forests and low amount of pollution in the state.

Knowledge of large-scale environmental changes inspired students to take action in their everyday lives, in addition to joining the high school’s Green Team. In this club, students brainstorm ideas to mitigate climate change locally and work on projects to take action against climate change. Although most students mentioned the same few actions, such as recycling and turning off the lights, the projects they take part in with Green Team expand on their individual actions. They acknowledged that numerous people fighting against climate change in a small way is an important part of making change. However, students often shared that they are frustrated and sad about the state of the environment, wishing that they were able to have a larger impact. They do not feel like they have the authority to help act against climate change in a meaningful way. We attribute this rationale to their understanding of significant and abstract environmental issues juxtaposed with the feeling of daily sustainable actions having a minimal impact. A lens of bias may also be added through the news students receive through social media exacerbating their perception of environmental events to be overwhelmingly negative. Despite this lack of agency felt by students, the Green Team appears to offer students an opportunity to collaborate and make larger-scale changes in their school and community. During our time talking with the students in the club, they have been working to create public service announcements to help spread awareness about the school’s space for sustainability improvement as well as working with the school district to transition to powering the high school by solar energy.

Since most students explained in their interviews that there is little to no coverage of climate change in their classes, another possible reason that students think they don’t have agency is that they have a very narrow sense of the environmental problems occurring in the world. If climate change is discussed, it is limited and primarily in science classes. This low amount of knowledge about environmental issues could contribute to students’ lack of perceived options for climate action. Additionally, science classes serving as the predominant educational discussion surrounding climate change may demonstrate a lack of ability for other educational disciplines in solving or discussing climate issues. This lack of integrated education could be a reason that some students believe they cannot be involved in climate solutions because they do not plan to become scientists. A wider variety of environmental problems or solutions could be tackled by students if they had a broader understanding of the issues as well as an established forum to talk about said issues.

Our results support a limited but growing field of research on youth responses to climate change across communities. For example, despite expressing similar emotions in regards to climate change, Inuit youth population in Rigolet expressed greater regional awareness of the effects of climate change (MacDonald et al., 2013; Haynes & Tanner, 2015) than did the Waterville youth we interviewed. Furthermore, other researchers have found that multimedia and digital storytelling raises awareness of climate change among youth, which parallels what some Waterville Senior High School students said of the influence of media sources with regards to their information about climate change and climate action (Manfredini, 2017). Further research should expand the scope of research on youth emotions and actions in order to include this important demographic in the climate change narrative.

Acknowledgements: We are grateful for the assistance of Prof. Gail Carlson of Colby College in the planning stages of this project and for providing connections to Waterville Senior High School. We are also immensely grateful for the help Julie Letourneau provided us with to conduct this research at the high school. Additionally, we are thankful for all students who participated in interviews or in the survey as well as students of the Green Team who donated their time distributing and collecting surveys.

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Appendix 1. The survey administered to all students of Waterville Senior High School.

Circle your grade:ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 9thÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 10thÌęÌęÌę ÌęÌę 11thÌę ÌęÌę 12th

How would you rank the current importance of climate change? (1 = not important, 10 = most important issue facing my generation)

1ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 2ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 3ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 4ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 5ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 6ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 7ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 8ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 9ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę 10

What three emotions do you attribute to the current status of the environment in Maine?

________________________________________

________________________________________

________________________________________

What three emotions do you attribute to the current status of the environment in the world?

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

_______________________________________

Have you participated in an organized event centered on environmental awareness (For example, a climate strike such as on September 20th when students gathered in Portland, Maine to demand climate action)?

⃞ YesÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę ⃞ No

If not, do you wish you could have?

⃞ YesÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę ⃞ No

Would you consider yourself an environmentalist (a person who is concerned with or advocates for the protection of the environment)?

⃞ YesÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę ⃞ No

Appendix 2: Consolidation of terms from Survey Responses.

Emotions attributed to the current state of the world’s environment:

Anger = anger and angry, mad

Alarmed = alarmed and alarm

Annoyance = annoyed, annoying, annoyance

Anxiety = anxiety, anxious

Concern = concern, concerned

Confusion = confused, confusion, bamboozled

Depression = depressed, depressing, depression, very depressing

Desperation = desperation, desperate

Disappointment = disappointment, disappointed

Disgust = disgust, disgusted, disgusting

Don’t care = don’t care, don’t really care

Excitement = excited, excited for change

Fright = frightening, frightful

Frustration = frustrated, frustrating, frustration

Happiness = glad, happy, happiness, happy sometimes, little happy

Hope = hope, hope of change, hopeful

Hopeless = hopeless, lacking hope

Irritation = irritated, irritated that people don’t care

Nervous = nervous, nervous of extinction

Overwhelmed = overwhelmed, overwhelming

Sad = sad, sadness, big sad, sadness for animals, sometimes sad, sorrow, upset, kind of upset I guess, really upset, upsetting

Scared = scared, scary, kinda scared, very scared, fear, fearful

Stress = stress, stressed, stressful

Terrified = terrified, terrifying

Worry = worry, worried, worrisome, very worried, worrying

Emotions attributed to the current state of Maine’s environment:

Anger = anger, angered, angry, mad

Annoyance = annoyance, annoyed, annoying

Anxiety = anxiety, anxious

Boredom = bored, boredom, boring

Concern = concern, concerned

Confusion = confused, confusion,

Disappointment = disappointment, disappointed

Disgust = disgusted, disgusting

Encouragement = encouraging, encouraged

Excited = excited, exciting, excited to act

Frustration = frustrated, frustrating, frustration

Happiness = happy, happiness, happy relaxed

Hope = hope, hope of change, hopeful a bit hopeful

Joy = joy, joyful

IDK = IDK, unsure, I don’t know

I don’t care = don’t care, don’t really care, I don’t really care, couldn’t care less

Proud = proud, proud of what Maine is doing

Sad = sad, sad because it is cold, sadness, upset, upsetting

Scared = scared, scary, scared for the environment, fear

Overwhelmed = a little overwhelmed

Worry = worried, worrying, worriful

Relaxed = relaxed, relaxing

Both

No response = left blank, crossed out, “N/A”, “no answer”, “none”, “nothing”

Appendix 3. The guiding questions asked to each participant of the interviews.

When you hear the term climate change what comes to mind?

1. 1. What feelings does climate change evoke?

When you hear the term climate action what comes to mind?

How often do you think about environmental issues?

Can you describe the natural environment’s role in your everyday life?

Have you noticed any changes in the environment around you over the course of your life?

What do you believe is the most important environmental issue?

How do you take action against climate change in everyday life?

How do you influence people around you to take action against climate change?

Who influences you?

How is climate change covered in your classes?

How does living in Maine shape your view of the environment?

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

How do you learn about important environmental issues? What is your source, parents, newspaper, social media?

Appendix 4. Table representing how often different common words or phrases were brought up in conversation during all student interviews.

Appendix 5: Table of responses of observed environmental changes from interview question “Have you noticed any changes in the environment around you over the course of your life?”

Appendix 6. Surveyed students’ responses regarding climate action events.

