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Hello. Even though the poetry

1:01

lessons at my secondary school were quite

1:04

pedantic enough to rob even the noblest

1:06

verse of its majesty and meaning,

1:09

some things I learnt parrot fashion at that time

1:12

have stayed lodged in my head and like

1:14

oyster grit have grown in significance,

1:18

in beauty even, over time. And

1:20

this is particularly true of some lines

1:23

in the Wordsworth sonnet, The World

1:25

is Too Much With Us, a lament for

1:27

the way in which our obsession with getting

1:30

and spending has robbed us of our

1:32

deep links with the natural world. I'd

1:34

rather be a pagan than

1:37

lose those links to nature, Wordsworth

1:39

declares. Well, a rather wonderful new

1:41

book seeks to restore our links

1:44

to a singular natural substance

1:47

by looking at how those outworn

1:49

creeds, that's Wordsworth's phrase, once

1:52

expressed their relationship with water

1:55

and the consequences for all of us of

1:57

losing those ways of thinking.

1:59

And that book is entitled Water

2:02

Beings, from Nature Worship

2:04

to the Environmental Crisis. And

2:06

its author who now joins me in the studio is

2:09

Veronica Strang, Professor of Anthropology,

2:11

affiliated to Oxford University.

2:15

Veronica, let me start with your title, Water

2:17

Beings. Can you start

2:19

perhaps by telling me what water beings

2:22

are and why they appear so

2:24

ubiquitously around the world?

2:26

Water beings are the ancestral

2:29

or supernatural figures that appeared

2:32

in early human history when people

2:34

worshipped nature and its elements.

2:37

And they can be seen in the most ancient rock carvings

2:40

and paintings and later in a whole

2:42

array of fabulous objects and

2:44

images. And they are, in essence, personifications

2:48

of the powers of water. And because

2:50

they personify water, they reflect

2:53

its material characteristics. They take

2:55

on its fluid serpentine shapes,

2:57

its movements and colours, and its

3:00

capacities to generate an orderly

3:02

cycle of life or to bring disorder

3:05

and chaos. And this

3:06

is produced a fascinating family

3:09

of

3:09

serpentine water beings all around the

3:12

world who, though they're culturally

3:14

and historically diverse,

3:16

represent water in all its earthly

3:18

and airborne forms. So

3:21

just to give you a few examples, we have things like

3:23

giant anacondas in Amazonia, Japanese

3:26

cloud dragons, Indian nagas,

3:29

Mayan plumed serpents, African

3:31

python beings, and ascending and

3:34

descending Chinese dragons. But

3:36

all of these beings share a primary

3:39

role to represent the hydrological

3:41

flows of water through the environment and

3:44

to bring rain and,

3:45

above all, fertility. What

3:47

were you hoping to explore, though? I mean, why did you

3:49

go in that direction? Why did you start looking

3:52

at this in the first place?

3:53

My research has always focused on people's

3:55

relationships with water. So

3:58

as water issues have become more pressing, I think that's a great question.

3:59

around the world, it's become

4:01

vitally important to understand

4:04

why society's relationships with the non-human

4:06

domain have followed very different

4:09

trajectories. And examining what

4:11

has happened to water beings in

4:13

different times and places

4:16

tells us a great deal about how and

4:18

why so many society's relationships

4:21

with water and the environment have moved

4:23

away from reciprocal and sustainable

4:25

partnerships

4:26

to more exploitative

4:28

practices. I mean there are lots of

4:30

really quite exceptional pictures

4:33

and objects, artworks representing

4:35

these water beings which you have in your book.

4:38

Let's just talk about one, the Australian

4:40

Rainbow Serpent.

4:41

Well, the Rainbow Serpent is a perfect

4:43

example of a water being that upholds

4:46

sustainable human environmental relations.

4:49

So it comes from a society

4:50

that maintained traditional

4:52

ways of life for many millennia. And

4:54

like many water beings, it's a primary

4:57

actor in cosmic origin stories.

5:00

The Rainbow Serpent generated all

5:02

of the other totemic ancestors including

5:04

humans who formed the landscape

5:07

and it remains as a powerful presence

5:10

in all

5:10

water bodies, generating life

5:12

of all kinds.

5:13

And performing a hydro-theological

5:16

cycle, it also carries the human

5:19

spirit out of the waters held

5:21

into the land, into the material

5:23

world and then end of life

5:25

back into the ancestral domain.

5:28

And the Rainbow Serpent is also the source of

5:30

what Aboriginal Australians

5:31

call the law,

5:32

which is a body of knowledge underpinning

5:35

every aspect of their lives. So in

5:37

this sense, like many water beings,

5:40

it brings consciousness and enlightenment.

