Unlocking the Sea Change: How Unlikely Allies Rewrote the Rules of the Ocean
We are so fortunate to have Amanda Leland joining us at the Bren School. She is a globally recognized environmental leader with a distinguished track record developing and implementing creative and workable environmental solutions. Amanda will be joined by her co-author Jamie Workman to discuss their new book, Sea Change, which tells the tale of one of the biggest conservation success stories in history. I look forward to seeing you there!
—Chris Costello, Professor, Bren School
ABSTRACT
The unknown story of fishermen and environmentalists who turned collapse into cooperation, and why it matters for every resource crisis we face...
Oceans were once a case study in collapse: collapsing stocks, collapsing trust, collapsing hope. Then came a quietly radical shift. This talk reveals how wild fish, once written off as hopeless, staged a rapid recovery in the U.S. by transforming rivalry into stewardship. The remarkable narrative of ocean resilience challenges our assumptions about natural resources, and sparks new ways of thinking about climate, cooperation, and the future of our relationship with the natural world. Come hear how former antagonists converted destructive competition into durable cooperation, with lessons that extend from reefs to rangelands, from carbon to groundwater.
BIOS
AMANDA LELAND fell in love with the sea at five years old, when her grandfather taught her to fish. As executive director of Environmental Defense Fund, Leland brings stakeholders together to support healthy communities and economies while reducing climate impacts. She previously led EDF’s Oceans program, a global team in fourteen countries focused on reversing overfishing while supporting those whose livelihoods rely on fish, triggering the dramatic economic and ecological recovery of US fisheries and beyond. An avid kayaker and scuba diver, Leland holds a master's degree in marine biology and lives with her family in Washington, DC.
JAMES WORKMAN is a storyteller, entrepreneur, and author of resilience strategies, including the award-winning book Heart of Dryness. Drawing on fieldwork with Indigenous Kalahari people, he founded AquaShares, a firm pioneering water credit trading. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Orion, Trout, and Washington Monthly. Workman studied at Yale, Oxford, and Stanford, and taught at Wesleyan and Whitman. But his real education came from restoring wildfires, reintroducing wolves, blowing up dams, smuggling to dissidents, getting married and raising two daughters.