Appendix 6 (a). Percent of yes and no responses to survey questions: (1) Have you participated in an organized event centered on environmental awareness? (2) If not, do you wish you could have? (3) Would you consider yourself an environmentalist? (n=285).

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Appendix 6 (b). Responses to survey questions “Do you wish you could have participated [in an organized event on climate awareness]?” and “Would you consider yourself an environmentalist?” represented as the percent of students that answered these questions in different combinations.

Appendix 7. Table representing the number of times students in interviews mentioned influencing or being influenced by certain parties.

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The post Youth perceptions of climate change and climate action in Waterville, Maine appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

¹Colby College Environmental Studies Program
²Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Colby College, Waterville ME
^‡Corresponding Author. Email:Ìęloren.mcclenachan@colby.edu

Abstract

Since the early 20th century, Maine has relied heavily on the lobster industry for its contributions to both the state economy and identity.Ìę However, the high dependence on lobster has turned the fishery into a gilded trap, or a valuable monoculture, that is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Therefore, Maine coastal communities are starting to think about economically and socially viable alternatives, such as kelp aquaculture. This paper seeks to determine kelp’s potential to diversify Maine’s coastal economy, specifically asking the questions: (1) Geographically, where along Maine’s coast is a transition from lobster fishing to kelp aquaculture most likely to take place?; (2) What is the current and potential future economic value of kelp aquaculture to Maine’s coastal economy?; and (3) How are key stakeholders in Maine’s coastal communities responding to kelp aquaculture as a potential primary Maine industry? To address these questions, we collected spatially explicit data on current kelp and lobster value, conducted expert interviews to identify potential for future growth, and completed a media analysis to determine social perceptions of kelp aquaculture and individuals and institutions involved in this transition. We found that the overlap of existing fisheries infrastructure has supported a hotspot of transition in South Central Maine.ÌęThe rate of kelp aquaculture production is predicted to increase from the current rate of 6.75% a year, with projected annual retail values of $2.2 million, though this growth is dependent on developments of processing facilities. Finally, we identified key individuals and institutions involved in the transition from lobster to kelp, indicating that this economic diversification is underway. While our results demonstrate that kelp has the potential to be economically and socially beneficial to Maine’s economy, they also indicate that continued injections of social and economic resources are needed for kelp to mirror the success of the Maine lobster industry.

Keywords: Maine, lobster, kelp, aquaculture, coastal economy diversification, environmental attitude, stakeholder involvementÌę

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IntroductionÌę

Wild-caught lobster is one of Maine’s top enterprises; 80% of lobster in the United States come from Maine’s adjacent waters (Holland 2011). In 2018 the lobster industry brought in approximately $500 million to Maine’s economy, accounting for more than three quarters of the yearly value for the state’s commercially harvested marine resources (Maine DMR 2019). The lobster industry is estimated to create over 35,000 jobs on the working waterfront; in addition to the 4,500 state licensed lobstermen, the industry supports lobster dealers and processors, those involved with boat maintenance, and seasonal restaurant workers (Collins 2018). Involvement in the industry offers not only stable and secure employment, but a sense of purpose, community, and belonging for much of Maine’s coastal population. Moreover, lobster has become a state icon with an international reputation that plays an important role in attracting millions of visitors and perpetuating the small-town, family-owned character of Maine (Lewis 1989). Tourists flock to the state to enjoy lobster meat, and many also seek an authentic “Maine experience,” attracted to the charm of historic fishing villages. Festivals, like the Rockland Lobster festival, celebrate the lobstering culture and fundraise for coastal communities (Claesson et al. 2005), and some Maine lobstermen have even begun offering boat tours to tourists interested in the fishing process (Melendez 2019).

However, this dependence on lobster confers vulnerability, particularly with respect to warming waters associated with global climate change (Steneck et al. 2011). The poleward shifts of marine species have allowed lobsters to be successful in the Gulf of Maine, yet as warming events continue lobsters are predicted to move further north, and the Gulf of Maine population will become less predictable (Goode et al. 2019). These changes will alter the livelihood of those who are dependent on the industry (Barnett & Eakin 2015; Goode et al. 2019). For example, in 2012, the Northern Atlantic experienced a heatwave that increased surface temperatures roughly one to three degrees Celsius above the average. This warming event caused the quantity of lobster caught, landed, and available for market to peak before Maine tourist season, triggering a price drop of 70% below average per pound prices (Mills et al. 2013).

Diversifying the coastal economy is one strategy to avoid the negative impacts of declines in the lobster industry. Kelp aquaculture, though in the early stages of development, has shown great promise (Christian 2015). Around the world in countries like Canada, Chile, and Japan, the growth and integrations of seaweed into fed aquaculture systems have proven to be ecologically and economically beneficial (Chopin et al. 2002; Chopin et al. 2012; Kim et al. 2017). This industry is growing in Maine, but there is limited research regarding the economic and social viability of a kelp industry. Therefore, our research addresses three questions: (1) Geographically, where along Maine’s coast is a transition from lobster fishing to kelp aquaculture most likely to take place?; (2) What is the current and potential future economic value of kelp aquaculture to Maine’s coastal economy?; and (3) How are key stakeholders in Maine’s coastal communities responding to kelp aquaculture as a primary Maine industry?

Methods

First, we conducted a spatial analysis in order to determine the overlap of the kelp and lobster industries and identify places where kelp is most likely to act as substitute for the lobster fishery. To do this, we used Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) data on the landed value of 2018 lobster for ports in Maine and the locations of current and pending kelp aquaculture leases (Maine DMR 2019).Ìę We determined the 40 most valuable lobster ports to be representative of the Maine lobster industry because they support nearly all of its total value (92.9%) and total lobster landing weight (92.7%). We mapped all current and pending kelp aquaculture leases and used these to identify areas where there were large and valuable lobster ports adjacent to clusters of kelp sites.

Second, to determine the current economic value of the kelp industry, we gathered information from the Maine DMR on annual harvest, and combined this with information on price per pound, which we identified from online sales of processed and industrial kelp products in the state of Maine.Ìę Using web searches, we compiled a database of the companies, the types of products, and the product prices, which we transformed into a price per pound measurement and averaged based on the type of product (consumer products versus industrial products).Ìę We defined consumer products as those that have added value through marketing towards household use, such as seaweed salad and kelp flakes. Industrial products included raw kelp, animal feed, and fertilizer. We converted wet pounds produced from kelp aquaculture reported to the Maine Department of Marine Resources (2015-2018) into dry pounds of kelp by using a ratio of ten wet pounds to one dry pound (Maine DMR 2019). Together with our price data, we estimated the consumer and industrial sales values of kelp.ÌęTo determine the future potential economic value of the kelp industry in Maine, we interviewed experts in Maine kelp aquaculture, including marine scientists and policy professionals, asking questions regarding projections of kelp aquaculture production and factors that may limit or enhance production (Appendix 1). We used their responses to create projections of the kelp industry over the next ten years.

