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.

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Another Take: An English town’s take on rights of nature

The Take

Another Take: An English town’s take on rights of nature