Welcome new affiliate faculty — Yoshitaka Ota

Yoshitaka Ota served as director of the Nereus Program, a global interdisciplinary initiative between the Nippon Foundation and the University of British Columbia to further knowledge about how to best attain sustainability for the world’s oceans, between 2011 and 2019. During that time, he identified a capacity and knowledge gap in addressing the widening inequality in ocean use (extraction as well as conservation). At the University of Washington, he established a new research center, Ocean Nexus, housed in the EarthLab to fill this gap by promoting social equity and justice in global ocean governance. He also serves as a research assistant professor at the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. Yoshi’s primary research looks at ocean governance and policy, focusing on equity and justice. He has conducted research on the impacts of climate change on First Nations communities in British Columbia. His recent work focuses on the inclusion of Indigenous and coastal communities in the governance of the global ocean commons.