5:43

It upholds social rules and

5:45

punishes transgressions with floods

5:48

and droughts. And as this implies,

5:50

its central role is to represent the power

5:53

of the non-human domain and to maintain

5:55

that creative partnership with humankind,

5:58

making sure no

5:59

harm comes.

5:59

comes to the local environment or its

6:02

inhabitants and supporting their

6:04

collective

6:04

wellbeing. You begin

6:06

to see, I think, changes

6:09

in the way that the water serpents

6:11

are represented as

6:13

you get that shift between humans

6:15

and environment. Yes,

6:17

one of the most fascinating patterns of

6:19

change to be revealed by this study

6:21

is that although small

6:24

place-based communities generally worship

6:26

non-human beings and aspects

6:28

of the natural world, as societies

6:31

enlarged became more stratified

6:34

and developed technologies giving them instrumental

6:36

control over the environment, they

6:38

tended to humanise their deities.

6:41

So in these societies, serpentine

6:43

water beings changed form.

6:45

They sometimes acquired human heads

6:48

and torsos or they humanised entirely

6:50

or they were simply displaced by deities

6:53

in human form. But in many parts

6:55

of the world where new patriarchal religions

6:58

sought to replace earlier beliefs

7:00

and to separate male culture from

7:03

female nature, water beings were

7:05

demonised and male culture heroes

7:07

such as St George indulged

7:09

in an orgy of dragon slaying.

7:13

And what this transformation of deities into

7:15

human form reveals is a critical

7:18

shift in power relations in

7:20

which many societies went from worshipping

7:23

and respecting nature to seeking

7:25

dominion and control over it. And

7:28

in the process, they moved towards the

7:30

practices that have led to the

7:32

current environmental crisis. In

7:34

recent centuries of technological developments,

7:37

we've seen the whole scale redirection

7:39

of freshwater flows into supporting

7:42

human interests. So agriculture has

7:44

expanded

7:44

and intensified.

7:46

And in

7:50

the last two centuries, with that expansion

7:52

and with the political centralisation that

7:54

are encouraged, infrastructures designed

7:57

to control water have underpinned

7:59

grand and visions of growth and development

8:02

and the establishment of nation states.

8:05

And along with that, the science and engineering

8:08

necessary to these ambitions has

8:10

also created a new vision of water, not

8:13

as a sentient and powerful creative

8:15

partner in human lives, but as an asset,

8:18

a resource composed of H2O. That

8:22

shift to water as a resource

8:25

has had very serious consequences,

8:27

you want to point out fresh saltwater

8:29

ecosystems and oceans around the world have

8:31

been critically compromised,

8:34

you want to say, by our activities. Tell

8:36

me a bit more about the nature of that compromise.

8:39

Today more than 70% of the world's fresh

8:41

water is used to irrigate crops,

8:44

which is quite literally a massive drain on

8:46

ecosystems. A thousand years

8:48

ago, less than 4% of the

8:51

planet's habitable land was used for agriculture,

8:54

and today farming takes up more than 50% of it.

8:57

For example, in the UK, just in the last 100

9:00

years, we've lost 90% of our wetlands. All

9:03

kinds of natural resources being overused and

9:05

rivers and seas around the globe have been

9:07

very heavily impacted by pollution

9:10

from human activities. So the result

9:12

is a rocketing acceleration in species

9:15

extinctions, to the extent that a UN report

9:17

in 2019 predicted that

9:19

nearly a million species,

9:20

that's one in four of all species, is

9:23

now at risk,

9:24

as indeed are all species, including

9:26

humans, if we fail to address the

9:28

causes of climate change more

9:30

urgently than is happening at the moment. Now

9:33

we know that these concerns about ecological

9:36

destruction led to various

9:38

sorts of process in recent years. I've got a clip

9:41

here, it's just from a BBC News

9:43

online report back in

9:45

December 2016. It's covering a protest

9:48

against the construction of a massive oil pipeline

9:51

in the US, which grew into,

9:53

the protest grew into, what could

9:55

be the largest gathering of Indigenous

9:57

tribes in the century, round about.

10:01

10,000 people camped at the site in North Dakota

10:03

in 2016 and there were violent

10:05

clashes with the police.

10:07

The pipeline is being built along

10:10

the horizon here and it's almost complete

10:12

apart from a short section which would

10:14

go under the reservoir

10:17

in the distance which joins the Missouri

10:19

River. And

10:22

for the Sioux, water from the Missouri

10:24

is both vital and sacred. These

10:28

tribesfolk have paddled nearly 200 miles to

10:31

join the protest at the Standing

10:33

Rock Reservation.

10:35

We come all this way down the hill

10:37

in waters

10:39

to hear my people in

10:41

Standing Rock, my Indian

10:44

people, my family. This

10:47

is what it is for, to break

10:49

the black snake or not

10:51

to ever come up again. Get

10:54

down!

10:56

References there to the

10:58

black snake picking up on your serpent.

