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. While Patrick started (and continues) to work on protected areas, fisheries management, and coastal management, he now believes, especially in these times, that working in support of visionary environmental justice social movements is both more interesting and more essential than conducting one more technical study resulting in recommendations that are largely ignored when they challenge the status quo. The status quo includes overreliance on natural science-based environmental decision making, privileging the same old voices, and relying on so-called experts for answers. As a White, privileged, male, he aspires to use his position to explore and foster allyship. As such, he has written about such matters and is working to understand and support social movements demanding change. His teaching, research, and activism works to support Indigenous leaders who are at the forefront of fossil fuel protest movements, anti-racist policies, and inter-cultural understanding. He has much to learn in this realm. Join him and others in this change process.

He started his marine-related career as a US Peace Corps volunteer working in the Philippines with a community to protect an overfished and degraded coral reef. The protected area established by the community on San Salvador Island is still in place since 1988. He then, as a graduate student, worked in solidarity with Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast Indigenous communities in the 90s to conduct participatory action-research to empower the Pearl Lagoon communities to resist neo-liberal efforts to appropriate their natural resources. Over his academic career at the UW, Dr Christie has led various comparative, socio-ecological research projects in the U.S., Philippines, Indonesia and Latin America to inform the practice of marine resource management. He has been particularly interested in the human dimensions of marine conservation employing marine protected areas, ecosystem-based management, and conservation fishing technologies—research that resulted in a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation. He regularly provides technical advice on the human dimensions of marine sustainability to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, World Bank, USAID, and various other governmental and non-governmental environmental organizations. In addition to his scholarship, he is actively engaged in marine protected area design and implementation. He was involved in an NCEAS working group that provided guidance to the Palauan government on the implementation of a large, new MPA.

In February 2016, he and others organized a meeting of 125 conservation leaders, cultural leaders, social scientists and donors to consider the human dimensions of and conflicts surrounding large-scale marine protected areas. This “difficult dialogue” resulted in an informal community of practice, a workbook for practitioners, and various peer reviewed publications—including journal articles and a journal theme issue (see below).

Dr. Christie is increasingly focused on understanding Indigenous-led environmental recovery in the Salish Sea and the Upper Great Lakes Region, petroleum infrastructure-resistance movements, and climate change social movements.  After conducting hundreds of surveys and interviews of tribal leaders, Dr. Christie and others co-hosted a workshop with the Tulalip Tribes in 2016 to explore the human dimensions for coastal squeeze in the Puget Sound region and potential of tribally-led estuary restoration projects. This resulted in a publication on tribal leadership in Puget Sound restoration (see below).

In Winter 2017, Dr. Christie and Francesca Hillery (then Public Affairs Manager, Tulalip Tribes) taught a course titled “Finding common ground in a world of environmental change”, in which students developed a strategic communications strategy for the Tulalip Tribes and a digital story about their experience. Dr Christie also led a course in 2018 with the globally recognized Indigenous leader, Winona LaDuke, on tribal rights and methods for growing hemp as means of sustainable agriculture and post-petroleum economic activity.

Dr. Christie recently has been involved in research, organizing, and digital storytelling to raise critical questions about how society engages in marine sustainability and restoration efforts and whether these efforts are inclusive of diverse perspectives. He is leading a project that uses participatory research and digital storytelling methods to engage Puyallup Chief Leschi Schools and UW students to explain tribal rights and leadership in Salish Sea recovery (https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/projects/indigenous-rights-and-environmental-sustainability/). He is also working on a project to understand conflict in ocean spaces around the world and the development of context-appropriate conflict resolution methods. Through his work with various communities and out of respect for their diverse knowledge systems, Dr. Christie has become increasingly convince that participatory research and learning networks are essential to bring local, Indigenous, and scientific knowledge to bear on complex problems. SMEA capstone advisees and he conducted a global review of marine learning networks that identified shared goals and practical design principles. He’s working with Future Earth (https://futureearth.org/networks/knowledge-action-networks/ocean/) and colleagues in Brazil (https://painelmar.com.br/#missao) to foster ocean-related learning networks.

He is jointly appointed in the Jackson School of International Studies. Dr. Christie received his Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environment from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Christie teaches:

• SMEA 572: Environmental Justice and Political Ecology Field Course:
  Indigenous Perspectives, Coalitions, and Activism
• JSIS 498D: Environmental Justice, Social Movements, and Collaboration in the
  Time of Climate Change
• SMEA/JSIS/ENVIR 103: Society and the Oceans