All They do is Win Win Win: With Indigenous Law, Climate Solutions and Coral Reefs
Show Notes:
This week we talked eels, manatees, wildfires and Indigenous epistemologies. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe wherever you are listening to this podcast. For more information on things mentioned in the episode, or Indigenous sovereignty and its intersections with climate change more broadly, check out the links below. If you have questions you can find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook or at rebalancingact.ca!
Learn more about American Eels here: https://www.ontario.ca/page/american-eel
Check out Indigenous fire management practices: https://grist.org/justice/with-wildfires-on-the-rise-indigenous-fire-management-is-poised-to-make-a-comeback/
Natural Climate Solutions and the study which finds they can contribute over ⅓ of the carbon reduction needed: https://www.pnas.org/content/114/44/11645
The study that assessed the effectiveness of Indigenous lead conservation as compared to government managed conservation: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901119301042
Grasslands and restoration: https://thenarwhal.ca/carbon-cache-grasslands/?fbclid=IwAR0LErwj0htB1o12dwHBFkOJIwZbbyhNihhIdGKlxvYSBduBboZ4I2C0_as
Peatlands and carbon sequestration: https://thenarwhal.ca/ring-of-fire-ontario-peatlands-carbon-climate/
Australian fire setting birds: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7843527/The-native-Australian-bird-making-bushfire-crisis-worse-spreading-flames.html
The 2014 Tsilhqot'in Nation v British Columbia case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsilhqot%27in_Nation_v_British_Columbia
Exciting coral reef news: https://www.wtsp.com/article/tech/science/restoring-coral-reef-florida-keys/67-e4e1c076-13a7-4733-8ae3-7a41ccfd98eb
Reefs and health science reserach: https://coral.org/coral-reefs-101/why-care-about-reefs/medicine/
Mote Marine (the home of Hugh and Buffet): https://mote.org
Indigenous knowledge and a new role for it in statistical modelling: https://medium.com/ubcscience/stats-660805dd930a
Indigenous Guardian programs as an example of Indigenous land management: https://landneedsguardians.ca/latest/guardians-partner-on-climate-and-wildlife-research
Funny video on land “acknowledgements”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlG17C19nYo&t=1s
TRANSCRIPT:
Kiran 0:06
In today's special inaugural episode of Rebalancing Act, we explore what traditional ecological knowledge and land practices are, how they are a solution to climate change by promoting carbon sequestration, and how their widespread implementation would benefit Indigenous nations and non-Indigenous Canadians alike! Also, good news about coral reefs, and a shout out to Leslie Anne's favorite manatees Hugh, and Buffett.
Leslie Anne St Amour 0:52
Okay, so, Kiran, we're doing it, we're making a podcast. Isn't it exciting!
Kiran 0:58
I know I'm really excited.
Leslie Anne St Amour 1:00
Yes, I'm so excited about this first episode, we're going to touch on Indigenous sovereignty, we're going to touch on land back. And we're also going to touch on traditional ecological knowledge, which is where I want to start because that kind of sets the stage a little bit sound good.?
Kiran 1:17
Yeah.
Leslie Anne St Amour 1:28
Okay! So, when we talk about traditional ecological knowledge, we are talking about knowledge that Indigenous nations and people and communities have been generating over years and years since time immemorial. This knowledge can also be tied to Indigenous epistemologies or worldviews because our oral traditions, the way we teach our laws and our culture are so tied to the land that there's your psychological knowledge, even in the stories themselves. So I want to start with a little fun story about traditional ecological knowledge, and the first time I kind of realized that it's not just an abstract concept but actually something that is a part of my life, as well as something that's part of the lives of all Indigenous people, even though we may not see something and think I yes, that is my traditional ecological knowledge and play there. A few years back, I was working for my community. And my community at that time is doing a lot of work around recovery efforts for an endangered species, the American eel, which honestly, is one of my favorite animals in the world. They are so cool. They travel all the way from like the Caribbean, up the Ottawa River to spawn and then of all the way back! And they're like tiny critters and they do so much, it's kind of amazing.
Kiran 2:50
The ells are the OG world travelers.