Finally, to determine the public’s view of kelp aquaculture — and in particular the view of current lobster fishers — we searched existing online databases for news publications relevant to the topic. Keywords included, but were not limited to, “kelp aquaculture, “Maine,” and “seaweed farming.” Information was found and taken from both state news sources (Maine Public Radio, Portland Press Herald) and national news sources (National Fisherman, National Public Radio). To expand the range of represented social groups we also joined a Facebook group, “All Things Lobstering,” and searched for comments about kelp made by Maine lobster fishers to other Maine lobster fishers. We noted relevant text from the source, our categorization of the individual as having a negative or positive view of kelp aquaculture, and what led us to interpret their comment as positive or negative. Additionally, we identified examples of lobster fishers transitioning to kelp aquaculture, and institutions and organizations noted in the media sources as having played a significant role in the research, education, and financial backing of kelp aquaculture endeavors.

ResultsÌę

Hotspots of Transition

The distribution of Maine’s major lobster ports suggests that the lobster industry is influential across the entirety of the coast, but there are key ports of particular importance for Maine lobstermen (Figure 1). The two most valuable ports in Maine, Stonington and Vinalhaven, alone bring in nearly a fifth (19.66%) of Maine’s total lobster landing value. To the south is a cluster of valuable ports like Friendship, and Downeast Maine includes a number of other major ports, notably Beals. The Casco Bay region is also particularly important to the lobster industry as it was surrounded by a few important ports like Portland and Cundys Harbor, the fifth and seventh most valuable Maine lobster ports respectively.

The kelp industry meanwhile tends to be concentrated primarily in mid-coast Maine from Portland to Rockland. While there are a few kelp leases further north in the Penobscot River and Frenchman Bay, nearly all other kelp aquaculture sites are located in this central region. Within this region, we identified two major clusters of kelp aquaculture sites in Casco Bay in Cumberland County and in Knox County along Maine’s central coast. This was also where the large majority of pending leases were concentrated.

The greatest overlap between the industries exists in mid-coast Maine just south of Vinalhaven and Stonington, particularly in Knox and Cumberland Counties (Figure 1). These areas contain the highest concentrations of kelp aquaculture leases along the coast of Maine, combined with significant presence of lobster fishing, suggesting that this is the area where a transition may be underway.

Economic Viability of KelpÌę

Our economic analysis of kelp aquaculture indicates that the industry is growing rapidly.ÌęHarvest data from 2015-2018 show that kelp production has increased by 6.75% annually. Consumer marketed products have a substantially higher estimated value in comparison to industrial products , with average values of $40.81 per pound and $3.25 per pound, respectively (Figure 2a; Appendix 2).

Experts in the kelp aquaculture industry agreed that kelp production will increase at a rate greater than the current rate (+6.75% per year) over the next ten years (Figure 2b), and that available markets and locations available for growing kelp would help support this increased growth. However, the rate of growth is dependent on surpassing limitations including lack of processing capacity available to create marketable, value-added products.ÌęDespite these uncertainties, one expert predicted exponential growth resulting in a ten-fold increase in value in the next decade. This increase would propel kelp production to an estimated 53,560 dry pounds in 2028, which corresponds to a combined industrial and consumer value of $2.2 million. By comparison, the lobster industry in 2018 brought in $484.5 million in total dockside value.

Perceptions of Kelp Across Stakeholder Groups

Our media analysis indicated mixed views of kelp aquaculture by the Maine community. Of 20 recent news articles about kelp, we categorized eight as “positive,” four as “positive with obstacle,” and eight as “negative” (Table 1). “Positive with obstacle” denotes that the individual perceived the industry as promising, but mentioned a barrier necessitating further planning and development before it can reach its full potential. However, views vary across stakeholder groups. Seven out of eight of the individuals categorized as holding a negative view were lobster fishers; the eighth was a fisheries non-profit executive. Individuals with positive/positive-with-obstacle viewpoints hold a range of professions, from kelp farmers to fishery scientists, and chefs to project developers.

Despite mixed views, we identified multiple instances of lobster fishers who have begun kelp farming (Table 2), and an associated positive view of kelp aquaculture as a beneficial diversification strategy. All of these individuals are situated in Knox County and Cumberland Counties, including the towns of Damariscotta, Falmouth, Corea, Biddeford, Chebeague Island, and Saint George. Some of these lobstermen were aided by programs and institutions (Table 2); others may have had assistance in transitioning but did not mention it. These institutions have missions to research market structure, fund enterprises, and provide education, and include Coastal Enterprise Inc., Maine Sea Grant, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Island Institute (Appendix 3).

Discussion

Kelp aquaculture has the potential to help diversify Maine’s coastal economy, which will be necessary in an era of warming waters. While the current value of kelp is over orders of magnitude lower than the value of lobster, this sort of fisheries diversification is important to maintain resilience in fishing communities, particularly in times of change (Cline et al. 2017). In Maine, a diversity of institutions has invested in kelp aquaculture development, and future investments in kelp processing will help to create marketable products, which in turn will increase consumer demand. Locally-derived value added products like kelp chips and other dried kelp products have been popular, North America is projected to have the fastest growing kelp market, and growth of other uses in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries is predicted to fuel market growth (Markets and Markets 2020). All of these trends are promising for Maine kelp production, though many unknowns exist.

While there is momentum toward the development of a kelp industry in Maine, there is also opposition to this industry from within the lobstering community. All of the negative views expressed in the media came from lobstermen, who objected to the influx of large corporations as well as unfair leasing practices. These competing claims of coastal access and resources among key stakeholders are important to acknowledge in designing inclusive solution-oriented plans for coastal development and fisheries diversification. Lobstermen’s concerns and requests must be taken seriously; transparency and assurance that kelp farms will not negatively impact the lobstering industry is critical to broader acceptance of aquaculture.

Importantly, our research also shows that kelp aquaculture by lobstermen has the potential for positive ripple effects. Casco Bay and Mid-coast Maine are places where fishermen are engaging with kelp aquaculture. This is seen both in the geographic overlap of the industries, as well as in the views expressed by lobster fishers who have transitioned to kelp. Casco Bay and Knox County have large numbers of pending kelp lease applications, suggesting that kelp aquaculture will continue to grow in these regions in the future. The shifts in views of lobster fishers in Knox County and Cumberland County in particular provide hope that there will be future acceptance, and growth, of kelp aquaculture.

Acknowledgments: We would like to thank the various individuals instrumental in conducting this project. Nick Battista, Dana Morse and Jaclyn Robidoux were all significant in understanding the future of the kelp industry in Maine.

Ìę

ReferencesÌę

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Bever, Fred. “Maine seaweed: the next super-food?” Maine Public Radio, April 26, 2016. https://www.mainepublic.org/post/maine-seaweed-next-super-food.

Bever, Fred. “Seaweed on your dinner plate: the next kale could be kelp.” National PublicÌęRadio, June 5, 2016. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/06/05/480346509/seaweed-on-your-dinner-plate-the-next-kale-could-be-kelp.

Bever, Fred. “As Maine’s coastal waters warm, lobstermen look to new fisheries for stableÌęfuture.” Bangor Daily News, September 23, 2019. https://bangordailynews.com/2019/09/23/news/state/as-maines-coastal-waters-warms-lobstermen-look-to-new-fisheries-for-stable-future/.

