SG - Contested Currents: From Exploitation to Protection

About Contested Currents: From Exploitation to Protection

Can a river be disputed?What do we actually know about competing claims on rivers all around us?How are conflicts around river commons playing out in real time? And how do each and every one of us figure into this?We pose these questions to two WUR scholars who will share their ongoing work to understand the complexities of river contestation playing out in real time around the globe. How do river exploitation opportunities for some amount to existential river crises for others?Wageningen researchers Carolina Cuevas and Carlota Houart share a number of local cases from different continents. In these, not only are conventional ideas about power revisited, but we are invited to consider the evolving empowerment of diverse, often marginalised stakeholders. What does their river research reveal about grassroots initiatives and agency? What trends does their work signal regarding the value of rivers? How do these speak to the heart of our societal notions about development, progress, and modernity? To what extent are competing claims, contradictions and incongruences around riverine resources telling us something about the adaptability of neo-liberalism and commercialisation? Consider these questions and more, as we ponder together what research tells us about grassroots initiatives and opportunities for agency & responsibility for river commons in a complex world.

About Carlota Houart

Carlota Houart is a PhD researcher at Wageningen University, working within the international project "Riverhood: Living Rivers and New Water Justice Movements". Her PhD research focuses on multispecies justice in river territories, inviting critical reflections on the agency and political representation of human and other-than-human beings in shared river worlds and river lives. Carlota is also a member of the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature and has been active with socio-environmental activist groups like Extinction Rebellion.

About Carolina Cuevas

Carolina Cuevas Parra is a feminist researcher from Mexico. She is conducting her PhD activist-research within the project “Riverhood: Living Rivers and New Water Justice Movements” on practices of river care in Colombia and Andalusia. She co-developed the collaborative sound installation “A Chorus of Singing Rivers”, exploring art-based methods as affective ways of researching and living with bodies of water.