Search
-
Visit water bodyWater body
Mediterranean
A systemic and practical approach to preserving and restoring the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean has been an exceptionally biodiverse region for millennia. Today, countless species, including mammals, birds, fishes, amphibians, trees, plants, fungi, and other living beings, are facing predicted and already happening extreme climate change impacts and potentially devastating challenges to their existence. This is on top of the...
-
Read moreRepresentative
Thijs Middeldorp
Thijs Middeldorp (1978) is co-owner of campaign and design agency Partizan Publik, director of the Amsterdam 4 and 5 May committee, curator of the Groningen Atelier aan de Middendijk, co-founder of energy cooperative Amsterdam Energie and board member of various cultural organizations.
-
Visit water bodyWater body
Reuss
The Reuss is the river that characterises Central Switzerland. It flows from the Gotthard region in the canton of Uri to the north. Its water finally ends up in the North Sea. For a long time, its wild course in the region of origin was an obstacle to transport over the Gotthard Pass in the Alps. The crossing of...
-
Read moreRepresentative
Andrea Muehlebach
Andrea Muehlebach is a Professor of Maritime Anthropology and Cultures of Water at the University of Bremen. She is the author of “A Vital Frontier: Water Insurgencies in Europe” and is currently involved in a book-length project on the rights of nature movement and its relation to what many proponents call “Earth Law.” Here, she…
-
Read moreRepresentative
Maria Lucia Cruz Correia
Lucia is a water keeper, artist and the initiator of the Natural Contract Lab group. Since 2009, her work has reacted to the environmental crises of our times, weaving temporary and collaborative processes that are a living organism that keeps growing in kinship with rivers, resilient plants, trees and others.
-
Read moreRepresentative
Sabina Candusso
Sabina Candusso, 28, is currently living in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where her profession as a cultural and visual anthropologist merges with intense activity in communications and environmental justice. Here she works in support of Indigenous communities’ advocacy against aggressive extractive industries in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Her commitment to water justice is deeply rooted in her…
-
Read moreRepresentative
Dr Marian Bruce
After spending many years in academic research, Marian founded Highland Boundary, Scotland’s first botanical spirits distillery in 2016, where she is director and master distiller. Award- winning Highland Boundary spirits are produced on her small, re-wilded family farm at Kirklandbank in Alyth, Perthshire where she also manages livestock, holiday rental and sculpture businesses. She was also Enterprise Manager…
-
Read more
Landingpage
Confluence Mar Menor
-
Read moreNews
Watch the video of the confluence 2024 in Venice!
From all over Europe, from Iceland to Poland and Sweden, and from Norway to Spain, to Serbia and the UK, representatives of Europe’s lakes, seas, rivers and glaciers confluenced for the second edition of the Confluence of European Water Bodies 2024 at Ocean Space, Venice. Over 50 academics, lawyers, artists, ecologists and policy makers gathered…
-
Read moreRepresentative
Pieter Ippel
Pieter Ippel (1953) was a professor of law at Utrecht University and in Middelburg (Zeeland). He also worked at several other universities and was a government lawyer in The Hague. He is the author of a book about the growth of environmental and health law from the 1970s onward.
-
Visit water bodyWater body
Irish Sea and the River Liffey
“The River Liffey runs through the heart of Dublin as an enduring presence, shifting and layered. I don’t just represent the Liffey as a body of water, but as a living archive, a fluid witness to history, memory, and change. It holds within it the sediments of time—colonial trade routes, ancient crossings, ecological decline, whispered…
-
Read moreRepresentative
Ana Džakić
Ana Džakić is born in 1985 in Belgrade. She graduated from the Secondary School of Architecture and is currently employed full-time in the energy sector. A mother of two, she has been a long-time environmental activist and is the legal representative of the NGO White Heron 1165 – Bela Čaplja 1165 from Belgrade. She is…
-
Read moreRepresentative
Giga Tsikarishvili
Giga Tsikarishvili is a multidisciplinary artist and architect. Merging material intervention with posthumanist theory, he researches the affective traces and ecological wounds left on landscapes by extractive forces. Through teaching and site-specific speculative design, he challenges dominant urban and architectural practices. He seeks to heal nature-culture entanglements and foster deep, physical attunement with traumatised environments.
-
Visit water bodyWater body
Morača & Tara
As some of the last remaining wild rivers in Europe, Montenegro’s Morača and Tara rivers stand as monuments of extraordinary natural importance. The Tara River, home to the world’s second-largest canyon, showcases the grandeur of wild landscapes, while the Morača River, brimming with rich biodiversity, is the next candidate after Vjosa to attain “wild river national park” status.
-
Read moreRepresentative
Li An Phoa
Li An Phoa (1980) is the founder of the Drinkable Rivers movement. Over the past ten years, she has walked 21,000 kilometres along rivers; the Meuse river walk was the subject of the documentary Long Walk for Drinkable Rivers. She is the author of the book ‘Drinkable Rivers: How the River Becomes My Teacher’.