11:01

I mean water serpents have become an important

11:04

symbol of protest, I think, particularly from

11:06

Indigenous communities. Tell me a bit about

11:08

those developments and the snake is coming back

11:10

again if you like.

11:11

As Indigenous communities have sought to re-establish

11:14

their rights and to protest against

11:16

the damage that colonizing societies and multinational

11:19

corporations have done to their homelands, these

11:22

water beings have resurfaced in political

11:25

debate. So in New Zealand, for example,

11:27

Maori communities have deployed their tannifah,

11:30

which are river guardian spirits, in

11:32

conflict about water rights and proposed

11:34

developments, explaining that these

11:37

beings will be angered if the waterways

11:39

and tribes connected to them are harmed

11:41

in any way. Which is, of course, a way of saying

11:44

that the non-human domain, as well as Indigenous

11:46

rights, need to be respected. And

11:49

just recently in Australia, I provided

11:51

some anthropological advice in a major legal

11:54

case in which the Aboriginal traditional

11:56

owners in the Tiwi Islands

11:58

argued that their marine rights rainbow serpents

12:01

and therefore their community would

12:03

be devastated if an international

12:05

fossil fuel corporation was allowed

12:07

to proceed with a multi-billion

12:09

dollar project to drill into a nearby

12:11

reef and extract hydrocarbons.

12:14

And the islanders argued that their

12:16

rainbow serpent, MPG, protects

12:19

them and shows itself when their sea

12:21

country is endangered. I just

12:23

want to turn a little bit to the arts

12:26

because you suggested water serpent

12:28

beings are alive and well because

12:30

they represent old and new ways of engaging

12:33

with the non-human world and its powers. I

12:35

mean tell me about the most striking examples

12:37

here, what they signify in your view.

12:41

Water beings have continued to have a central role in

12:43

indigenous communities but in larger societies

12:45

they've been sort of sidelined or

12:48

demonised by more dominant religious

12:50

beliefs or disenchanted by

12:52

scientific ways of thinking. But in the arts

12:54

and literature and in folklore culture

12:58

they've maintained a very strong presence.

13:01

Serpentine water beings, in particular

13:04

the lightning and fire spitting dragons, have

13:06

an abiding fascination for people.

13:09

In western societies particularly post-medieval

13:12

arts and literature tended to go along with the

13:14

church's demonisation of serpent

13:16

beings representing them as evil

13:18

adversaries to be slain by male

13:21

culture heroes.

13:21

But

13:23

since the 1960s, as

13:25

concerns about the environment have gained

13:27

traction,

13:28

there has been a shift towards much more sympathetic

13:31

images of them. In popular fiction

13:33

Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea

13:35

Dragons share ancestry with human

13:38

beings and speak the language of creation.

13:40

In Anne MacCaffrey's books the

13:43

dragons have a telepathic link with

13:45

their human writers. And Radio 4

13:48

listeners may remember James Cameron's film

13:50

The Abyss in which a most wonderful

13:52

sea serpent being very clearly composed

13:54

of water proves to be empathetic

13:57

and curious, changing its features to

13:59

mirror the face of the film's

14:02

heroine. So I would suggest that

14:05

this move in the arts and culture towards

14:07

rapprochement with beings representing

14:09

the powers of water and non-human

14:12

creativity reflects rising

14:14

concern about planetary well-being

14:17

and a desire for real changes. When

14:19

you look at the way in which, say, the United

14:21

Nations is addressing the issue of water,

14:23

where they're focusing on clean

14:26

drinking water and sanitation

14:28

for disadvantaged communities, what

14:30

does your research lead

14:32

you to say is absent from what

14:35

the United Nations are doing? It remains politically

14:37

vital for it to continue to prioritize

14:40

clean water and sanitation for the many

14:42

people who still don't have access to these.

14:45

But having worked with a UN

14:46

panel charged with setting out some principles

14:49

of water to

14:49

underpin the sustainable development goals,

14:52

I would say that particularly

14:54

with increasing input from Indigenous

14:57

communities, UN conversations

14:59

have broadened and they've started to

15:02

involve recognition

15:02

that just focusing on human

15:05

access to clean water

15:06

can only be achieved by protecting the

15:08

ecosystems through which water flows.

15:11

So

15:11

senior UN leaders have become quite

15:14

open to discussing the

15:15

problems caused by focusing exclusively

15:18

on human rights to water. Do we need

15:20

a UN Declaration for Non-human

15:22

Rights? Do we need international

15:24

laws against the eco-side? Do

15:26

we need international earth law legislation

15:30

to protect non-human beings? But

15:32

of course this requires a big shift

15:35

on a global scale, quite radical rethink.

