An English town’s take on rights of nature made it to Al Jazeera’s recent Podcast the Take, when a town in England – Lewes – voted to recognize the rights of its river, the River Ouse.
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Al Jazeera writes:
An English town’s take on rights of nature…
English rivers are polluted. Could giving them legal rights clean them up? In the town of Lewes, the answer to that question was yes. In February, the town’s council voted yes to a rights of river motion, the first in the United Kingdom. This motion is the first step in a two-year long journey to give the River Ouse legal representation and rights. The UK is facing heavy river pollution: most of them are not swimmable, and all failed a quality test in 2019. Since then, government testing of rivers has only plummeted. Lewes’ council now takes on the task of figuring out what exactly rights of a river should be.
Read more….and see the podcast
