[MB advising: This course does not meet any major or minor requirements for Marine Biology, but could be taken for electives or area of knowledge requirements.]

SMEA 103A/ENVIR 103A/JSIS B 103A Society and the Oceans

Professor Patrick Christie

Spring 2022

Today the oceans have become the ultimate proving ground of whether humans are capable of achieving a sustainable relationship with a planet showing increasing signs of stress. Human populations are burgeoning in coastal areas worldwide, with increasing affluence and increasing impoverishment each in its own way contributing to coastal resource degradation. Scientific studies reveal how the actions of such disparate groups as property owners along Puget Sound’s shores or fishers in the Philippines contribute to marine environmental degradation. We can ask, therefore, as we will through this course: Why is it that we behave in ways that lead to the destruction of the things we love and depend on? What does it take to get us to change our ways? How are Coast Salish people leading the way toward sustainability locally?

In SMEA 103A/ENVIR 103A/JSIS B 103A Society and the Oceans students learn how human values, institutions, cultures, and history shape environmental issues and policy responses in the Pacific Northwest and the tropics.

This course counts toward UW Individual and Society (I&S), Natural World (NW) and Diversity (DIV) credit requirements.

Professor Patrick Christie has worked around the world on this these issues and is jointly appointed in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and Jackson School of International Studies (https://smea.uw.edu/faculty/patrick-christie/). “Patrick Christie is interested in justice and sustainability, in that order. Sustainability without justice is regressive and untenable. He happens to work at the interface of oceans and coastal communities, but also works in other environments.”