Sound Water Stewards of Island County, WA
Working for a healthy, sustainable Salish Sea marine environment
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WWU Environmental Speaker Series
October 13, 2022 @ 4:30 am – 5:30 pm
Every Thursday: Sep 22 – Dec 1 at 4:30 – see entire list of speakers
Oct 13: Environmental justice and river restoration in Puget Sound
As the second largest estuary in the United States, Puget Sound is a national figure for river restoration. River restoration is an important tool for repairing legacies of uneven economic development that have degraded river systems across the US and resulted in disproportionate impacts on communities who are poor and communities of color, leaving them exposed to all kinds of environmental hazards and harm. Currently, river restoration as a form of ecological improvement is also emerging as an important climate change adaptation strategy as well as a nexus of social justice concerns. Drawing on two years of archival, ethnographic, and community-based research, this talk will explore two distinct modes of river restoration as they relate to ideas of environmental justice. By drawing on comparisons of two distinct communities who live along the banks of the Skagit and Duwamish Rivers, this talk discusses how communities come to understand and define environmental harm and how this relates to concerns for environmental justice.
The Environmental Speaker Series is free and open to the public. Talks are held each Thursday at 4:30 pm in Academic Instructional Center West, room 204. Paid parking is available in lot C. Or join us online on Zoom!
More information about the speaker series is available here, and past Environmental Speaker Series recordings are available here.