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Clark, Melissa. “The climate friendly vegetable you ought to eat.” The New York Times, April 30, 2019. .

Cline, Timothy J, Daniel E Schindler, Ray Hilborn. Fisheries portfolio diversification and turnover buffer Alaskan fishing communities from abrupt resource and market changes. Nature Communication 8 (2017): 14042.

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Graham, Gillian. “Farming for biofuel on the open ocean: UNE researchers’ first harvest atÌętheir kelp test farm shows some promising signs for Maine’s aquaculture industry.”ÌęPortland Press Herald, May 28, 2019. https://www.pressherald.com/2019/05/28/une-researchers-harvest-kelp-from-fa.

Hathaway, Jessica. “Seaweed matters: lobstermen help kelp spread in Maine.” National Fisherman, April 11, 2019. https://www.nationalfisherman.com/northeast/seaweed-matters-lobstermen-help.

Kim, Jang K., Charles Yarish, Eun Kyoung Hwang, Miseon Park, and Youngdae Kim. “Seaweed aquaculture: cultivation technologies, challenges and its ecosystem services.” Algae 32, (2017): 1–13.

Holland, Daniel S. “Planning for Changing Productivity and Catchability in the Maine Lobster Fishery.” Fisheries Research 110, (2011): 47–58. .

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Maine Department of Marine Resources. “Aquaculture in Maine.” Accessed October 2019. https://www.maine.gov/dmr/aquaculture/index.html.

Maine Department of Marine Resources. “Historical Maine lobster landings.” Accessed October 2019. .

Markets and Markets 2020. Commercial Seaweeds Market by Type (Red Seaweeds, Brown Seaweeds, Green Seaweeds), Method of Harvesting (Aquaculture, Wild Harvesting), Form (Liquid, Powder, Flakes), Application (Food, Feed, Agriculture), and Region – Global Forecast to 2023.

Matusek, Sarah. “Seaweed fudge, anyone? Maine lobstermen try a new, watery crop.” TheÌęChristian Science Monitor, June 21, 2019. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Progress-Watch/2019/0621/Seaweed-fudge-anyone-Maine-lobstermen-try-a-new-watery-crop.

Melendez, Jarrett. “Maine lobster fishing information.” USAToday, November 19, 2019. .

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Steneck, Robert S., et al. “Creation of a Gilded Trap by the High Economic Value of the Maine Lobster Fishery.” Conservation Biology 25, (2011): 904–12.

Trotter, Bill. “Organic Maine seaweed firm wants to make your table salt obsolete.”ÌęBangor Daily News, March 28, 2019. .

Yu, Alan. “Kelp has been touted as the new kale, but it has been slow to catch on.” NationalÌęPublic Radio, June 3, 2019.

Appendices

Appendix 1. Expert Interview Question

1: According to the Department of Marine Resources there has been a 27% increase in kelp aquaculture production since 2015. In the next 10 years, do you believe this growth will:

a)ÌęÌę continue at the current rate (an average of 6.75% a year)?

b)ÌęÌę increase from the current rate (6.75% a year)? If so, by how much?

c)ÌęÌę decline from the current rate (6.75% a year)? If so, by how much?

2: In your opinion, what factors most affect the future growth of kelp aquaculture in Maine?

3: In your opinion, what are the biggest opportunities and challenges in kelp aquaculture in Maine over the next ten years?

Appendix 2. Kelp products and price per pound. Data collected from various sources listed in the table.

Appendix 3. Organizations that help incentivize kelp aquaculture in Maine.

The post Diversifying Maine’s coastal economy: A transition from lobster fishing to kelp aquaculture? appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Faculty Fellow, Department of Religious Studies, Colby College

Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę ÌęEvening has arrived. I am attending a poetry reading sponsored by the English Department at Colby College. Per departmental tradition, a creative writing undergraduate student introduces our guest poet. The tradition is designed to give developing writers the opportunity to exercise accountable attention—to read closely and speak responsibly in public about a set of poems, in the presence of their author, to an audience eager to extend charity toward the podium.

It is a lovely ritual, but on this night, my charity hits a snag. The student, a young woman, introduces the poet—a woman I knew to be my age, in her early 40s. With an awed smile and dramatic pause, the student punctuates her take on our guest with a simple compliment:

Ìę Her words are so
young.

ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę I am not miffed at the student. Finding salutary words for wordsmiths is difficult, and she is giving a far better introduction than I would have at her age. But it troubles me that her cultural thesaurus lists young as a synonym of good—one too obvious to warrant qualification. As is often the case at public arts events on campus, the median age of the room is no lower than 40, and it is that low only due to the introducer herself and some creative writing students sprinkled sparsely among the gray and graying hairs. I wonder how young falls on other ears; the student’s cultural thesaurus is ours, too, to some extent, so perhaps my concern is unique. Perhaps the student believes she is reversing the sometimes-patronizing references to youthfulness (for example, the first sentence of this paragraph). But it dogs me. I keep revising the line in my head, wondering over the historic guilt of associations presumed innocent: her words are so…old
new
dignified
fat
current
feminine
masculine
white.

Night rides over the day in Maine—state of extreme tides, whose population is the oldest of any in the union. State of compromise. State of first light: the Dawnland. I return to my old house that evening. I read:

The meshes of a life
at close attention
went dense; the heaved
limbs upended slowly,
the white scut half-
lifted in a lopsided
wigwag, as though
even the wildest of
surmises need be
in no great hurry.

Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę It is the final stanza of Amy Clampitt’s “Slow Motion,” in which the narrator observes a deer. The poem is not Clampitt’s best-known, but it bears her many signatures: attention, paid and paid back; line breaks, studied but unconventional; diction, a mixture of the idiomatic and scientific; adjectives, packed and plentiful; verbs, alternatingly simple and complex. It is like Maine’s tides: pressing, ardent, unrushed.

Are these young words? Amy Clampitt first published them, in book form, in The Kingfisher, in 1983. It was her first full-length poetry collection. She was 63 years old. She died ten years later, having won a MacArthur Fellowship just two years earlier. On June 15, 2020, she would have turned 100, though according to Mary Jo Salter, her friend and perhaps her best reader, no one likely would have known, as Clampitt kept her birthday a secret. Over the past few years, as my feet have followed hers, Clampitt has gently and surely insisted her way into my consciousness.

***

Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę In 2018, I began splitting my time between Maine and New York City. I was non-tenure-track faculty at Colby, filling one of those long-term visiting positions that are becoming more rule than exception in the 21^st century academy. My spouse works as the Minister of Older Adults at New York’s Riverside Church. In the contemporary job climate, we can claim with a straight face that ministry is the more stable of our two gigs, so she keeps our home base in Manhattan while I live in Waterville, Maine. About every other weekend during the school year, I commute through New England, passing back and forth across the Piscataqua River, the sidelong salutations of Maine’s border signs escorting me into and out of the state: Maine. Welcome Home. Vacationland. Worth a Visit. Worth a Lifetime.

