What are the Objectives of ECC?

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Our principal objective is to help communities deal with the threats of climate change. The exact nature of the threats are going to vary from region to region. The first step to determine the nature and possible severity of the threat is to understand how the community functions in its current situation. 

To accomplish this, we have to conduct data collection on the social structures of communities. The social structure of the community is partially a result of the physical environment it occupies so it is important for our research to collect all the information we can on both elements. We will in essence have 2 principal data collections groups: one that collects data on the physical environment, and the other collecting data on the social structures of communities. 

 The physical environment consists of the following parts:

The actual layout of the community; the housing, workshops, community buildings, sacred or

special spaces like cemeteries and parks and gathering areas;

The economic parts of the community – fishing grounds or farming or herders plots, gardens

or orchards what the community uses to support itself;

The physical environment also obviously includes the layout of the land is it a coastal region,

or in a river valley or a forest, etc.

 To collect the data we need, we require a variety of equipment some of that follows:

cameras; video; airborne lidar and photography, lidar scanners from drones, ground based

mobile and terrestrial; sonar, side scan or scanning; ground penetrating radar; drills for coring

for geological samples; and that needed to take soil and vegetation samples; just to name a

few. Which ones to use  is determined by the particular requirements for each project.

There is not one piece listed above that takes priority over the others. We use what we

need to be able to formulate a complete understanding of the physical environment.

 Collecting information on the social structure of the community would largely be done using interviews

and observations of the interaction of members with each other and the interactions of

members with the physical environment. At this initial stage we would trying to build a base

line understanding of how the community functions within its current situation. This

understanding and documentation would include the political structure of how the community

rules itself; the class structure and how the society deals with people with disabilities, family

relations; the living situation; is it single family housing or extended family and who owns the

houses; the importance of religion; the economic structure. We envision collecting 

enough information to be able to make assessments on how this community functions inside

of its current environment. Part of our research and data collection on the social structure of

the community is the history. How and when it got to where it is. How it has responded to

changes in the physical environment and contact with outside groups. To fully understand the

history will require investigating the prehistory and to understand that we will need to do some

archaeological investigations.

Compiling both sets of data that arise from the physical and the social will give us necessary information that can be used to document a part of human history to preserve a part of human history before it gets

altered from climate change. But the most important part of our work will be to try and help

give communities options on how to survive the coming changes in climate. To do this, we

will need to access the research being done on the potential threats in the region of the

community. We will use that research to sit down with the leaders and the members of the

community and explain the potential threats and what those threats could mean for the 

community. Likely options for the community will be staying or migrating. Either choice could require massive changes in social structures. Staying in place may mean redoing physical structures like housing to withstand the changes in weather. An economic base might lend itself to altering due to those

projected changes. For example, communities may choose to learn new techniques in farming or fishing etc. To deal with these threats and the required changes, communities may be faced with questions about how their social structures might evolve, as well. Housing situations, social gatherings, relations to neighboring groups all could be altered. If the community is faced with a decision of whether to move, then the solution would require finding a place and could require doing a complete set of data collection for those potential areas. We aim to seek data that helps transition of the migrating group into the new region. 

The final product of our efforts will be a publication that pulls together all of the data into a

coherent package that chronicles the history of the community, the structure of the community

and what the community will have to do to survive. We will be able to give the community

things like collection of photos and videos to document its home and history, but our

publication has to be done to explain how the community functions in its current situation and

what changes must occur for the community to survive the coming changes in climate. This

publication will serve not just to the community but will be a part of understanding the

developing threats from climate change. Our efforts will be a part of developing techniques

and protocols on how to deal with the coming changes in climate.

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