Leslie Anne St Amour 2:53
Honestly, yes, like the eels are just enjoying the fact that they're still traveling internationally well we're all stuck at home right now with COVID. I always heard stories about the eels in the river, and any when you're a small child, people tell you that they're electric eels that you won't go swimming on your own and drown. But even as you get older
sometimes keep hearing about them from the older folks. And for me that was sometimes for my dad, he would tell me about how when he was a kid, he would go fishing with his grandfather for eels because for the old folks’ eels were a delicacy. I came home one day, I basically sat down with my dad and it was like that. Tell me about the eels something I don't think a lot about the auto river is that the river is I know it isn't the river, originally was, they put in a lot of hydro dams that have changed the shape of the river the flood the flow of the river floodplains of the river and decimated the yield population, because those training wheels, aren't so great if your yield and you get stuck in that. As the downside of the eel world traveler Instagram lifestyle right there for sure. We talked about that we talked about some of what he's seen how some of the hydro dams are now putting in eel ladders, which are these fancy little shoots that the eels can climb up and down.
He talked about where he used to go fishing for them. And then he turns to me and says, you’ve heard the story about the time your cousin got chased by deal right. And I was like, "No!
I'm going to need to hear this story". Back in the day, you would often hear about eels ending up in farmer's fields after a big rain are flooding and the eels would have ended up on the edges of the fields from coming up from the river trying to find their way getting turned around these the flooding. And when the flooding receded, it'd be eels kind of slithering like little snakes, trying to get back to the river. So, my cousin was fishing caught Neil, you know, took it off the hook went to go throw it back in, and all of a sudden, the eel came back at him. And then you know he backs up, and they'll still you know slither in towards them. Joey turns and starts, you know, running a little because there's eel chasing him. You know he's run in the hills fallen slithering through that farmer's field. And till he realized that when he'd unhooked it went to go toss it back in and actually hooked its backend back on the hook and he was actually just dragging the yield through the field with him.
Kiran 5:41
Can we talk about how eels’ faces are so much less cute than like snake faces?
Leslie Anne St Amour 5:45
I don't know why but it's so true. After this conversation with my dad. I got to tag along with some people from work and some biologists, to go seals that have been captured at some of the hydro dams, they're being tagged, and then released back into the river. And this is being done so we could actually track some of their migration seeing how many were successful using
the eel ladders, things like that. And the eels show up in a bucket drugged and unconscious, and you try to quickly take up before they start to wake up, and then you throw them into another barrel where they recover. And the recovery barrel was where I was tasked with helping out. And as they slowly come to, they start climbing the sides of this metal barrel. I was tasked with knocking them back end when they got too close, but sometimes you don't get them and they go, slithering off. And I immediately knew you know they're not like a fish that's just going to flop there. They're going to be slithering through that grass, because I've heard the stories from the old folks about the eels ending up in the farmer's fields during the flooding, about how they can move on land. And I it clicked to me that that is a form of traditional ecological knowledge. There are biology students helping out this day, and for them. Some of them didn't know what the hell to do when it came out of the barrel. They thought it was going to flop like a fish, but my knowledge filled in a gap that their knowledge didn't have. And I kind of realized that this isn't just an abstract thing it's a thing. It's a part of my life too. It's something that Western knowledge and science hasn't always respected. And so, what kind of information. Are we missing in our conversation around climate change? Just like how those biology students are missing the key fact that the eels will sliver rather than just flop. Totally. And I think you can go even further and talk about it as a specific type of knowledge. Whereas I think that eels may be in the traditional ecological knowledge that you have aren't discussed as an abstract other thing. It was discussed in relationship to the geography of where you live, as a food source as a part of people's lives as opposed to something where you detect its anatomy and that you know it's fascinating it's an object of fascination, but it's not really related to you or your life the same way. One of the important aspects of traditional knowledge, being able to be applied differently, and having a lot more buy in from communities when programs are based on traditional knowledge because they can actually relate to it and see how it impacts their lives relates to their lives in a way that you don't always have with Western science. Now that we kind of know what traditional knowledge is and how it's been missing and a lot of settings. If this is, I mean this is, but this is also fire, this water management, this is forest management, this is grasslands, it's also at mitigation and adaptation and be able to understand the effects of climate change. One thing I think is really interesting, that's happening in Canada right now is an effort to restore our prairie grasslands, because I had no idea about these grasslands actually hold most of their carbon underground and their root systems, they can have roots, like 10
feet into the ground, which is just incredible.
