Resources and Links

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Earthwatch Europe: Connects people with nature and gives them the tools they need to fight for our planet. From fighting for healthy freshwater, bringing greenspaces to our cities or putting nature back into farming, we support communities and organisations to build knowledge, create connections and motivate action.

Friends of the Thames: This group focuses on connecting businesses with river conservation efforts, particularly on the River Thames. Building on the work of existing Guardians and covering any gaps so that the whole of the Thames is covered.

Guardians of our Rivers: This project, which feeds into The Riverfly Partnership, trains citizen scientists to monitor the health of their local rivers.

River Roding Trust: Focussed on a vision for the River Roding that flows through Essex to the Thames and is often said to be one of the least known rivers in London.

Sacred Earth Activism: Sacred Earth Activism CIC was formed in response to hearing the call for profound change and transformation that needs to take place if we want to live sustainable, humane and fulfilled lives, infused with a sense of connection to earth and the sacred. Their work is dedicated to environmental campaigning and sacred activism, bringing the sacred and earth-centred spirituality actively into the web of change through supporting, co-ordinating and initiating movements, protests, resistance initiatives, projects and change-makers.

Save the Wye: Aims are a clean and healthy river, an end to ALL pollution, the Wye to be restored to its former health and glory and immediate government action to protect the river Wye. There is now a Manifesto for the Wye which calls on the Governments of the UK and Wales to establish a single, cross-border approach to tackling the pollution crisis across the Wye catchment.

Universal Declaration of River Rights: to establish rights for all rivers. Legal personhood status was first granted to the Whanganui river in New Zealand and India’s Ganges in 2017; two years later Bangladesh legally designated all its rivers as legal persons and in 2021 guardians were appointed to represent the interests of Canada’s Mutuhekau Shipu in legal and environmental matters. Globally, over the past year, rights have been recognized or declared for Boulder Creek and the Boulder Creek Watershed (Nederland, USA, using language from the Declaration), the Magpie River (Canada), waterways in Orange County, Florida (USA), the Alpayacu River (Ecuador), and the Paraná River and Wetlands and Argentina (Rosario, Brazil).

Voices of Water are embarking on a long River journey in aid of their first ‘tributary’ mission and petition for the right and voice of UK Rivers and Rias (drowned river valleys). https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/731397

We Are Avon: aims to act upon the interwoven crises of river pollution, climate change and food insecurity. Led by the people, a diverse web of communities, regenerators, farmers and projects who collaborate to regenerate. There is now a Thriving Avon Charter based on the Universal Declaration of River Rights which states that the river has a right to flow free from pollution. 

River Action UK: This organization is a campaigning group focused on addressing pollution in British rivers. They work to influence government policy, mobilize public opinion, and call out destructive industrial practices. 

Right to Roam: n the UK, only a small fraction of riverbanks are freely accessible to the public. While there are approximately 42,700 miles of river, only around 1,400 miles have a clear, undisputed right of public access. This equates to roughly 3% of riverbanks being freely accessible. The remaining 97% are subject to private riparian rights, meaning the landowner controls access to the riverbank and riverbed. Right to Roam are campaigning for greater public access to rivers and our countryside. Their vision is of a future countryside in which people not only enjoy the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of nature but serve as its guardians too.

Regional River Trusts (see River Trust) offers educational programmes to schools on water health and safety, introduction ot rivers and terminology, water conseravation awareness games and invertebrate kick sampling and sorting.

Don Catchment Rivers Trust: They offer educational programs for schools and groups, including activities focused on river health and conservation.

Wessex Rivers Trust: Wessex Rivers Trust is an environmental charity dedicated to the conservation of chalk streams and rivers in Wessex, working towards healthy rivers for wildlife and people. We look at ways to improve local rivers for wildlife and work within catchment partnerships to help achieve their aims. Educating the public about the importance of our rivers increases their value to people, and ultimately builds support for the future of these fragile environments.

Books

Peter Ackroyd: Thames: Sacred River, 2008, Vintage

Mark Angelo: River Magic: A Paddler’s Global Journey, 2025 Hanncock House

Amy-Jane Beer: The Flow, 2023 Bloomsbury Publishing is a book about water, and, like water, it meanders, cascades and percolates through many lives, landscapes and stories. From West Country torrents to Levels and Fens, rocky Welsh canyons, the salmon highways of Scotland and the chalk rivers of the Yorkshire Wolds, Amy-Jane follows springs, streams and rivers to explore tributary themes of wildness and wonder, loss and healing, mythology and history, cyclicity and transformation.