At 40, I found myself living alone for the first time, a native Midwesterner at the far lip of the lower 48. The consequent yawning of time and space compelled me to linger at the edges of the edge; I spent my open days exploring the interior and the Downeast coast. As I had done each of my prior moves, I sought out the works of artists who had lived in my new home before me. Since knowing Vacationland, and my place in it, involved untangling its knotty, manifold terms of belonging, I was especially interested in how the seasonal residents had been set up. Nativity is off the table if you are not born in Maine, and gold-star citizenship is unlikely if you don’t live there all year. But Mainers confer degrees of residency, and as long as you keep a place in state, and your attendance is regular, your unbelonging is of a higher order than that of a mere tourist. Unlike all of those dainty summer people, I wintered in Maine, so I hoped to earn more than seasonal credit. But I was down to explore all options. It actually felt like grace, for someone who has never felt like I really belonged anywhere, to know certain types of belonging were impossible for me to earn. It opened up space for a more intimate, authentically two-way embrace between the state and me. You can’t embrace an other if there is no other. Maybe that is why Maine draws people drawn to permanent elsewheres. I sought the crossers and dwellers alike.

“As I had done each of my prior moves, I sought out the works of artists who had lived in my new home before me. Since knowing Vacationland, and my place in it, involved untangling its knotty, manifold terms of belonging…”

“It’s so hard for a Midwesterner to find out who he or she is,” Amy Clampitt wrote a friend in 1980. A self-described “poet of place” who later changed the moniker to “poet of displacement,” she was born in New Providence, Iowa, a tiny town in the center of the state, founded by Quakers in 1855. Like many poets who came of age in a Quaker orbit—most famously, the one who published his first edition of Leaves of Grass the year of New Providence’s founding—Clampitt was friendly with some of the Friends’ sensibilities: patience, deep attention, and a commitment to social justice. But Iowa was the Midwest; those cold, grey winters dim even the most luminous inner lights. When she turned to theology in letters to her brother Philip, Clampitt’s sense of sin and the need for transformation, both individual and structural, were as acute as that of any New England Calvinist. Her poem “The Dahlia Gardens,” whose occasion is the 1965 self-immolation of Quaker Norman Morrison outside the Pentagon, synthesizes with chilling clarity her theological acumen, and her awareness of the stakes of cultivating a well-wrought social spirituality. Never quite at home in any particular religious sect—she left the Episcopal Church after a brief but headfirst sojourn, citing the ostensibly progressive denomination’s sluggish response to the American war machine—she was conversant with a number of them.

Shortly after graduating from Grinnell College in 1941, Clampitt moved to New York City. Greenwich and West Village would function as much as home as anywhere for the rest of her life. After some brief, disappointing study at Columbia University, she worked for years at the Oxford University Press and the Audubon Society. Although her satisfaction at both positions ebbed and flowed, the Press gave her polymathic instincts a venue, and the Society gave her an outlet for her specific interest in birds (and in the eccentric people who claimed to be their best observers). All the while, she wrote and tirelessly reworked two novels, neither of which would ever find a publisher. It is heartrending to track her relationship with those works across the decades, through her letters, given the outcome. But Clampitt’s persistent re-visioning of her craft—and, necessarily, of herself—would produce Clampitt the late poet. The letters evince the vocational woodshedding essential to any serious cultivation of artistry. The fruit is unpredictable in substance, but not in essence.

In the late 1960s, Clampitt met Columbia law professor Harold Korn. Amy and “Hal” did not marry until the final months of Clampitt’s life, but they were lifelong companions, and by all accounts had a mutually-fulfilling partnership from the outset. In the mid-1970s, the two began spending their summers in Corea, Maine, a village on the Schoodic Peninsula, east of Mount Desert Island. For two decades, Corea would be her home for the warm months.

The natural variety of the Schoodic was certain to attract a person so roundly attentive as Clampitt, and her love of the place is on full display in both her poems and letters. I wish, though, I had access to her very first impressions. To witness people like Clampitt making their first landings is like being present for a star’s birth: the colliding of energies transfers epiphany to all bystanders, verges on fatal.

I wonder if she, like me, sought precedents. Marsden Hartley, who had Midwestern and New York connections, lived in Corea late in life, using the tower of the town’s Baptist church as his painting studio. Louise Dickinson Rich was Clampitt’s closest literary predecessor in the area. More self-consciously regionalist than Clampitt, Rich lived in Corea for a while and wrote extensively and lovingly about the Schoodic Peninsula. She receives one of the two dedicatory epigraphs to Clampitt’s famous long poem, “What the Light Was Like,” and may have been the reason Clampitt became apprised of Corea. It is easy for me to imagine Clampitt—the Iowan-New Yorker-Mainer, the rejected novelist, the poet keeping watch over nature at the cracking fringe of the Anthropocene before many of her literary contemporaries would realize the radical import of “mere” nature poetry—enthusiastically scribbling down lines from Rich’s 1958 The Peninsula: “We are overcome by a sense of being alien, of not belonging in the world in which we find ourselves, of being out of step with the times and out of sympathy with the attitudes that we encounter.”

***

Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę Situated east of the most frequented portion of Acadia National Park, the Schoodic Peninsula remains relatively quiet all year. It has its summer people—more than when either Rich or Clampitt lived there—but Mount Desert Island constitutes the littoral terminus for most vacationers. Like all of Maine’s lobster villages, Corea is experiencing the effects of a warming ocean, of partially-committed money from the lower latitudes, of the disappearance of a generation who knew the place before either phenomenon became discernible. But the traps are still stacked by the hundreds along the roads, the lobster boats pack the harbor, and residents will tell you the place has stood resilient against some of the most regressive iterations of progress.

In early December 2019, I drove to Corea after having spent a weekend on Mount Desert. It was not my first trip to the village, but it was my first in the snowy season. Winter is my favorite time to visit the region, when the snow streaks the rocky coasts, the spruces bridge the year’s bluest skies and waters, and the place abounds with the silence of ordinary time.

“Winter is my favorite time to visit the region, when the snow streaks the rocky coasts, the spruces bridge the year’s bluest skies and waters, and the place abounds with the silence of ordinary time…”

I turned off U.S. Highway 1, onto the undulating road that led into the peninsula, blown toward the land’s bow by the bluster of New England sports radio. I typically avoided such programming (why break the silence?), but I had chanced upon a segment discussing Dwight Evans, the Red Sox outfielder who recently had barely missed election to the Hall of Fame. One of my favorite baseball rants concerns the underappreciation of Evans due to his late career bloom. Evans became a better player in his 30s—upper-middle age, by professional baseball standards—and the national pastime, like the ageist national culture, does not know what to do with late bloomers. It was gratifying to listen to Evans’s nonrhotic defenders (“he had more ah-B-I’s than Cahlton Fisk!”), on my way to the summer home of the woman whom Willard Spiegelman called “America’s oldest young poet.”

I was headed for Gouldsboro, the Peninsula’s major population center, at 1,700 people, to visit the town’s library. I hoped they might possess some region-specific materials on Clampitt, or even better, that some of the staff may have known Amy and Hal. It was called the Dorcas Library: a good omen. According to the New Testament, Dorcas was a prominent older woman in the early church—an artist of great charity, who fashioned clothing for the widows of her community.