So, a fire burns a wildfire which of course happened naturally as a regular part of that carbon cycle. The majority of their carbon. Because carbon is being stored in the ground. Unlike traditional forest, most of its carbon is being stored in the trees. I think humans have a tendency, and I'm guilty of this as well, you relate to what you can see. Carbon absorbing things are actually invisible to us.
Kiran 9:57
I was reading a type of mushroom that apparently mushrooms are very good at storing environment but obviously you can't see them because it's a giant network of mushrooms that exists solely underground
Leslie Anne St Amour 10:07
Mushrooms are wild!
Yeah, so there's people working to restore these grasslands as much as possible and protect what we still have been so much these prairie grasslands been taken over for agriculture and have been altered and changed and no longer exist in this incredible carbon storing way. According to nature Canada there's actually only 1% of the remaining grasslands that are that are currently protected. All of that other carbon could potentially be released as it is now. But there are people working really hard to change this. And I'm bringing this up in relation to traditional ecological knowledge, because one of the groups working really hard to protect the grasslands. It's actually the blood tribe land management unit, because they're working with Individuals to protect these grasslands, not only for their potential to store carbon, but also these same grasslands, hold really important traditional plants like sage and sweet grass plants that are used in traditional medicines that are also threatened by the same things threatening these grasslands. And so, when you have the buy in of Indigenous organizations like this who not only want to see. climate action, but it also protects.
These grasslands also hold important traditional and cultural aspects. And these cultural aspects are things that. For example, the blood tribe and people who are members are intimately familiar with, because they've been interacting with these plants for generations upon generations. So, their knowledge about where to find these plants, where they grow and how to protect them is being used to also help restore the same grasslands, that hold the key to carbon storage that is so
important for us addressing climate change. I think such an important point, just to emphasize, that's true in this context it is true so many times will come up over and over again is that these solutions are weighed with their wins in the environment, their wins culturally, they're going to be wins politically. And it's great. I just think it's great. And it's important to remember that a lot of the time environmentalism and climate positive action has been portrayed as personal sacrifice. But when you look at all those solutions, we're going to talk about it's quite the opposite. You can look at, I learned recently in Quebec there's still large areas of forests that have never been logged and are still old growth. And so, they hold incredible, incredible amounts of carbon, and also incredible importance to those Indigenous communities, and that's another way you can enjoy that partnership of getting that Win Win solution by protecting those areas. Another one of my really my absolute favorite examples of the way, traditional knowledge can interact with Western science is, I think we all remember back in the early stages of 2020, before we knew it was going to be the Australian bushfire season, which was catastrophic and awful really thought that was going to be the defining feature of 2020, you know, and that it wasn't. Yeah. And so, some, a new story that came out a little bit during that time was about an Australian bird that has a tendency to spread fire because they will pick up embers and burning pieces of wood.
For a long time, there was a discussion between Indigenous folks and Western scientists, as to what was happening there. Because Indigenous folks believed correctly, I will add that the bird was doing this intentionally. The bird picks up the burning piece of wood and flies to a non-burning field or clearing and drops it because it flushes out the birds’ prey, all those little critters
running for their lives from the fire, or you know, perfectly accessible prey. But, Western science for a long time, didn't accept this because they were seeing no evidence that the bird wasn't just, you know, picking it up, not realizing it was burning and then dropping it like it's hot. And so, it was actually questioned science confirmed the Indigenous perspective on this, I believe it was back in 2017 2018, something like that. And it's interesting because someone paid for that research to be done. And instead you could have just listened to the Indigenous people who've been watching this bird for generations. I think you're seeing analogies for that in the legal system too. When you're looking at Aboriginal rights. They need to be framed in a way that's comprehensible to our legal system in order to be valid validated. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't valuable if they aren't able to have that validation, it just means that they were developed under a different system with its own internal logic. It frustrates me to think about how much money has been spent trying to bring this Indigenous knowledge is these epistemologies these rights into a framework that Western science or logic can understand in order to
confirm them, to believe them. But if we just took Indigenous people’s word for it and so many of these cases that money could have been redirected to. Oh, I don't know, studying wildfire prevention. It's one of those things that I think we're getting better at doing, as a society, but we're not there yet, but I will give credit to the fact that we are doing much better than we were even 10 years ago, and dealing with these issues, sometimes. In these cases, too, because we've seen them in action before. It's bringing things from the theoretical debate where logic rules but also to power into the practical world where if something is actually going to help them, they are able to see that weather. And you see that with the wildfires.
