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Content posted on waterbucket.ca helps others achieve their goals. Blue Ecology is a prime example. Stories on the Blue Ecology page on waterbucket.ca have magnified the awareness of Michael Blackstock’s work globally. After watching him in the Partnership for Water Sustainability’s Blue Ecology video, Dr. Serpil Oppermann at Cappadocia University in Turkey was overjoyed when she contacted Michael Blackstock and he accepted her invitation to contribute a chapter to the “Bloomsbury Handbook to the Blue Humanities” book that she is co-editing.

“During the day I listen to the stock market channel on the radio. The talk is constant now about AI. Companies are embracing it because it is viewed as the greatest thing since sliced bread. My observation is that we are being firehosed. It just seems that humans are going down this artificial rabbit hole where business believes technology is going to solve everything; and it is happening with no apparent awareness of unintended consequences,” stated Michael Blackstock.

“There is untapped intelligence out there in nature. It is on our doorstep but we are tapping it even less because we are so focused on Artificial Intelligence,” says Michael Blackstock. “There is this vast amount of wisdom out there that Indigenous peoples have seen forever…and that is Natural Intelligence…NI. Avoid getting caught up in only looking to AI to solve your problems. The balance principle is central to Natural Intelligence and Blue Ecology. It calls for a narrative shift towards healing and giving back to the environment. It is about creating a reciprocal relationship with nature.”

“During times of crisis, a few leaders always step into the spotlight with a new vision bridging conflicting worldviews. Michael Blackstock is one of these visionaries,” stated Glen Brown. “As an Independent Indigenous Scholar and founder of the Blue Ecology™ theory, Michael Blackstock offers a unique First Nations perspective on the climate crisis, inserting water into the difficult debates about carbon emissions. His ability to mediate grew out of a uniquely diverse background as a writer, a thought leader, and Forester. He has written over two dozen peer reviewed papers.”

“Every year I listen to the climate change debates. Scientists talk about temperature rise to one decimal place. An image of a committee with their hands on a thermostat popped into my mind. And they are trying to adjust it. There is so much arrogance in that, and so much naivety at the same time,” stated Michael Blackstock. The image of a Climate Change Thermostat draws attention to the flaws in a “slice-and-dice” approach that does not account for the interaction of variables within a system.

How are Harry Potter and Blue Ecology connected? The answer is Bloomsbury Publishing, the originating publisher and custodian of the Harry Potter series. “The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Blue Humanities has 35 chapters. My section has 10 chapters, and Blue Ecology is one of them. I knew that there is this Canadian scholar who developed Blue Ecology and he is very effective in Canada. So, I said to my team, if anyone is going to write the chapter on blue ecology it is going to be Michael Blackstock. He coined the term. It belongs to him,” stated Serpil Opperman.

“Blue Ecology is about interweaving two ways of knowing through a collaborative framework that would help facilitate how Indigenous, provincial and local governments work as leaders on a common problem, the climate crisis. Tools like EAP can be used to shape the future, as our new attitude deploys these existing tools in new ways. Has the moment come to reframe ‘ecosystem services’ as ‘gifts of nature’? If it does not get measured, it does not get managed. EAP helps us measure and assess the trade-offs; and helps us understand when it is time to just let the land heal,” stated Michael Blackstock.

Michael Blackstock believes that a message of hope is paramount in these times of droughts, forest fires and floods. “Rather than looking through a cumulative effects lens, I also see the concept of ‘cumulative healing’ landing as a way to give back to water and land. Rather than wondering how much more can we take or impact land before we need to stop, instead we should ask how much longer should we let the water and land heal, before we ask for more,” states Michael Blackstock.

The Blue Ecology video documentary seeds the idea that hope lies within the spheres of influence for local governments…whether they are Indigenous OR non-Indigenous. At its heart, Blue Ecology is about taking responsibility for care of the land and passing on the intergenerational baton. The video also seeds the idea that making it so requires a change in attitude to achieve the five Blue Ecology principles – Spirit, Balance, Harmony, Respect, Unity. The primary audience for the video are people in local governments. The Watershed Moments goal is to help remove their fear of saying or doing the wrong thing.

“British Columbia has an an amazing diversity of Indigenous languages, about 60% of Canada’s First Nations languages are found in BC. Language is an essential component of the cultural diversity of the planet. Biocultural diversity emerged as a term this millennium that inextricably links cultural and biological diversity, focusing on correlations between biodiversity and linguistic diversity. The evolution of the two in BC can be portrayed by interweaving Biogeoclimatic (BEC) Zones and linguistic zones to create Biocultural Diversity (BCD) Zone maps,” explained Michael Blackstock.