Coasts, Watersheds, and Justice
Discussing issues at the intersections of marine science, ecosystem restoration, and environmental justice.
Back in 2019 I took a class on the Ecology of Infectious Marine Disease, and now, over four years later, a research paper that I was involved in as part of that class is finally out!
I’ll talk a little more about the paper and the background behind it in my Marine Science blog, but for now I just wanted to celebrate this milestone on my “main” blog. Oh and here’s a group picture from that class way back in 2019! :)
Where you live, your income, race, or language ability should not determine how healthy and safe you are. But in our communities, health and well-being varies significantly according to who you are and where you live. People across Washington State who are suffering worst from pollution are often people with lower incomes, communities of color, Indigenous peoples, and linguistically isolated folks, and they pay with their well-being and shortened lives.
In 2021, after years of hard work and dedicated community mobilization, Front and Centered was able to celebrate the passage and signing of Senate Bill 5141: the Healthy Environment for All (HEAL) Act, a landmark environmental justice law. But it’s 2023 now: what’s happened since the bill was signed? 2023 is a critical year for the HEAL Act, with the law’s requirements to assess significant agency actions as well as budgets and spending coming into effect. The legislature will also determine what funding is available to communities and agencies.
In their first community progress report, Front and Centered assesses implementation of the HEAL Act midway through its first cycle of requirements and recommends how to realize the full potential from a non-governmental, community-based perspective, based on their observations, conversations, and participation:
As the person handling the final rounds of editing and copyediting on this report over the last six weeks, I’m really proud of how this publication turned out, and I hope you check it out!
Recently, a friend of mine messaged me to chat and share their feelings of hopelessness and helplessness in the face of environmental disasters and geopolitical crises. I did my best to cheer them up, primarily by talking about how I found hope in taking action, whether it’s by participating in environmental restoration or community organizing. But ultimately, I left the conversation feeling like I did a poor job of instilling any optimism.
Soon after that I watched this lecture by Dr. Kyle Whyte on Indigenous approaches to environmental justice and I really appreciated what he had to say on the matter. It’s a great talk that deserves to be heard by anyone interested in advancing environmental justice and confronting climate change.
During the Q&A session, Dr. Whyte addresses the idea of having hope in the face of environmental crisis. To paraphrase him very roughly: Hope isn’t useful if it disconnects you from the material reality we are dealing with—obviously, you can’t look at the world as it is and have “hope.” But hope isn’t what actually matters—it’s acting upon our responsibilities and repairing kinship that matters. (Crucially, kinship as he describes it is a far more universal concept and doesn’t just refer to bonds within a Western-style nuclear family.) Again, paraphrasing very roughly here, but: “Get rid of hope. Why aren’t we motivated by paying attention to responsibility and kinship in everything we do?”
To illustrate this further, Dr. Whyte points out that a truly just approach to tackling climate change (for example) wouldn’t be to merely draw down carbon drastically without much consideration of the inequities that such a massive undertaking would perpetrate. A truly sustainable and just approach would focus on repairing consent, and repairing broken relationships—and Dr. Whyte emphasizes that once one realizes this, one will also come to realize that under a just approach, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels probably can’t be drawn down as quickly as one might want or “hope” for.
As someone who finds motivation in action, I felt quite “at home” with Dr. Whyte’s views on hope, and why it’s not a useful framework for understanding or reacting to what is happening in the world. Doing what you can in all aspects of your life to fulfill your responsibilities and promote stronger kinship is what’s more important, and when you approach life through that lens, you’ll begin to understand why.
Here are some articles I’ve been reading that relate to some the themes of Dr. Whyte’s talk:
Why Environmental Justice Is Crucial in Climate Resilience: Just Look at New Sea Level Rise Predictions — An article from February by KQED, on the inequitable impacts of climate change induced sea level rise in the Bay Area.
“The Stars Have Moved”: How Climate Change is Impacting the Planet at Multiple Scales — This recent piece from the University of Washington’s College of the Environment talks about how an Iñupiaq community in Alaska, in collaboration with Dr. Griffin (Griff) and others, worked to answer the question of whether or not climate change has altered the position of stars in the night sky—spoiler alert: it has, and it’s due to how large-scale ice melt has drastically changed the Earth’s water distribution to the point that the way the planet wobbles on its axis has been altered. Griff is one of my favorite professors from my time as a student so I’m always glad to see what he‘s up to and to see the work and the knowledge of Indigenous communities recognized.
By the way, Inuit knowledge holders have been talking about the changes in the position of the sun and other stars for years—since at least 2010!—and were initially not taken seriously. You can learn more about this in Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, a 2010 documentary by Ian J. Mauro.
19 April 2021 — Collecting sand dollars from a university-owned site for a class. (Photo: James Lee)
Here’s a quick roundup of articles I’ve read recently and that I’ve found interesting:
Saving California’s Kelp Forests from “Zombie” Urchins — A very visual, “scrollytelling” article from last summer about the background behind recent kelp forest declines on the West Coast and the many efforts under way to restore them by addressing different key components of the kelp forest ecosystem, from urchins to sea stars. Includes a short, 13-minute film and an appearance by Dr. Jason Hodin, who instructed me on how to raise sand dollar larvae when I was helping teach a class at Friday Harbor Labs. (EDIT: Here’s a related audio and text-based piece about the sea star research at Friday Harbor Labs, also from last summer.)