The other side of this that I think is so important to climate action and climate solutions are particularly when you look at the area of natural climate solutions. And so, a natural climate solution is generally a land stewardship strategy or policy that focuses on conservation restoration and improved management practices that contribute to increased carbon increased carbon storage into natural carbon sinks or preventing the emission of greenhouse gases at all through different management practices. There is an article published in 2017, that actually states that natural climate solutions have the potential to meet over one third of the mitigation needed between now and 2030 to stabilize global warming below two degrees Celsius, and that the rough cost estimates, which of course can be very challenging to do, but in this study they found the cost effective mitigation was based on it being 10 US dollars per tonne of carbon
which is a pretty good price to keep that carbon from warming us up. Absolutely. I also think that natural climate solutions have a level of scalability, that we don't see with technical solutions, which are very important in their own right. But if you're talking about something like soil management or forest management, and tables, you're able to do that at a large scale, with a relatively low monetary investment and then also time to get off the ground, you're not spending time in r&d to this, you're going out and doing it. There's another study that came out a few years ago that found that conservation, led by Indigenous people, which incorporated Indigenous knowledge and traditions and laws into the conservation programs are actually, at least equally effective if not more effective than government run conservation programs. And this was found to be true, not only in Canada, but also Brazil, and Australia, and the US to me growing up conservation was implied this act of passivity letting something grow and leaving, he. But I think something that I've come to learn more and more, is that first of all, historically speaking, wild spaces for as long as humans have been around and shaped by those humans, regardless of what part of the world and what culture they come from. They're just in varying levels of success with varying degrees of care. And so, the concept of adaptive management, isn't actually foreign to these landscapes. It's the way that we've been doing it, it's the way that people have been doing it the best. A really good example of that is forest fire management. And traditionally Indigenous people engaged in prescribed burns cultural burns, as well as other types of preventative burning to prevent fires from burn from building up. So, a cultural burn is a burn that's conducted in an area to alter the landscape for the cultural needs of that community, whether it be clearing an area to be able to use it for agriculture, or for living, different things like that, a prescribed burn is used to clear fuel from an area to prevent forest fires in that area from either occurring at all or for being able to spread and controlled burns are used when a fire is already existing to limited fuel and the surrounding area to kind of cut off and spread these practices were used by Indigenous people in North America and Australia for generations upon generations. But when colonial governments began to view forests and logging in particular, as an economic industry it wanted to be in it then practiced fire suppression.
And that was the idea of limiting all fires as much as possible from happening, putting them out immediately not letting them burn out. And that kind of forest management actually has led to more and more severe fires. He's you're getting fires areas that haven't been cleared haven't been burned in years, and are also in areas where due to logging, there can actually be better fuel for fire in areas that have been lost, depending on how they're cleaned up. It's really important to remember that management isn't just about blocking off an area of land and not touching it. That's not conservation is about understanding our relationship with the land and the relations of the different critters and plants and understanding their relationships, to be able to have that ecosystem thrive. And that doesn't necessarily mean taking a step back and not allowing any interaction. In some cases, that is what you need to do, but it's not inherent in conservation, talking about natural climate solutions talking about the role of Indigenous knowledge talking about how conservation and therefore likely a lot of forms and natural climate solutions are actually going to be more effective with Indigenous involvement. What do we do with that? My knowledge and the traditional knowledge of other Indigenous people can be used to not only protect our land, but to protect the entire world to protect our climate. And I think that responsibility is to me, a lot of what my connection to the land is. And we're seeing a lot of Indigenous people really talk about this in a new way. In the last year or so, we've been seeing a lot of hashtag land back or land back as a chance to protest.
