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This project focuses on climate grief amongst Indigenous and non-indigenous youth. This project expands an ongoing collaboration between the University of Washington and Chief Leschi Schools to include non-governmental, government agencies, and the Nisqually Tribe. Students will come to better understand their climate grief. Indigenous youth will learn about their culture and roles as environmental stewards. Through various creative workshops leading to food forest restoration projects on two Indigenous land sites, youth leadership and intercultural education will be fostered. A video will be created about this process and disseminated widely. Multiple methods will be used to assess how this process and outputs impact youth climate grief. Masters theses will lead to a peer reviewed journal article.

Research Team:
Principal Investigator: Patrick Christie, Professor, UW Seattle College of the Environment, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs

Community Lead: Binah McCloud (Puyallup), Director of Culture, Chief Leschi Schools

UW Co-Investigator: Jonathan Warren, Professor, UW Seattle College of Arts & Sciences, Jackson School of International Studies

UW Students: 
Kayley Pingeon, Graduate student, UW Seattle College of the Environment, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs
Thor Belle, Student- Graduate, Graduate student, UW Seattle College of the Environment, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs

Collaborators:
Yvette Duenas Aponte (Quileute), Academic Collaborator, Teacher, Chief Leschi Schools
Don Brummett, Community Collaborator, Chief Leschi Schools Interim Superintendent
Hanford McCloud (Nisqually), Community Collaborator, Government to Government Liaison for the Nisqually Tribal Council
Aidan McCloud (Nisqually), Community Collaborator
Keith Secola (Anishinaabe), Community Collaborator, Musician, Native American Production Cooperative
John Weller, Academic Collaborator, Only One Senior Fellow, Only One
Jeanette Dorner, Community Collaborator, Executive Director, Nisqually Land Trust
Derek Churchill, Community Collaborator, Forest Health Scientist, Washington Department of Natural Resources
Ashley Blazina-Cooper, Community Collaborator, Environmental Justice and Western WA Forest Health Planner, Washington Department of Natural Resources

The Just Circular Communities (JCC) collaboration is a community-initiated movement to develop community-envisioned, owned, and managed hyper-localized circular economies for Frontline communities. Such circular systems and infrastructure have the potential to address systemic displacement, economic stagnation, and resilience in communities that experience the worst effects of climate change through material recovery that maintains local resources and place-based employment. One example of a resource recovery infrastructure is an anaerobic biodigester. By converting food waste into probiotic plant food and clean energy in the form of biogas for fuel and/or electricity, the biodigester can serve as a catalyst for a community-scale circular economy that supports a shift away from fossil fuels and privatization of essential goods and services and toward shared resources and community-benefitting infrastructures.

This project engages in a feasibility study of a large-scale anaerobic biodigester for the South Park neighborhood of Seattle. Our transdisciplinary team includes a novel mix of designers, engineers, planners, and economists that will collaborate with existing community partners in South Park to ensure the project aligns with community visions. The project will generate a schematic design for a biodigester co-developed through participatory design methods, a financial feasibility study and business plan for the biodigester’s operation and end-product markets, and complete economic contributions analysis to assess the broader social and economic benefits of the pilot project. Outcomes of the study will be gathered in a feasibility report for the development, installation, and short and long-term implementation of a large scale pilot anaerobic biodigester that documents the environmental, social, and economic benefits of the project. The accessible dissemination of project findings to the community is a main priority of the team. Results will be shared via a community meeting with a multimedia exhibit, and published on the JCC website where community members within South Park, the Duwamish Valley, and beyond can engage with the data generated by the project.

Research Team:

Principal Investigator: Catherine De Almeida, Associate Professor, UW Seattle College of Built Environments, Landscape Architecture

Community Lead: Edwin Alberto Hernandez Reto, Project Coordinator, Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association (DVSA)

UW Co-Investigators: 
Gundula Proksch, Associate Professor, UW Seattle College of Built Environments, Architecture
Christian Primack Metcalfe, Affiliate Instructor of Entrepreneurship, UW Seattle Michael G. Foster School of Business, Department of Management and Organization

UW Student: Sarah Chu, Graduate student, UW Seattle College of Built Environments, Landscape Architecture