In this late American moment, it is easy to despair of the American project. A caring, cared-for public library works like a vitamin shot to the body’s hope centers. When I entered the little building, I was struck by the liveliness. While few people were present, everywhere were signs of activities: a poetry writing group, a Shakespeare reading group, a youth gaming group, a program for delivering books to the homebound. Looking out onto Prospect Harbor on that snow-fringed, sunny winter day, the library’s main reading room rivaled any space in which I have worked in its spare beauty. To be sure, money was tight, as evidenced by the signage soliciting donations. Dorcas was like everything out here, like every jut of democratic earth: hearty and fragile.

“In this late American moment, it is easy to despair of the American project. A caring, cared-for public library works like a vitamin shot to the body’s hope centers…”

Dorcas was curated mostly by older women. Faith, the library director, possessed the concise, staid helpfulness I had come to love from Mainers; it resembled the southern Missouri where I grew up, only it was not seared with mock Confederate cheeriness. Faith plucked several Clampitt volumes off the Dorcas shelves for me—a surprising highlight being a signed copy of The Kingfisher—and welcomed me to work in the reading room. I found out later that silver-haired Faith and her husband were planning to hike the Appalachian Trail in 2020 to raise money for the library. Of course, I did not learn this from Faith.

People trickled in and out, and before I knew it, my project had become communal. Martha, a volunteer who was old enough to have some vague memory of Clampitt in Corea, thumbed through phone books and her own memory, brainstorming with Faith the names of area people who might be willing and able to speak to me about those days. Martha was the first of many residents whose eyes lit up when she spoke of “What the Light Was Like.” She knew the poem before I mentioned it. She also knew the family of Ernest Woodward, the second of the poem’s dedications. Woodward was a Corea fisherman and Clampitt’s neighbor, and his death just off the coast was the occasion of “What the Light Was Like.” The verses exhibit Clampitt’s capacity to bear “elegaic witness,” to borrow a phrase from Susan Snively—chronicling the region’s tricky luminosity; the aids to navigation, natural and human-made; and the full-bodied particularity of a man who, like Clampitt, kept faithful watch. Woodward and Clampitt possessed their own special vision, but it seemed to me that every dweller on the Peninsula exercised integrating vigilance. Martha knew much. I left Dorcas with more resources.

Not all older women are the unacknowledged ministers of the world, but I am increasingly certain the world’s unacknowledged ministers are older women. Thanks to Martha, I later met Donna and Peg. Donna was another Midwesterner who had found her way to Maine. Born in Kansas, she had spent years as a licensed nurse practitioner, providing health care to marginal and compromised populations—some in the remote regions of eastern Kentucky. Her partner Peg was a gregarious West Coast academic whom I realized incidentally over conversation was one of the reasons the contemporary American academy has robust women’s and gender studies programs. Donna had moved to the Peninsula in 1977, just a short time after Amy and Hal began summering there (“but I don’t count as a native”). Peg arrived many years later.

“Not all older women are the unacknowledged ministers of the world, but I am increasingly certain the world’s unacknowledged ministers are older women…”

When Donna talked of Corea, the light in her blue eyes was like the Downeast winter sky: widely reflective, generously radiant. She spoke of the trees, the animals, the people, as neighbors. Donna and Peg had a formidable collection of books on Maine history and culture, but I was more drawn to the breadth of genre and subject matter represented on their many shelves. They were wholly inquisitive about their whole world—the sort of women for whom disciplinary parameters were but useful organizational tools in their sizable archive. Entering their orbit fortified every precinct of my person.

“I’d describe her as a coiled spring,” Donna told me, half-chuckling, remembering her encounters with Clampitt. Amy and Hal lived on Corea’s Youngs Point, a peninsula on the Peninsula. There was one route into the village center, where the post office was located. Donna lived on that route. Walking to retrieve one’s mail has functioned as a daily social rite in Corea for a long time, which meant Clampitt—who sent and received much correspondence, especially as her poetry career blossomed—regularly walked past Donna’s house, and they saw each other frequently. They did not talk much, but they were both Midwesterners, so they were adept at passing pleasantries. They also were kindred in their sensitivities to the life and motion of the place. Donna fondly remembers Amy inquiring about the flowers in her yard, noting new appearances and bloomings. And, of course, there was the wild, diurnal dance of atmosphere and ocean to discuss. Mainers are the only people I have met who could talk Midwesterners under the table concerning the weather. Midwesterners in Maine, the crash site of the continent’s every passing system, become walking almanacs.

It was a crisp, sunny January day, just above freezing, and we walked out to Amy’s old place. The last portion of the road was a stew of ice and mud. The house was square and stout—the standard Maine frame for dwellings and dwellers—not one hundred feet from the water. You can see several islands at high tide. At low tide, tidepools abound on the rocks, and the congregation of islands nearly becomes a single piece of land—another peninsula, in fact, since you can walk to the nearest across a sand bar. The near island is Outer Bar, the site of Clampitt’s poem of the same name. The first two stanzas:

When through some lacuna, chink, or interstice
in the unlicensed free-for-all that goes
on without a halt out there all day, all night,
all through the winter,

one morning at low tide you walk dry-shod across
a shadow isthmus to the outer bar,
you find yourself, once over, sinking at every step
into a luscious mess—

Too wild and scruffy with sea matter to be “calm,” Clampitt’s corner of Maine was somehow still a place of peace, provided you accepted the sloppy terms of welcome. Amy did. Donna seemed to as well; as we wandered on the rocks, she wistfully noted the sonic interplay of waves and wind. Could anything rattle a woman born in tornado country?

“Could anything rattle a woman born in tornado country?”

I imagined Amy keeping watch out here, as her access points appeared and vanished by the hour. I imagine her waiting, then bounding to the bar, so as not to sink all the way. Like a coiled spring.

***

Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę Donna’s memories of Amy square with other testimonies, and with the impression I gleaned from her writing—always moving, but possessed of a soul stillness that gathers then translates the witness of the trees and the hills. It is a prophetic synthesis—the wait, the watch, the silence poised to pass into proclamation. Did Amy’s various homes grant her this disposition, or was she already this way?

As with all New Yorkers who make their way to remote New England during the summer, it is tempting to say that Maine provided Clampitt a solitude and a connection with nature that New York could not, and the city provided opportunities and intercourse with a diverse multitude—”culture,” in a word. That is true as far as it goes; no one of Clampitt’s means keeps two properties out of love of redundancy. But her writing testifies to a woman attendant to the full ecologies of both places. While her Maine poems demonstrate her fascination with meteorology, botany, and ornithology, they include quite a number of humans. Letters from and about Corea catalogue the activity of tides and people alike, and they are saturated with solicitation for visitors. She knew New York was flush with nature and culture, and she marked it all, from surprising urban tumbleweed to barely-perceptible water seepages in Times Square stairwells. In her letters about city life, she is as likely to wax Thoreauvian about the flora, the fauna, the crackle of ice on the Central Park Reservoir, as she is to describe a Broadway show or social gathering. Her description to Philip of the mystic experience she had in the mid-1950s, at the Cloisters in upper Manhattan, places her in the visionary company of Hart Crane, Alfred Corn, and Walt Whitman—poets of the New York ecstasy, private and populous. As with all seers, her vision fell unbroken on what was barely there.