And this is the idea of, you know, we're going to take our land back and evict all of y'all, something that I've learned over the course of the time that I've like come to know more about Indigenous issues is realizing that my own frameworks for thinking about concepts like land have to change in order for me to understand what the solutions are. I really encourage people to think about the other ways of understanding that the other things you can need is to me, and I know to a lot of other folks. One of the things that can mean is that Indigenous people regain control over the land. And I know that's a weird concept to people but if you think about it, our governments have control over all the land already, as much as it's private property. There's zoning law it's there's environmental protection laws are all kinds of things telling you what you can and can't do with your land, and we just think that these Indigenous people are the traditional owners of this land did not give up this land that they should also have a say. Can you talk about like the qualities of Indigenous control that are a qualitatively different from the type of government control that we see? So I think one aspect of it is we have to remember that Indigenous people do have our own laws and our own principles that would be guiding that control Indigenous nations are all different, so I can only speak from an Algonquin perspective, but in my teachings, you have a relationship with all of the other inhabitants of this earth. And so, you have an obligation to continue to protect the Earth for the benefit of all those other
creatures and critters as well. One example would be looking at water use, and the way we feel that we can restructure entire rivers and lakes and change all of these things to the detriment of so many other critters and fish the turtles, all of these other actors and the larger scheme of the earth that we all have obligations and responsibilities to.
Kiran 23:54
And so, can you talk a little bit about the historical basis for that sovereignty and how that would fit into maybe some of the legal decisions that have been made. We've talked about a lot of different aspects of how Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty relates to climate action. But I think we both really want to dig in on some of what those solutions can look like.
Leslie Anne St Amour 24:19
One of my favorite examples that I'll start with is when people literally just give their land back in our show notes, you'll find an example from CBC from a few years ago where a woman decided that she was going to give her land back to her local First Nation.
She lived in the Peterborough area I believe she had a farm, and it wasn't clear but it kind of sounded to me like she was retiring and no longer operating the farm as a farm, and so was returning a large portion of her property to the first nation, which is super cool. It's not the first time I've heard of people doing that. Often, it's for more specific purposes. So sometimes if someone has land that's in an area adjacent to a park or Protected Area sometimes, they'll return it to the local first nation that manages that protected area. Sometimes people do it in their wills. But there is the option to literally just give the land back if you're into it.
Kiran 25:15
So, I feel like we are both somebody I'm somewhat familiar with the mechanisms for the legal system and how certain first nations have successfully regained control over their land. Do you want to talk about Tsilquot'in?
Leslie Anne St Amour 25:33
And for those of you who don't know what case we're talking about, we'll include it in the show notes, and you can learn a little bit of history there. So, this case is important for a lot of reasons, and very, very exciting. Yes, so the case came out in the case was decided by the Supreme Court I believe back in 2014, and it was the first case that actually found an Indigenous community Canada had title to their land. This case was really interesting. Apparently because it didn't address the issue of private property. So, it's crown land. We call it. Yeah, crown lands, or public lands, and so it shows chocolaty nation, when they were bringing the same forward consulted with private landowners to make sure that they knew they weren't making claims to their private land. And when they brought this case forward, they had to prove that they had occupied this land prior to sovereignty, that they had exclusive and sufficient control over the land, and they had to bring evidence of this to court, which I gotta tell you, I can barely find evidence of like what I did last week, trying to do this and find evidence for something that happened, hundreds of years ago, it's challenging. And these cases are really expensive to bring forward so props to them. And I think it's worth emphasizing how high the evidentiary burden is to meet in order to successfully being a land or an average human rights claim, and two things flow from that. The first one is once again how inaccessible it is and how, in that sense, sometimes the legal system can be a narrower and more protracted and expensive solution, and the other aspect is that when they do succeed, there is strong, strong evidence in favor of this claim. Sometimes I get asked why Indigenous communities don't take the government to court, every time they're unhappy with the results of an environmental assessment or something like that Why do they protest Why do they talk about the media Why don't they just go to court every time. And part of it's because getting that evidence is so expensive the experts, you have to hire the people you have to bring to court to meet that threshold that you need to meet for the court to recognize that evidence is really challenging and often people don't have the resources to do that every time. Unfortunately, and so it's important to remember that if you hear a case went to court and it wasn't successful, but doesn't mean they don't have a very strong claim it doesn't mean that they don't have a history in that area, it can just mean that they weren't able to prove it to the way the court needed it.
Kiran 28:05
Absolutely.
