The School of Marine & Environmental Affairs will hold its next faculty meeting on Thursday, March 2, 12:00pm. Please see below for location details;
Fishery Sciences Building, Room 207
or via Zoom https://washington.zoom.us/j/9175532830 
A copy of the meeting agenda can be found here. Please contact Michaela Miller (mcski@uw.edu) with any questions or for more information. 

SMEA faculty Nives Dolšak and Dr. Eduardo Gallo Cajiao, a David H. Smith Postdoctoral Fellow at SMEA, along with a team of  scholars from Europe, Australia, Asia, and North America, discuss complex challenges for the governance of biodiversity resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Specifically, they examine three interacting factors: (1) the isolation of Russia from the international system, (ii) the delay of international cooperation, and (iii) changes in international and domestic policy priorities. 

Professor Nives Dolšak and coauthors examined whether endorsing climate policies, such as the Green New Deal, brings electoral payoffs. After publishing an academic paper in PLOS Climate, which was listed among the journal highlights of 2022, they wrote a shorter article for the Washington Post accessible to the public. Now, their work has been listed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her official House website. 

SMEA Professor of Practice Yoshi Ota and Ocean Nexus’s international report was highlighted in a recent UW News article. The report titled, “Towards an Equitable Approach to Marine Plastics Pollution” presents how marine pollution impacts the human population and promotes an equity-focus to addressing this issue. The report features topics from COVID-19 to Coca-Cola. You can read the complete article by Hannah Hickey here. 

SMEA faculty continue to contribute to the scholarship of marine and environmental affairs. In 2022, we published two books and over 30 articles in prestigious environmental, marine, and interdisciplinary journals. Many of these were co-authored with our students and our postdoctoral scholars. Below is a collection of these works. Faculty names are in bold; names of students and postdoctoral scholars trained by our faculty are underlined. 

 
SMEA Professor Terrie Klinger and SMEA Affiliate Professor Jan Newton, were recently featured in a UW Today article titled Fighting ocean acidification, one oyster at a time. The article discusses the impacts of ocean acidification on the shellfish industry and how the industry has adapted after scientists, shellfish growers and other partners collaborated and came up with tools to manage corrosive water. 

In Washington state, thousands of barrier culverts block salmon from accessing critical upstream habitat, violating tribal treaty rights and hindering efforts to rebuild populations of this iconic species. These barrier culverts are owned by a large number of entities including federal agencies, the state, counties, cities, and private landowners.
Each of these entities is independently ramping up efforts to correct barrier culverts and, in the next decade, billions of dollars will be devoted to fish passage restoration projects in the state. 

Molly Daly, SMEA second-year student, Dr. Eduardo Gallo-Cajiao, a Smith Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at SMEA, and Nives Dolšak, SMEA faculty, presented their research at the 2022 Annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Political Science Association in Walla Walla. Molly presented preliminary findings of the project entitled “Evaluation of Multi-level Governance of Shorebird Management and Conservation in Puget Sound,” a capstone project with Elley Donnelly, SMEA second-year student, Drs. 

As the world gears up for COP27, it is vital to understand what progress countries have made to reach the Paris goals. A large number of countries have announced net-zero emission pledges (NZEP). Inhwan Ko, Nives Dolšak, and Aseem Prakash analyze these pledges in their paper published in PLOS Climate [journals.plos.org]. The credibility of NZEP varies because countries have committed to different target years. 

SMEA Professor of Practice Dr. Yoshitaka Ota along with his colleagues at Ocean Nexus Center have authored an article published in PLOS Biology. The article, “Finding logic models for sustainable marine development that deliver on social equity,” covers how sustainable ocean development and equity beyond the current goals of 2030. Below is a brief summary of the article provided by SMEA alum Leah Huff, who now works with Dr.