Can the Ocean Save the Planet? — This article came out a few weeks ago and it’s about nature-based solutions to climate change and human impacts on the environment. It features the work of Dr. Kathy Boyer’s wetland ecology lab at the Estuary & Ocean Science Center, where I worked for a couple of years. The article is written by David Helvarg, who’s been working with other community members to protect Point Molate (and by extension, the eelgrass beds that lie just offshore) in Richmond, California.
Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change: A Makah Tribal Leader Seeks Solutions to an Ocean Out of Balance — This article was published in February by NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuaries office. It describes how climate change is affecting the Makah Tribe and how researchers at Washington Sea Grant (where I used to be a Science Communications Fellow!) are working with the Tribe to Indigenize research methods and implement climate resilience initiatives that are led by Tribal priorities, values, and input.
Shape Our Water: Pah-tu Pitt — An article from November featuring Pah-tu Pitt, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and an instructor who teaches qualitative research and ethics at the University of Washington Tacoma. She discusses the wildfires that blazed through West Coast states in 2020 and talks about the importance of Indigenous knowledge and methods of ecosystem management.
Infrastructure Matters for Wildlife Too—Here’s How Aging Culverts Are Blocking Pacific Salmon Migration — This article from November talks about how fixing aging infrastructure in Washington state will help endangered salmon populations, enhance ecosystems, and honor the treaty rights that Tribes in the area have held and reserved since time immemorial. This was written by Ashlee Abrantes, a doctoral student who served on the University of Washington’s College of the Environment Student Advisory Council with me! Always fun to see someone I know writing something so cool.
9 June 2021—Fallen salmonberry at Puget Creek, a tributary of the Lower Duwamish River. (Photo: James Lee)
I’m really excited and proud to announce that my first ever peer-reviewed paper has been accepted by a scientific journal! The American Naturalist has accepted the paper and it is titled: “Transforming Restoration Science: Multiple Knowledges and Community Research Cogeneration in the Klamath and Duwamish Rivers.“
Normally I would post something related to my research and my time in grad school over in the Marine Science section of my website, but I thought this milestone was important to celebrate here, especially since this isn’t what most people think of when they think of a “typical” natural science paper. Yes, in our paper, my co-authors and I discuss our research as it relates to two separate river restoration projects. However, our focus is on the how and not the what. How was our research conducted? How did we approach our work ethically? How can we produce research with local communities, Indigenous peoples, and Tribes, instead of extracting data from already overexploited peoples? How would we do things next time, and how can other scientists learn from our examples?
There have been a growing number of papers being published in natural science fields in recent years that discuss ethical research, participatory research, and community-engaged research. I believe that one of the things that makes our paper interesting is that we provide two case studies, both involving river ecosystems, where the research took on very different forms due to current institutional constraints as well as historical legacies. I think the two case studies provide a nice backdrop to the theories our paper discusses and the suggestions we make for those who are in the field of restoration science and practice.
My good friend and colleague from graduate school, Samantha Klein, is the lead author, and I am second author on the piece. I’m proud to be co-authors on this paper with Indigenous scholars, as well as with my former classmates Sam and Sallie, who worked with me closely to advance equity and justice for underrepresented folks in our graduate program. Our principle investigator is Dr. Cleo Wölfle-Hazard of the FRESH Water Relations Lab; this is not just my first-ever peer-reviewed publication but also Sam’s first and the FRESH Lab’s first.
Our paper will be published some time soon in a special issue of the journal titled: “Nature, Data, and Power: How Hegemonies Shape Biological Knowledge.” Until then, you can read more about the special issue and the papers accepted for it here. I’ve also posted the abstract for the paper over in Marine Science—here’s the direct link to that post.
At Chimney Rock, Point Reyes National Seashore, May 2019.
I’ve been blogging on my personal website on and off for awhile, but in recent years I’ve become more interested in communicating about my interests in a more structured, thoughtful way. That’s why I’ve started The Liminal.
The Liminal will explore the intersections of marine science, ecological restoration work, and environmental justice. The blog’s name comes from my interest in these intersections as well as my interest in coastal and nearshore ecosystems: basically anywhere where water and land meet.
Here are links to pieces I have written elsewhere, which should give you an idea of what I have planned for The Liminal:
In Ovens Green Our Mother Bakes: The Rights of Nature Movement
Ice-ice, Baby! How Warming Waters and Bacteria Create a Frosty, White Disease
Note: There is another blog here besides The Liminal. Titled Marine Science, that blog is simply my personal account of my adventures in the marine sciences and is meant to be more a diary of my work, versus The Liminal which is meant to inspire thought and dialogue and be more “public facing.” I also have a couple of resource pages linking to educational articles, books, videos, and more. Finally, I also have photo galleries of tiny aquatic inverts for you to peruse.
Enjoy your stay and feel free to reach out to me if you have any feedback!
Vote James Lee Han in the City Council race in Redwood City this November!
I am a Redwood City native and community builder who has been working hard to advocate for affordable housing, open spaces, local jobs for local people, and responsible development that plans for our climate future. I believe that these concerns need a strong voice in city hall, and I want to expand opportunities for the public to engage in a debate around these important issues.
If elected, I will articulate these concerns with a strong voice and bring new ideas and solutions to the table. I will proudly represent and advocate for the many in our city who share these concerns about our city's future.
The enthusiastic support I've been getting as I speak to people in the community has been overwhelming and humbling, and I feel that I've become an effective voice for those who have been marginalized by the current status quo.
I know this will be a tough race, but I am prepared for it, and with the support of the community, I know we can do it. Together we can make Redwood City a more responsible, inclusive, and prosperous city.
I respectfully ask for your vote this November.
