Hope, Justice and Water: Inside the Dublin Screening of Our Blue World
Progress often begins with storytelling, community-building and the empowerment of people who already feel deeply connected to water. Trinity’s panel captured that spirit, blending scientific precision with cultural wisdom and a strong sense of responsibility.
The film asks audiences to fall back in love with water. In Dublin, that invitation became a wider call: to remember that we are nature, to act with courage, and to build the future together.
This week in Dublin, Our Blue World was welcomed into an auditorium where ideas travelled as widely as the film itself. At Trinity Business School, the screening was followed by a thoughtful and deeply grounded panel discussion with Mary Robinson, Paul O’Callaghan, and Prof. Nessa O’Connor, moderated by Aoife Kelleher.
While Amsterdam’s panel just a day later leaned into community action and lived practice, the Dublin event positioned water within a wider planetary, cultural and justice-driven frame. The result was a conversation defined by clarity, warmth and a sense of responsibility that felt both urgent and hopeful.
Mary Robinson — former President of Ireland, climate justice advocate, guardian of the planetary boundaries and Adjunct Professor at Trinity — brought a global lens to the room. Prof. Nessa O’Connor, a marine ecologist, connected freshwater and ocean systems with precision and optimism. And Paul O’Callaghan, Executive Producer of Our Blue World, shared the journey that shaped the film and the lessons gathered from rivers, forests and communities around the world.
Together, they explored how reconnecting with water can reorient our values, actions and long-term imagination.
“We are nature — and we must act like it.” – Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson began by acknowledging what resonated most strongly with her: the film’s constant thread that we arenature, not separate from it. She spoke about how indigenous wisdom, long disregarded in global policy discourse, is now recognised as essential to repairing planetary systems.
Her perspective carried the weight of scientific reality. As a guardian of the planetary boundaries initiative, she reflected on how freshwater, biodiversity, oceans, climate and land use are intrinsically linked. She warned that humanity is breaching seven of the nine boundaries — and that freshwater is both a symptom and a determinant of the planetary crisis.
Yet her framing was not despairing. She spoke of hope as action, telling the story of listening to a melting glacier in Greenland and realising emotionally, not just intellectually, what is at stake. She explained why storytelling and cultural connection — music, ritual, art — are just as crucial as scientific data in shifting hearts and catalysing public will.
Above all, she emphasised that every community can act, and that justice must be central. Those working on the ground, she reminded the audience, receive only a fraction of climate finance. Real progress requires redirecting resources, power and attention toward the people who sustain ecosystems every day.
“We have the science. The challenge is implementing it.” – Prof. Nessa O’Connor
Prof. Nessa O’Connor brought an ecological clarity to the discussion, linking Ireland’s coasts and marine systems to the freshwater stories shown in the film.
She noted that although much of the teaching in marine ecology can feel bleak — coral bleaching, biodiversity decline, acidifying oceans — there is an emerging wave of regenerative ocean farming and coastal restoration that offers tangible paths forward. Shellfish, kelp forests, oysters and mussel beds can restore water quality, rebuild biodiversity and provide sustainable food sources when cultivated responsibly.
But O’Connor also highlighted the barrier that repeatedly surfaced across the evening: solutions exist, yet political and social willingness often lags behind. Communities want action. Science supports action. Nature desperately needs action. But decisions are still shaped by short-term interests and administrative inertia.
Her message grounded the room: ecological systems can rebound when given the chance. The question is whether we will give them that chance in time.
“Water connects everything — and personal stories can shift the narrative.” – Paul O’Callaghan
For Paul O’Callaghan, the film is rooted in a personal journey. Growing up in Middleton, County Cork, he formed his earliest memories around a body of water that shaped his understanding of place, belonging and responsibility. Seeing that water polluted as a teenager was a turning point — one that eventually led him into marine biology, freshwater management, and a global career exploring water innovation.
He described the experience of filming Our Blue World: travelling across continents, speaking with innovators, elders, farmers, ecologists, and indigenous leaders, and realising that the same renaissance of reconnection was emerging everywhere. People separated by geography, language and culture were rediscovering ancient relationships with water at the same moment in history.
A key insight from his journey: climate change is not only something we experience through floods, droughts and storms. The way we manage freshwater systems can also influence climate outcomes. Sponge cities, restored wetlands, rewatered landscapes — these solutions are climate solutions.
He also reiterated the film’s driving idea: if values shift, systems can shift. Stories can unlock that shift. The emotional impact of a film like My Octopus Teacher, he noted, changed how people saw the ocean. He hoped Our Blue World could help people see water with a similar sense of intimacy and responsibility.