Collaborators: 
Todd Schindler, Community Collaborator, Project Coordinator, Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association (DVSA)
Michelle Benetua, Community Collaborator, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Programs, Seattle Parks Foundation
Nathanial Trull, Academic Collaborator, Associate, ECOnorthwest
Todd Schindler, Community Collaborator, Project Coordinator, Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association (DVSA)
Bonnie Gee Yosick, Academic Collaborator, Senior Economic Advisor, ECOnorthwest
Brian Allen, Academic Collaborator, Business Consultant, 360 Social

It’s all connected, and it all starts with water. That’s how Klamath Tribal members with the Ambodat Department summed up the motivation for this project. Ambodat is the Klamath word for in, at, or on the water. Water shortages, toxic algae, federally listed endangered sucker fish, vulnerable salmon returning after long-sought dam removal, and on-going degradation of habitat for other first foods all threaten the resilience of those dependent on the ecosystems of the Upper Klamath Basin in south central Oregon. These challenges result, at least in part, from more than a century of imbalance in land use practices, including fire suppression and water diversion, that favor short-term profits and industrial agriculture.

Climate-adapted restoration of ecosystems that regulate water quality, storage, and delivery is a critical step toward promoting social justice in this region. To support this effort, we will generate a landscape-level inventory of incised channels that disconnect streams from floodplains for the Klamath Reservation (~1.2 million acres). Reconnecting streams with floodplains improves water quality and quantity by trapping sediment and agricultural runoff, increasing water storage, and slowing flow rates so that winter precipitation lingers longer into the summer drought season. Our project stems from the urgent need for landscape-level restoration and the demonstrated potential for rapid and cascading benefits from restoring landscape patterns and ecosystem functions. In addition to delivering continuous, comprehensive, landscape-level inventories and maps of incised channels, disconnected floodplains, and wetland potential, we will develop a story map that illustrates the scope of the challenge and the potential for recovery of ecosystems that regulate water supply and are biodiversity hotspots. Living memory and traditional knowledge personalize the radical changes that limit access to first foods (including the first of these, water) on the Klamath Tribes’ home lands. Climate warming compounds long-term challenges, and extreme droughts in recent years exacerbate water scarcity, a recurring challenge in the Upper Klamath Basin. Our story map will describe how climate-adapted restoration of streams and floodplains could provide multiple benefits to the region by restoring landscape patterns that regulate water storage and delivery.

Research Team:

Principal Investigator: L. Monika Moskal, Professor; Director, Precision Forestry Cooperative, UW Seattle College of the Environment, School of Environmental & Forest Sciences

Community Lead: Debbie Johnson, Principal, Applegate Forestry LLC

UW Co-Investigator: Brittany Johnson, Assistant Professor, UW Seattle College of the Environment, School of Environmental & Forest Sciences

UW Student: TBD, PhD student or candidate, Seattle UW Seattle College of the Environment School of Environmental & Forest Sciences

Collaborators: 
Meghan Halabisky, Academic Collaborator, Research Scientist, UW Seattle College of the Environment, School of Environmental & Forest Sciences
Keala Hagmann, Academic Collaborator, Affiliate Assistant Professor, UW Seattle College of the Environment, School of Environmental & Forest Sciences
Shahnie Rich, Community Collaborator, Environmental Scientist, The Klamath Tribes Ambodat Department
Brad Parrish, Community Collaborator, Water Rights Specialist, The Klamath Tribes Ambodat Department

Composting is a core climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy in major cities, yet experiences are limited in low- and middle-income countries. Iquitos, a city with half a million people in the Peruvian Amazon, faces challenges with an unreliable waste collection system, leading to waste accumulation that harms ecosystems, public health, and water sources, particularly affecting vulnerable Indigenous communities living on river floodplains. 60% of this waste is organic and compostable. A multidisciplinary team of UW, Peruvian researchers, young activist residents from Iquitos, and the Kukama Indigenous community partnered to design a city-wide composting system and an implementation plan. To achieve both goals, the team utilizes a “design thinking” approach that starts by documenting the perspectives of community stakeholders. Subsequently, the academic team will research and experiment with composting systems in situ. Later, the team will organize co-creation sessions to design the composting and implementation plan with the residents of Iquitos and the Kukama community. The Kukamas produce traditional pottery art, utilizing clay from the Amazon basin rivers, natural local pigments, and wood collected from the shores for their ovens. This sustainable and traditional art serves as inspiration for designing elements in the composting system, particularly the compost bin. Additional workshops, requested and co-organized by the Kukamas, aim to improve their techniques and business model in anticipation of large-scale implementation. Once the composting system and the implementation plan are conceptualized, they will be implemented in a pilot in 30 households. Participants will receive a Kukama compost bin, supplies, tools, educational materials, and training on how to use and maintain the system. Over eight months, the team will assess the performance of the composting system, implementation, and health and hygiene practices. The results of this first cycle will be compiled in a final report and presented in seminars at the National University of the Peruvian Amazon, with the participation of the Kukama community and Iquitos’ residents, as well as at the University of Washington. After this project, the partnership will continue working on the long-term vision and utilize the pilot’s results to craft the next steps for expanding the program city-wide.