Leslie Anne St Amour 28:06
This finding of title, also really ties into the duty to consult where the government is going to make a decision or take an action that may adversely affect an Aboriginal right or a claim to title, they have to consult with the first nation on that, or the Metis community or the community, but in the case we're talking about they were first nation communities.
Kiran 28:29
and that flows from section 35 of the Constitution,
Leslie Anne St Amour 28:32
you got it right section 35, which recognized firm's existing Aboriginal and treaty rights and defines Aboriginal people to include First Nations matey and in us. Yes. And so, because they had a successful claim for title which is one of the hardest thresholds to meet even compared to other Aboriginal rights. It gives them a really strong case for any consultation in their territory. And while the duty to consult doesn't necessarily require consent, it often requires accommodation. And so that can be compromising or what a project will look like it could need financial compensation, all kinds of different things that put this first nation in a really good position to have a say in the management
Kiran 29:18
of their land, their territory. But this into context I think this is such a big deal. There are so many things. Just to summarize a couple of. It's a big deal. I think that this type of litigation was only available fairly recently. So, this hasn't been something that's been available to Indigenous communities for a long time, only been post Canadian Charter, which is why we're seeing sort of Aboriginal rights and title theme sort of gaining momentum as the basis for the common law it's built over time. And, as some of these concepts that historically speaking have been regressive, and frankly, racist towards Indigenous people, especially early documents, but sometimes even more recent ones are being re interpreted by courts in a way that is more addressed.
And so, I think that's really important to remember and I think, as we've emphasized before the other thing that's important to remember is that the Supreme Court very intentionally in this case, set it as a template for negotiation.
Leslie Anne St Amour 30:18
They did not write to code with the intention that any title claim that wants to exist must come before the Supreme Court. And this is a problem that we're struggling with now, because we need to change, political, and cultural norms in order to permit these types of negotiations to occur outside of the legal system. If we want to see more positive results like this negotiation isn't everybody has to say yes nobody has to say. It's even one player acting in bad faith can negotiate. It can be really challenging to implement some of these really, really helpful actions like Indigenous led conservation that contributes to National Climate solutions, if not everybody's on board. And I think I hope that in the future, when we start to recognize the ability of Indigenous knowledge and epistemologies and worldviews and laws to be contributing to climate solutions tangibly that maybe the conversations around it oceans will start to change.
Kiran 31:19
Once we recognize the way Indigenous nations can be contributing to that, I hope, I believe also that it'll change the conversation around some of these negotiations as well, because it does make it more of a win win, whereas right now sometimes that political will is unfair because government and the public feel like they're giving something up in those negotiations, we need to purge, I think the opposite of a vicious cycle is a virtuous cycle. And I think that there are the ingredients of a virtuous cycle, if people do come with the intention to find solutions. I think the solution-oriented mindset is really key because we have all of the other ingredients, we have the legal principles we have the historical treaties, we have all the law. We know the facts, and sometimes they're pretty. And now we need the political will to move forward from them.
Leslie Anne St Amour 32:11
Totally. So, as in, if we did implement if we did if we did this.
Kiran 32:17
Can you picture of what the world of what the of what Canada is a picture of what Canada might look like? if we were able to successfully implement Indigenous learning into a few of these areas like fire management management.
Leslie Anne 32:30
I love this question, because you know I love to dream big. And I think this is gonna be an important part of the podcast it's like we want to show you what the world could be. Let me paint you a picture with my words. I like it. I think a lot of what it would look like, to me, is there's something called like Indigenous guardians which relates to land, which is often Indigenous people from local communities, being hands on engaged in restoration and research on their lands. And I think to me that's a really, really big part of what this will look like. So it'll be an Indigenous nation hosting experts on all different aspects of conservation of restoration, engaging with indigenous people and sharing that knowledge with Indigenous people who can then be on the land and acting to ensure that the prairie lands stay healthy and continue to hold carbon in the ground. Indigenous control over their lands and implementing climate solutions under Indigenous control is equity it's clean drinking water on reserves because how do you bring in experts to talk about land restoration if they can't.
Kiran 33:38
And I think that the land management perspective has a different timeframe in mind with these types of better management practices or thinking about managing these resources for great grandchildren, or not thinking about doing it for the next five years.
