What would change if the law treated a river not as property or a resource, but as a living entity with rights of its own?

In this episode, Dave and Claire speak with international barrister Monica Feria-Tinta, author of A Barrister for the Earth: Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future. Monica explains how environmental law is beginning to move beyond its traditional, human-centred perspective and recognise that rivers, forests and ecosystems possess an inherent right to exist, flourish and recover from harm.

The conversation explores the influence of Indigenous knowledge, including Monica’s own Quechua heritage and a worldview in which humanity is not separate from nature. She discusses the growing rights of rivers movement in Britain, from the River Ouse and River Wye to emerging work along the River Severn, and considers whether these local initiatives could eventually influence the constitutional development of environmental rights across the UK.

Monica also takes us inside landmark international cases. She explains how Ecuador’s Los Cedros cloud forest was protected from gold mining despite having no human population to represent it, and how Spain’s Mar Menor lagoon is now bringing a case in its own name before the European Court of Human Rights.

Finally, the discussion turns to what communities and citizen scientists can do. Monica argues that water-quality testing, ecological monitoring, historical records and local knowledge can collectively establish the identity and needs of a river—and provide the foundations for legal action, restoration and a more democratic approach to environmental protection.

• Why Monica wrote A Barrister for the Earth
• How international law can help enforce climate obligations
• What it means for a river to possess legal rights
• Why companies can be legal persons while rivers remain legal objects
• What Indigenous knowledge can teach industrialised societies
• The relationship between human health and the natural world
• The River Ouse Charter and Britain’s growing rights of rivers movement
• Why the River Wye represents an important milestone
• How local communities and councils can change environmental governance
• What Spain’s Mar Menor teaches us about legal personhood
• How rights of nature could help hold large corporations accountable
• The successful campaign to protect Ecuador’s Los Cedros cloud forest
• Why scientific and citizen-generated evidence matters
• How communities can turn local knowledge into legal and political action