-
Read moreNews
GARN EU Hub x Confluence of European Water Bodies:
Rights of Nature Case Dialogue. A plunge into the river ReussWe invite ecologists, lawyers, philosophers, artists, designers, and activists to join the first online GARN EU Hub x Confluence of European Water Bodies Rights of Nature Case Dialogue. A plunge into the river Reuss on May 7, 2026, at 7:30 pm. Reuss Initiative This online dialogue spotlights the Reuss Initiative —a pioneering popular initiative (and…
-
Read moreRepresentative
Rosa Jijón
Rosa Jijón is an artist, activist and cultural mediator, former director of the CAC (Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito), CAC. She has participated in various international exhibitions.
-
Visit water bodyWater body
Piave
When the river Piave finally reaches the plain, just past Vidor bridge, it spreads widely across the area named ‘Grave di Ciano’ (Ciano Riverbeds), which comprises about 940 hectares of river ecosystems and represents a still intact biodiversity oasis of stunning beauty. Thanks to the rare species and habitats it hosts, the site is included in the 2000 Nature...
-
Read moreRepresentative
Nico Landsman
Nico Landsman (1955) formerly worked for the Province of Zeeland in water management and climate adaptation. He is inspired by Western Scheldt itself, philosophy, Western academic knowledge, Indigenous wisdom, and generations yet to be born. He is connected to the Earth Trusteeship Initiative, which triggered him to start Rights of the de Scheldt as a…
-
Read moreRepresentative
Thomas Fabre
Thomas Fabre is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Gustave-Eiffel University, under the supervision of Corine Pelluchon. He holds a master’s degree in philosophy from Panthéon-Sorbonne University and a master’s degree in environmental governance from AgroParisTech. Before that, he spent two years working for Nitidae, an NGO that promotes agroecological transition and combats deforestation in…
-
Read moreRepresentative
Carolijn Terwindt
Dr. Carolijn Terwindt (1979) is a lawyer, cultural anthropologist, author, and artist who joined the Embassy of the North Sea in 2021 to explore the possibility of creating a European network to strengthen the cultural transformation towards a real participation of nonhumans in politics.
-
Read moreRepresentative
Emilie Reuchlin
Emilie Reuchlin is the co-founder and managing director of the Doggerland Foundation. She is a marine biologist and political scientist with 15 years of experience in marine conservation in the international North Sea.
-
Read moreRepresentative
Clare Cooper
Clare is an independent creative producer, working across the fields of culture, nature restoration and tourism. She is co-founder and co-director of Tayside’s ‘museum without walls’, the Cateran Ecomuseum and with her sister, operates Vanora’s Cottages. Previously a member of Alyth Community Council and a founding Director of the Alyth Development Trust, she also served on the Local Action…
-
Visit water bodyWater body
Seine
‘The Seine is like a person,’ dreamed Prévert in 1957. Since 2020, the Seine Guardians collective has been working to turn this poem into a collective project. Opposing the anthropocentric view of life and its extractivist practices, the Seine Guardians collective defends a bioperspectivist view of the river, respecting the intrinsic value of nature. At…
-
See projectProject
Diplomatic suitcase
Diplomatic suitcase Water is vital for all life on Earth, yet the voices of water are rarely heard in political decision-making. Born out of growing water challenges and demands for water democracy worldwide, the Confluence of European Water Bodies sprang from a collective pursuit of a deeper understanding of the ‘Rights of Nature’ in Europe.…
-
Read moreRepresentative
Anna Chmiel
Anna Chmiel is a painter, multimedia artist, and key member of the Rivers Sisters collective from 2019. She seamlessly combines art with activism for nature, especially rivers.
-
Visit water bodyWater body
Vistula
There is a unique river in the heart of Europe, largely still free and wild, with a vibrant ecosystem – the Vistula, a European treasure. More than half of Poland’s area is in the basin of the Vistula, the longest river (1,047 km) in Poland. Despite the construction of dykes and regulatory structures along a stretch of several hundred...
-
Read moreRepresentative
Cecylia Malik
Cecylia Malik is is visual artist and environmental activist. She is part of the Save the Rivers Coalition. She is the author and the leader of the nationwide social campaign and collective ‘River Sisters’.
-
Visit water bodyWater body
Wattenmeer
Wattenmeer The Wadden Sea (Wattenmeer) is the largest unbroken tidal mud flats system in the world and consists of an unusual and highly dynamic sedimentary coast that ebbs and flows as sand, debris, mud, soil, and marine materials are distributed and redistributed over and over by the waves, tides, and currents. It is one of…
-
Read moreRepresentative
Tina Jelia
Tina Jelia is a literary researcher and poet exploring the body as a confluence of traces and an epistemic agent that archives knowledge voided from dominant cultural frameworks. Both as a researcher and an author, she approaches poetry as an embodied practice that can disrupt calcified oppressive structures and help us attend to the mutual…