Collaboration with diverse team members and stakeholders can sometimes result in disagreements or contention, as was the experience of the New England Climate Adaptation Project, a regional initiative involving the four New England reserves. 

Resolving Conflict

The project’s goal was to design and test role-play simulations for four New England communities that faced a specific climate risk. Originally, the team assumed that the role-play simulation for the community of Barnstable, Massachusetts, should focus on wastewater. However, the team learned from local partners that the issue was so politically fraught that making it the foundation of the simulation would detract from the  goal, which was to prepare communities to take action on climate change adaptation.