Research Team:

Community Lead: Leydiana Menacho, Community Leader, Kukama Compost

UW Co-Investigators: 

Rebecca Neumann, Associate Professor, UW Seattle College of Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Joseph Zunt, Professor, UW Seattle School of Public Health, Global Health
Rebecca Bachman, Lecturer, UW Seattle College of Built Environments, Landscape Architecture

UW Student: Coco Alarcon, a PhD student, UW Seattle School of Public Health, Global Health and Implementation Science

Collaborators: 
Sally Brown, Academic Collaborator, Research Professor, UW Seattle College of the Environment, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
Ranulfo Segundo Meléndez Celis, Academic Collaborator, Professor

Our project in southern Mauritania centers the voices and experiences of the Haalpulaar’en community of Khareirat and its relationship with Tambass, a 4,400-acre wetlands area. Mauritania has always been hot and arid, but it is now experiencing increasingly wild oscillations between drought (e.g., 2020-2022) and periods of violent rain and flooding (August 2022, July 2023). The country’s few wetlands provide crucial flood-control and water-storage buffers, among other ecosystem services, in an increasingly unpredictable hydrologic context. Against this already fraught backdrop, human actors recently drained Tambass, a critical water source for the herders of Khareirat, their animals, migratory birds, and countless other life forms. Without some type of intervention, the wetland will disappear, like so many others. In the meantime, the diversion eliminated the Haalpulaar’en community’s primary source of water and left the nearby wells upon which they depend unreliable, amplifying the already significant effects of climate change. Quite simply, the hydrocommons of Tambass and the social-ecological cultures it supports are at risk of vanishing. Our interdisciplinary project, codesigned with local partners and the community of Khareirat, aims to bring attention and imagine alternatives to the situation in Tambass, with hopes of restoring water flow to the wetland while illuminating and activating the creativity, agency, and lifeworlds of the communities there, even amidst loss. Through a documentary film developed in partnership with the community and Oscar-nominated filmmakers Aberrahmane Sissako and Kessen Tall, we explore the community’s attempts to live with major hydrologic changes and discover possibilities of action and repair. A qualitative + quantitative-data wetlands map will integrate remotely sensed data about water resources and the lived experience of the Haalpulaar’en into a pilot water bodies monitoring app (with Digital Earth Africa). Finally, historical analysis of drying events will inform how partial restoration might proceed, while we collaboratively build scientific capacity for community knowledge, planning, and self-advocacy via new relationships with local and regional partners. All project activities aim to embody the mutually enriching potential of actionable humanities and science – as forms of reclamation and “repairing the world,” recurrent themes in African art, performance, storytelling, and being in the world. 

Research Team: 

Principal Investigator: Richard Watts, Associate Professor, UW Seattle College of Arts & Sciences, French and Italian Studies

Community Leads: 
Abderrahmane Sissako, Co-director of AME, Filmmaker, Association Mauritanienne pour l’Environnement (AME)
Kessen Tall, Co-Director of AME, screenwriter, Association Mauritanienne pour l’Environnement (AME)

UW Co-Investigator: Daniel Hoffman, Professor, UW Seattle College of Arts & Sciences, Jackson School of International Studies

UW Student: TBD. Graduate student.  

Collaborators: 
Meghan Halabisky, Academic Collaborator, remote-sensing ecologist, UW College of the Environment/Digital Earth Africa, UW Seattle College of the Environment, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
Maureen Ryan, Academic Collaborator, Owner and principal, Dark Creature LLC
Lisa Rebelo, Academic Collaborator, interpreter, affiliated with Digital Earth Africa
Abou Sow, Community Collaborator, interpreter, affiliated with Association mauritanienne pour l’environnement
Sidi Cheiguer, Community Collaborator, interpreter, freelance filmmaker, affiliated with Association mauritanienne pour l’environnement
Amadou Sall, Academic Collaborator, Wetland Lead for West Africa, Centre de suivi écologique Dakar, Senegal