‘Across the Rights of Nature movement, which is an evolving framework, legal custodians play a vital role in fostering care and respect for nature, taking action on behalf of nature, and ensuring a duty to protect across generations. Yet, how does one represent, respond with care and carry out duties – how can we become custodians of the ocean?’ Excerpt from Rights of the Deep, Emma Critchley and collaborators
This event brings together artists, community initiatives and custodians engaged in the growing movements for the Rights of Nature globally. Rights of Nature advocates call for the legal recognition of ecosystems, allowing entities such as animals, bodies of water or mountains to obtain their own personhood. The roundtable will connect with transnational conversations on the rights of rivers and oceans as well as reflect on how to rebuild celebratory connections and kinship with land and waterways. Together we will explore how to meaningfully include and represent the voices of bodies of water – from small streams to the global Ocean – in human assemblies.
This event includes Carolina Caycedo, Emma Critchley, Love our Ouse and Anne Robertson, who will share glimpses into their collaborations with diverse bodies of water, from the Yuma River in Colombia, to the Ouse in Sussex.
Carolina Caycedo
Carolina Caycedo is a Colombian artist born in London and living in Los Angeles. Her works are gateways into larger discussions about how we treat each other and the world around us. Engaging with issues of water and land stewardship and food sovereignty she enquires into ways of being on Earth that foster sustaining and caring relationships. She invites viewers to consider the unsustainable pace of growth under capitalism and how we might embrace resistance and solidarity.
Emma Critchley
Emma Critchley uses water as a formal material property within a range of media including film, photography, sound, installation and dance. Her work explores the underwater environment as a political, philosophical and ecological space. Her work has been shown extensively nationally and internationally in galleries and institutions. Her current project Soundings, explores how to connect with the deep ocean to help foster the meaningful connection needed to inspire care for the deep sea and its ecosystems.
Love Our Ouse
Love Our Ouse is a community initiative linking people to celebrate, raise the profile of and upscale positive action for the Sussex Ouse from source to sea. They believe the river has the right to support a rich biodiversity and a thriving riverside community. Love Our Ouse led the creation of rights for the Ouse, with local stakeholders and community consultation, which recently saw the first council formally support a River Charter in the UK.
Anne Robertson
Anne Robertson is an environmental scientist with interests in Freshwater Biodiversity- and in particular the biodiversity of groundwaters. The impact on freshwater ecosystems of disturbances such as climate change and emerging contaminants including microplastics. Monitoring and conservation of groundwater ecosystems.
She is increasingly interested in developing interdisciplinary approaches to address complex problems such as poor river quality. She is working with lawyers, philosophers, economists and social anthropologists to discover how a Rights of Nature approach might improve the current poor water quality of UK rivers. Her work is supported by a variety of funders including the Leverhulme Trust, UKRI, Environment Agency and British Council.
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