River Guardians Summit, hosted by Sheepdrove Organic Farm
We wanted to share some of the recent work we have been doing at Lawyers for Nature, and some news, updates and what to look out for in the coming months.
River Guardianship Summit - Sheepdrove Organic Farm
We have long held the view that one of the main pillars of the Rights of Nature movement and one of the core mechanisms for realising or enforcing legal rights for nature - is guardianship.
We also believe it is vital to champion the local communities who work tirelessly to care for the land, rivers and nature they are connected with and love. They are often the drivers behind Rights of Nature movements and their work is often under-resourced and under-recognised.
Our co-founder, Paul Powlesland has lived on a boat on the River Roding for many years and in 2019 he founded the River Roding Trust, where he works passionately as a volunteer guardian of the river. In his role as a guardian he undertakes practical action and campaigning to protect and restore the river, uphold its rights, and speak for the river’s interests. Paul’s relationship with the river provides Lawyers for Nature with practical examples of how our current legal and regulatory system is failing and how Nature Guardianship can instead provide a practical, legal, and philosophical way forward.
It was his work on the Roding which inspired us to convene and bring together river guardians from across the country to exchange knowledge and skills and to share their personal stories about the rivers they love and the lessons they have learned about how best to protect them. The River Guardians Summit of over 50 people working alongside rivers is happening this weekend, hosted at Sheepdrove Organic Farm, who are generously sponsoring the event.
We will be hearing from a wonderful array of volunteers, river guardians, lawyers and ecological experts who all have a shared goal in common: to help to protect and restore the rivers we live beside, swim in, walk along and love.
We are at capacity for this summit but we know that the information shared will be of great value to everyone who attends and those not able to come, so we are planning to film the event and then create a River Guardianship programme, video content and documents from the three days will be free to download from our website after the event.
Nature on the Board Toolkits
We are in the process of creating a Nature Director course (more details to follow) and in the meantime we will be releasing a number of open source toolkits to help any organisation embed the voice of nature into spaces and decision-making processes.
Nature on the Board Webinars
Our co-founder Brontie Ansell will be talking about nature governance on November 12 at 10am as part of a wonderful series of webinars organised by our friend and collaborator Tom Johnstone - you can register here.
The other webinars are on fascinating topics and you can find the links to sign up here:
Brontie and Jessie will also be participating in a webinar on 17 November at 8.30am - alongside Kellie Dalton of House of Hackney and Laura Ford at Faith in Nature in collaboration with Earth Laws to talk about Nature on the Board for Australian Organisations. This is open for everyone to join and the sign up link will be shared on LinkedIn in due course.
If you would like to hear more about anything we’ve mentioned, express an interest in our Nature Director course or if you missed the opportunity to attend the River Guardians Summit but would be interested in an in person River Guardianship course next year, please get in touch here.
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