Another Take: An English town’s take on rights of nature
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 749 Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2024
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Every Saturday, we revisit a story from the archives. This originally aired on May 25th, 2023. None of the references from that time have been changed.
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 UK. 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.
In this episode:
- Matthew Bird (@mjbirdy), mayor and former councillor of Lewes
Episode credits:
This episode was updated by Sarí el-Khalili. The original production team was Chloe K. Li, Miranda Lin, and our host, Malika Bilal. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan.
Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik. Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer.
Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
Connect with us:
@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hi, it's Saril Khalili, a senior producer with a take, and this is another take, where we bring you episodes from the archive. |
| 0:19.0 | English rivers are polluted. |
| 0:22.3 | One solution campaigners came up with is to give those rivers rights. |
| 0:27.8 | In March 2023, |
| 0:29.9 | counselors in the town of Lewis successfully passed a motion |
| 0:33.4 | that recognizes the legal rights of the river ooze. |
| 0:38.2 | Campaigners and counselors alike are looking to replicate this elsewhere in Britain. |
| 0:44.2 | We talked with the mayor and former counselor of Lewis Matthew Bird about his town's historical |
| 0:50.1 | accomplishment. |
| 0:51.9 | Here's that episode now. |
| 0:53.5 | But remember, none of the dates or other references have changed from May 25, 2023, when |
| 1:00.0 | it originally aired. |
| 1:24.6 | The River Ouse. The river ooze flows through southeastern England. On any given sunny day, you might see people swimming and dog splashing. But you might also see... On one side it was sewage, I think, and on one side it was sort of oil. |
| 1:29.7 | Pollution. |
| 1:30.9 | The river has a lot of it. |
| 1:33.0 | And in the UK, it's just one of many. |
| 1:36.8 | Not a single river in England |
| 1:38.6 | has received a completely clean bill of health |
| 1:40.8 | and it comes to chemical contamination. |
| 1:42.5 | Not one. |
| 1:43.7 | But thanks to a local push, the river Ouse might be the first to be granted legal rights in the country, |
... |
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