The Blue River Declaration | 2011
What are we to do when our guiding ethics have sent civilization barreling toward ecological limits and collapse? How can we pivot our morality to align with ecological principles? How can we ensure the mutual flourishing of future humans, animals, plants and systems? These are the questions that compelled a quorum of leading environmental writers, philosophers and scholars to gather at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in 2011.
Under the ancient cedars and along the banks of the Blue River, these visionaries crafted “The Blue River Declaration: An Ethic of the Earth,” illuminating a just path forward for humans who are inescapably dependent on the interconnected, creative and imperiled planet. It is a bold, imaginative and courageous statement about the role that humanity can and must play and the joy that’s possible in taking up that responsibility.
The Participants
The Blue River quorum included J. Baird Callicott, Madeline Cantwell, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Kristie Dotson, Charles Goodrich, Patricia Hasbach, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Mark Hixon, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Katie McShane, Kathleen Dean Moore, Nalini Nadkarni, Michael P. Nelson, Harmony Paulsen, Devon G. Pena, Libby Roderick, Kim Stanley Robinson, Fred Swanson, Bron Taylor, Allen Thompson, Kyle Powys Whyte, Priscilla Solis Ybarra, Gretel Van Wieren and Jan Zwicky.
The gathering was convened by the Spring Creek Project and made possible by support from the Shotpouch Foundation, the Oregon Council for the Humanities and the U.S. Forest Service. Thanks also to Orion Magazine for publishing this excerpt of the Blue River Declaration.