Threading together places and voices from across Britain, The Flow is a profound, immersive exploration of our personal and ecological place in nature.

Robert MacFarlane: Is a River Alive? 2025 Hamish Hamilton. At the heart of this book is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings – who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law. Is a River Alive? takes the reader on an exhilarating exploration of the past, present and futures of this ancient, urgent concept.

Olivia Laing: To The River: A Journey Beneath the Surface, 2017, Canongate Canons tells the story of how Olivia Laing set out one midsummer morning to walk the banks of the River Ouse, from source to sea. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology and folklore.

Documentary

George Monbiot Rivercide' documentary 

Podcast

Celtic River Goddesses by Kris Hughes 

In this podcast The Rivers Trust are laying bare the state of rivers in the UK and Ireland, getting up close and personal with some of the issues that they face, and discussing what needs to be done to bring rivers back to life. 

Poetry

Poly-Olbion by poet Michael Drayton17th century, a poetic journey through the landscape, history, traditions and customs of England and Wales based on the oral traditions and ancient writings he had gathered. William Hole engraved the work’s frontispiece and maps relating to several counties, in which various locations and rivers were depicted with their own muses and goddesses. 

Ted Hughes: River, 1983, Faber & Faber River celebrates fluvial landscapes, their creatures and their regenerative powers. West Country rivers predominate ('The West Dart' and 'Torridge'), but other poems imagine or recall Japanese rivers or Celtic rivers, and 'The Gulkana' explores an ancient Alaskan watercourse. 

Robert MacFarlane: Riversong a "broadside ballad" which protests the slow death of rivers in the UK and around the world –– and sings for their revival. Free to downlaod, print and share.

Chants:

Algonquin Water Song: The song’s words mean ‘the water is the life's blood of our mother the earth. Water is the life's blood of our own bodies’.  50-75% of each of our bodies is water. The Algonquin women who composed this song, sung it as a lullaby and wanted to express their loving gratitude for the water and raise the consciousness and connection to Mother Nature’s greatest gift. They have taken all copyright off this song as they wanted the song shared throughout the world, and where possible to become part of our daily practice. To encourage us to re-member that Water is powerful, water is revered, water is sacred.

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"Rivers of the world, we thank you for the life you give. May your waters run clean, may your voices be heard, and may we walk as guardians beside you, from mountain to sea.” Carol Verdugo-Gonzalez

The River is Flowing: (Lindie Lila version)

The river is flowing flowing and growing
The river is flowing back to the sea
Mother Earth is carrying me her child I will always be
Mother Earth carry me back to the sea

Blessings:

Speak aloud this water blessing (maybe followed by an oath of peace and three awens).

'We pray for healing blessings on the waters

We pray for healing blessings on the sea

We pray for healing blessings on the rivers

That they may shine in crystal purity.'

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"Praise and gratitude to the sacred waters of the world, to the oceans, the mother of life, the womb of the plant life that freshens our air with oxygen, the brew that is stirred by sunlight and the moon's gravity into the great currents and tides that move across the earth, circulating the means of life, bringing warmth to the frozen Arctic and cool, fresh winds to the tropics. We give thanks for the blessed clouds and the rain that brings the gift of life to the land, that eases the thirst of roots, that grows the trees and sustains life even in the dry desert. We give thanks for the springs that bring life-giving water up from the ground, for the small streams and creeks, for the mighty rivers. We praise the beauty of water, the sparkle of the sunlight on a blue lake, the shimmer of moonlight on the ocean's waves, the white spray of the waterfall. We take delight in the sweet singing of the dancing stream and the roar of the river in the flood.

"We ask help to know within ourselves all the powers of water: to wear down and to build up, to ebb and to flow, to nurture and to destroy, to merge and to separate. We know that water has great powers of healing and cleansing, and we also know that water is vulnerable to contamination and pollution. We ask help in our work as healers, in our efforts to ensure that the waters of the world run clean and run free, that all the earth's children have the water they need to sustain abundance of life. Blessed be the water."
— Starhawk in The Earth Path

Quotes:

“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it.

If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore;

if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water;

if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber;

if other species are biological kin, not resources;

or if the planet is our Mother, not an opportunity-then we will treat each other with greater respect.

Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.” David Suzuki

‘You will always find an answer in the sound of water.’ Zhuangzi