A poet of the world’s motions must master stillness. This means not simply knowing how to be at rest, but also knowing when to vault out of one’s mark—when to be coiled, and when to spring. Maine and Manhattan are both regions of relative, wildly-converging velocities: profound tidal shifts, shifty corporations of clouds, multitudes containing specimens whose pacing constitutes, but is only partly explained by, the tempo of the whole. To get the full sense of both requires sometimes stopping to let it all whiz by, sometimes running with a pacing partner, tracking a watermark, sometimes skipping across the city blocks and the tidepools, each a universe with its own velocities. It requires competence enough to navigate the everyday uncanniness of these places; only true artists can chart them.

***

ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę The self-described poet of displacement was herself a displaced poet, through a combination of circumstance and choice. By most metrics, Clampitt did not have the luxury of a single, “true” home. But given her homelessness, she had made prudent arrangements. Maine and New York City are places of, by, and for the displaced. That is not all they are, nor are they destined to remain that way. Paradoxically, the quality of their hospitality, and of those they welcome, is in direct proportion to the piety paid to their older populations. Lose the latter, lose it all. It is a precarious situation; Americans have a bad record of honoring elders and natives.

It is 2020. I revisit the student’s introduction, trying on another synonym:

Ìę Her words are so
urgent.

Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę Ìę ÌęI could go with that one. Given the quantity and quality of the problems we face one hundred years after Clampitt’s birth, this feels like a time when we need urgency expressed in art. I also understand the urgency of the artistic vocation itself. In the mad scramble of social media branding and influencer culture, the spoils seem to go to the person with the best hustle. Get while the getting is good: think, write, and publish (are they the same?) at the frenetic, character-per-second tempo of a live feed—the tempo, we are told, of the young. Otherwise, someone else will say it better, louder, faster. It is the old irony of the American ethic of scarcity: during those epochs when the technocrats claim to have liberated us from the limitations of time and space, we operate as if there is no time, no space—no outlet, not a moment to spare, no sanctuary.

“Given the quantity and quality of the problems we face one hundred years after Clampitt’s birth, this feels like a time when we need urgency expressed in art…”

It is tremendously difficult to keep these forms of urgency separate, but their entanglement causes us major problems. Patience is not always a virtue, but ultimately patience may be all we have to navigate these waters, for the simple fact that time is not ours. All we have is the watch, the charting of every migratory pattern, including our own. When Clampitt describes Ernest Woodward’s vigilance for the hummingbird in “What the Light Was Like,” she is both the lobsterman and the seasonal bird, the crosser and the dweller: “He kept an eye out // for it, we learned one evening, as for everything that flapped / or hopped or hovered / crepuscular under the firs [
]: ”

I am looking at a picture of Amy Clampitt. It is 1942. She would have been fresh out of Grinnell, about the age of the undergraduate at the poetry reading. She is seated in Riverside Park in New York—judging by the buildings behind her, just a few blocks from my city apartment. In most of her photos she has a gleeful, wide-eyed grin, but this young Clampitt—seated, arms across her knees—looks a little troubled as she gazes down a grassy hill. She is looking away from Columbia, toward the Hudson, back toward Iowa. This young woman has gone east. As she ages will proceed eastward, slowly, against the American current, with the motions of the clouds, toward the dawnland.

Ryan Harper is a faculty fellow in Colby College’s Department of Religious Studies, where he teaches courses on American spirituality, the arts, and the environment.Ìę He is the author of The Gaithers and Southern Gospel: Homecoming in the Twenty First Century (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) and My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry (Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018).Ìę Some of his recent poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, LETTERS, Jelly Bucket, La Presa, Cimarron Review, Chattahoochee Review, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere.

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Wildfires in Australia. Floods in Idaho. Spindly corpses of polar bears in the arctic and whole hives of small dead bumble bees.

The effects of climate change are local and global; discouraging and infuriating. They are also overwhelming.

“You don’t have a sustainability coordinator built into your life,” said Johannah Blackman, a founding member of the Mount Desert Island (MDI) nonprofit A Climate To Thrive (ACTT).

“You get up, you feed your kids breakfast, you go to work, you come home, you eat dinner, you’re exhausted. You don’t have time to be researching ‘How can I make my home more efficient? How can I afford solar panels? How can I afford an electric vehicle?’ For someone to come in and offer the opportunity to implement solutions and a toolkit of sorts,” said Blackman, “People are psyched.”

Blackman has been involved in climate activism for more than a decade. Much of that early work was focused on marches and protests, which she still wholeheartedly endorses (“We absolutely need national and international systemic change”) but in 2015, pregnant with her first child and living on MDI, “I really wanted to start actually making solutions happen on the ground. I wanted to be able to look at my kids and say I did everything I could.”

The group that became ACTT began as the MDI Climate Solutions Group, “Because we wanted to focus on implementing solutions,” said Blackman.

And so they have. With a goal of making MDI energy independent within the next decade, ACTT has racked up a number of successes: solar panels on the high school (the largest array on a public school anywhere in the state), new electric vehicle charging stations around Hancock and Washington counties, increasing solar on MDI by 450%, pledges from local businesses to replace single-use plastics and polystyrene containers, and a lot of involvement from local students, including a thriving intern program. The list (which is extensive) can be found on the group’s website, .

“We wanted it to be an ambitious goal,” said Blackman. Translating ambitious goals into action, she conceded, “Is difficult for national and international bodies. But it’s a lot easier at the local level.”

So how did they do it?

By involving as many community members as possible, by staying focused on solutions, and by listening: to experts, to local officials, to school board members and teachers. And, of course, to their neighbors.

The group began in the summer of 2015 with monthly potlucks for anyone who wanted to come. The idea was to start a conversation, “to get people together to talk about what we could do and how people were feeling.”

Organizers, including Blackman and her husband Dennis Kiley, along with residents John Craigo and Gary and Glennon Friedmann, who first began discussing the plans, pooled their contact lists and invited everyone they knew.

“Most of the people that we’ve approached have been so eager to find solutions and to have the opportunity to think about climate change in a hopeful way,” said Blackman. “They’re just overwhelmed in their daily lives.”

“Most of the people that we’ve approached have been so eager to find solutions and to have the opportunity to think about climate change in a hopeful way”

As the group continued meeting, focus areas began to emerge: alternative energy, zero waste, building efficiency, transportation, food systems and public policy.

“We wanted to bring the community together as early as possible around this so that the whole island would own the project,” said Blackman. “It was really important very early on that we had a public event that anybody could come to.”

On a Sunday afternoon in January 2016 they did just that: instead of watching the Denver Broncos beat the Patriots in the American Football Conference championships, more than 200 residents gathered at the Neighborhood House in Northeast Harbor to talk about what they and their communities were going to do about climate change. Venu Rao, the day’s keynote speaker, gave a speech on Hollis, N.H., a largely conservative town that’s become a leader in energy efficiency.