Leslie Anne 33:54
One of my teachings, is that when you do something you should be thinking of the next seven generations. And so, it's not only great grandchildren it's great great great great grandchildren. It really is thinking about a different type of timeframe it's taking a different perspective on these issues because we're not thinking about, you know, the next financial quarter we're not thinking about the next five years next 10 years we're thinking generations into the future and what kind of land, do I want to be leaving for those generations. I think it's so inspiring to think about my ability to leave the land in a better condition for the next generations then I received and it's helpful.
Kiran 34:38
And I think it's possible. Sometimes we fall into the trap of it's two weeks and it's not. And that's especially true. We can leave the land better than we found it.
And now for something a little bit fun.
Leslie Anne St Amour 34:56
So, welcome to climate allies for this episode. Every episode we want to highlight how different actors can come together to make our lives better when it comes to climate action this episode, we're going to highlight how both cancer researchers and climate activists should be really excited about wanting to protect our coral reefs. And we want to talk about this right now because recently there was a really exciting development in Coral Reef restoration. So, down in Florida. There's an organization called mote marine labs, mote marine labs operate both an aquarium, as well as an education center. Research Center, and wildlife rescue.
Kiran 35:36
Sounds like a place. I just feel like a picture Nemo there you know. He was hanging in Florida.
Leslie Anne St Amour 35:42
It's honestly one of my favorite places in the world, boat has been working for years and years now on rehabilitating coral colonies by raising corals in captivity to then be able to be reattached to reefs and I do say raising in captivity because yes, coral are animals. They're not just like rocks that look pretty. They are their own little critters many many and many of them. These little corals these little pups are placed on larger reefs, after they've been raised in captivity with the idea being that once they're a little bit more established, they'll be able to survive better. And recently, some of these corals that were raised specifically to be able to spawn at accelerated rates in order to speed up the restoration process spawned naturally in the environment on their own. Yay, the babies are all grown up. The reason I brought cancer researchers into this is because we know coral reefs are beautiful and stunning. But they're also a source of a lot of really interesting health related research cancer researchers have used the compounds found in coral reefs to develop treatments for cardiovascular disease, ulcers returnees inflammation, kill viruses, as well as to treat leukemia lymphoma, and skin cancer, and that all comes from the ecosystem of a coral reef. And so, bringing back and redeveloping these coral reefs allows us to continue to research them for our own benefit when it comes to our help. Well, as climate activists will know, they also work as an important mitigation measure when it comes to the impacts of climate change. One of the really big practical ones, is they act as surf breaks when we see really big tropical storms and hurricanes and helped protect people, as well as they are a carbon sink as those polyps build their hard little shells that they live in that you see there sequestering carbon. I also just got to plug Mote here. Mote Marine, they do all this really incredible work. They act as a rescue for dolphins and sea turtles and manatees that get stranded on beaches and things like that, you'd call it a boat and they'll come pick them up and they have an aquatic animal hospital. It's where I first fell in love with manatees which let me tell you as I has so many of my friends know I have four stuffed animals on my bed, two of which are manatees
Kiran 38:11
So that’s a high ratio. Considering how many animals are in the world, and you really love all animals so manatees.
Leslie Anne 38:21
My two favorite manatees in the world are humans Buffett, the resident half-brother manatees boat Marine, and if you like check out their website they sometimes have like live cams where you can like chill out and watch them.
Leslie Anne St Amour 38:34
Coral reefs are so important, and I hope all of the climate activists out there, and the cancer and other healthcare researchers can just come together to protect our coral reefs. Thank you so much everybody for joining us for our first episode as we are slowly figuring out this podcasting thing. If you're interested, we have a call to action for you based on the content of this episode today. We'd like to encourage you all to learn whose traditional territory your home is on. It's the first step to beginning to build a relationship with the Indigenous people of the land you call home. And if you want to learn more, check out our show notes where we have links to a variety of studies stats that we mentioned examples, and more.
Kiran 39:16
Here's a sneak peek of what we'll be talking about next episode. Do you feel like the climate conversation is spending a million miles an hour but going nowhere? Tune in two weeks from now to find out how you can change someone's mind about climate change, using a technique called motivational interviewing.
Also, this is where we shamelessly plug to rate review and subscribe. You can find this on Instagram, Twitter, as a worldwide web at rebalancingact.ca.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