“Our message is — we’re not trying to save the world,” Rao told the group, to a Maine Public Radio report. “We’re trying to save the money and we’re also appealing to them that we need to live sustainably, that you don’t have to be conservative or Democrat to do that, you know?”

After the speech, residents broke into groups based on the six focus areas. They could join any area that grabbed their interest. Each table had a scribe, a moderator and an expert on the topic.

“We opened it up to talk about possible projects in each focus area,” said Blackman. “It’s so wonderful to have a large group because you have people with expertise and knowledge and talent in different areas, people who show up with different strengths.”

The launch not only gave ACTT visibility and allowed them to hear what kinds of projects their neighbors thought were important, it also gave them emails, and lots of them.

“We left each of those breakout sessions with an email list of people who were interested in that particular area and some key plans and connections to start with and we followed that up with monthly meetings with each of those committees,” said Blackman.

The committee structure lasted “about a year and a half,” she said, until “It just became evident that we had enough projects going at that point.” They wanted to make sure that good ideas, said Blackman, didn’t “get bogged down in just the planning phase.”

In the meantime, the organization’s structure began to formalize: they brought on a board, applied for nonprofit status and hired their first staff member.

“When you start as a grassroots organization and you keep going and become this project-focused, much more organized effort, you have to go through this metamorphism process,” said Blackman, “shifting from that grassroots energy of ‘go get em’ to ‘okay, how do we go get em?’ and putting structure in place.”

“When you start as a grassroots organization and you keep going and become this project-focused, much more organized effort, you have to go through this metamorphism process, shifting from that grassroots energy of ‘go get em’ to ‘okay, how do we go get em?’”

The members on ACTT’s board, said Blackman, have been key to that. “We made sure to bring people onto our board that had lots of experience in nonprofit organizations,” which helped the group envision what its structure might look like.

“We have a really good balance of people involved who have that entrepreneurial whatever it takes spirit, and people who are like ‘Okay, but we also need to really think about this,’” said Blackman. “Having that balance of energies and making sure those energies are communicating well is really key.”

The group also made a conscious choice not to spend much energy trying to convince residents that climate change is happening.

That was in part, said Blackman, because “It’s becoming more and more self-evident — the world is unfortunately doing that work for us. And the people who are really resisting that, we’re not going to convince them.”

Instead, they put their energy into listening, as non-judgmentally as possible.

“What we have tried to do is really be conscious of how we’re talking about this challenge to different people,” said Blackman.

“What really drew us in was not only how dedicated ACTT is to these issues, but how accessible they are trying to make it for everyone in the community,” said Nicole Cuff, co-owner of Sweet Pea’s Cafe.

“It’s extremely important to be as inclusive and reinforcing as possible when dealing with such a wide spectrum of businesses. The last thing anyone needs is to feel inadequate or too far behind the curve to get involved, and ACTT does an incredible job making the information and process attainable.”

“There are so many different reasons why people care,” said Blackman. Fishermen may be worried about their livelihood moving to colder waters; businesses might be worried about what climate change will cost them.

ACTT’s members, said Blackman, “Are really trying to think about what those reasons are and adjusting accordingly.”

ACTT, said Stacey Gatcomb, who manages The Looking Glass Restaurant, “has helped to make the sustainability pledge easier to achieve and maintain by listening to local businesses’ struggles in pursuing sustainability and working to find a solution.”

The group has helped the restaurant find sustainable options for dealing with food waste, energy audits and sustainable products, said Gatcomb, “and makes that information easily accessible.”

The Looking Glass is one of the 85 local food and lodging businesses that have taken ACTT’s “Sustainability Pledge,” in which businesses agree to opt for things like more sustainable food containers, using reusable containers for sit-down customers, and putting in water refill stations instead of providing bottled water.

85 local food and lodging businesses have taken ACTT’s “Sustainability Pledge”

“The sustainability pledge has encouraged us to push ourselves on this front and be an example not only in our community, but also a leader in our corporate family (Lafayette Hotels),” said Gatcomb.

“What drew me into the way ACTT is approaching problems is their focus on the end result, the empathy and trying to find solutions, and their support for businesses. ACTT touches the entire community,” said Gatcomb, “and I love the youth involvement.”

The restaurant was already looking to become more sustainable, said Gatcomb, but “Each year we are able to do more because of the work ACTT has done. Options that have not been possible in the past are now available because of the collective desire for a better product.”

That push for better products and spillover to other communities is something ACTT’s leaders have long been hoping for.

“It’s always been the hope that this would be an inspiration for others,” said Blackman, “Which is why we’re putting resources into spreading this model to other communities.” Work at the local level is vital and necessary, said Blackman, “But if just MDI does this, we’re screwed.”

“It’s always been the hope that this would be an inspiration for others, which is why we’re putting resources into spreading this model to other communities.”

That’s part of the plan for the group’s next phase, the Climate Resilience Partnership (CRP).

“It takes the experience that we’ve gained over the past four years and formalizes it into an island-wide initiative, which is what we’ve always wanted to do,” said Blackman. The partnership, in turn, will be shared with other communities.

Since ACTT began, “we’ve jumped at every low-hanging fruit that’s presented itself,” she continued. “Anywhere that we’ve perceived interest, we’ve cultivated it, we’ve gone in and acted as a catalyst to make projects happen.” That’s been helpful in understanding what the community needs and building relationships with schools, businesses, residents and local governments.

And hopefully it will help them take it a step further.

The group recently started in on round one of the CRP, in which ACTT members are approaching community groups, businesses, organizations, schools and towns and “working with each partner to develop their own plan for energy optimization, renewable energy and sustainable resource management,” said Blackman. That means understanding “How they manage their waste, what kind of products they’re using, are they composting?” ACTT is holding information-gathering meetings, said Blackman, and will then work with each partner on a sustainability plan.

“Where we listen to them, talk about what goals might look like for them, what incentives they hold, what challenges they might be facing that we’re not aware of — because we have no idea of how an entity like the local hospital works,” for instance.

Once the group has a better idea of each member’s needs, said Blackman, they will draw up a “first look” at options to make their work more sustainable and give them resources to support the plan.

“This project is our key project for the next few years,” said Blackman. “At the same time we’re documenting the process. We’re getting a lot of requests from other communities, so we’re going to formalize the process of delivering that toolkit, whether it’s through consultation or workshops.”

The nonprofit continues to grow, said Blackman, and offers a model for other communities. But it remains focused on solutions aimed at mitigating the very real impacts of climate change close to home: warmer, shorter winters and wetter springs, the flooding of low-lying roads during storm surges, increasingly unpredictable growing seasons, the lobsters moving increasingly northward to colder waters. As the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould noted, “We will not fight to save what we do not love.”

“We’re more focusing on what is happening to us on a day-to-day level and what might the future look like in the areas we care most about,” said Blackman. “What are some of the things that might mitigate that?”

For more information, or to get involved with Mount Desert Island’s A Climate to Thrive, visit . For resources on how to start a climate action group in your own town, visit their “Climate Action Starter Kit” at

Kaitlin Cough is a writer and photographer at The Ellsworth American.

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