15:38

And in this respect, the lovely

15:40

water beings in my book have an important

15:43

story to tell about how

15:45

humankind moved away from venerating

15:48

nature to where we are today and

15:50

more importantly how we can now think creatively

15:52

about new more thoughtful ways

15:55

of engaging with water to support

15:57

long-term human and non-human.

15:59

flourishing. And there we must stop Veronica

16:02

Strang, thank you very much. I see that

16:04

you conclude your magisterial

16:06

work with the hope that your demonstration

16:09

of the creative powers of water and

16:12

the realities of human non-human relationships

16:14

will help to inform the debates and

16:17

decisions that determine the future of life

16:19

on earth. Well I'm delighted that I'm

16:21

now joined by another anthropologist who's

16:23

placed those very debates and decisions

16:26

at the centre of her research work.

16:29

She is Anna Mday, Professor

16:31

in the Politics and Global Development at the University

16:34

of Leeds and co-author with Ruth Sylvester

16:36

and Paul Hutchings of an article

16:38

in the Water Policy Journal entitled

16:41

Defining and Acting on Water

16:43

Poverty in England and Wales.

16:46

Now Anna, there are competing

16:48

and evolving definitions of water

16:50

poverty, perhaps you could sketch these

16:53

out for me. A

16:54

lot of the definitions have been derived

16:56

from the international level,

16:58

UN, charters, human rights to water and sanitation,

17:01

specifically now the sustainable development goals

17:03

on water, in which goal number

17:05

six is focused on six

17:08

different aspects of water, primarily

17:10

on access to water and sanitation

17:13

in so-called least developed

17:15

countries. And now this paper is

17:17

looking much more parochially if you like

17:19

at water poverty in England and Wales

17:21

and thinking about well how do we define what

17:24

water poverty is in so-called

17:26

high-income countries which are perhaps

17:28

a less obviously part

17:30

of UN efforts to

17:33

provide basic access to water. You know

17:35

most people have water in their house, they have a flushing

17:37

toilet, so it's not quite the same debate

17:40

as thinking about a village in Africa, you

17:42

know the places where I have probably spent more

17:44

of my career thinking about water access.

17:46

How do you define what water poverty might be

17:48

in countries like England and Wales?

17:51

We tend to then think in our societies about

17:53

water affordability and water pricing,

17:57

so trying to understand the percentages of income.

17:59

that are spent on water by households

18:02

and this is something that's done internationally. So

18:04

the UN and its monitoring bodies set

18:07

to definitions of 3 and 5

18:10

percent income lines of income

18:12

spent on water above housing

18:14

costs. In the research that we've seen,

18:16

and this is fairly consistent

18:19

over time, we can see that there are about 20 percent

18:21

of people at the 3 percent

18:23

level and estimates currently

18:26

are between 5 to 10 percent

18:28

at the 5 percent level.

18:30

I've got a clip here. This is

18:32

from BBC1's panorama

18:34

programme on water profits

18:37

and poverty which went out I think in

18:39

November 1993. This is a woman called Rose Blanford

18:43

and she's describing what happened after she lost

18:45

her job as a cleaner after having his

18:48

corrector me and she and her husband

18:50

were unable to pay a water bill of £253.

18:56

Well they just turned up and said that the water

18:58

was off

19:00

because of the non-payment of a bill. There

19:02

wasn't a lot I could do because I'd just

19:04

been out of work for three months and

19:07

had money coming in only husbands which

19:09

is a dead set wage every

19:11

week, it doesn't vary. I went round

19:14

to John next door, I was in tears

19:16

and told him what had happened and

19:19

he sat me down and offered to

19:21

supply water. When

19:24

we needed it John filled up five gallon drum

19:26

and three big buckets which he put over

19:29

the fence and I carried into the house. Rose

19:32

Blanford who was forced to carry heavy

19:34

buckets after a major abdominal operation

19:37

remains bitter. I

19:38

think they're really low

19:40

to have done such a thing to

19:42

anybody, not only myself but

19:45

if that could have been somebody with children or a pensioner.

19:49

Now this connects rather well with work that

19:51

you've done on looking at people who've

19:54

had this experience of water poverty.

19:56

Well we've explored the the literature around

19:59

how water poverty was

19:59

framed over the last decades and

20:02

particularly around the 1990s when the water industry was privatised

20:07

the late 80s and in the 1990s we

20:09

saw increasing disconnections and

20:11

as the clip you know really shows what you

20:13

found was that the biggest impacts were on the

20:15

households least able to pay

20:17

and also those with the greatest vulnerabilities

20:20

and needs for water such as

20:22

those experiencing illnesses,

20:25

high numbers of children or

20:27

people requiring care within a household

20:29

so you sort of got an intersection of high

20:32

dependency, high need for water at

20:34

the same time of as low ability

20:37

to pay for the water and at that time the

20:39

water companies were able to disconnect for

20:41

non-payment and as a consequence them

20:44

increasing protest and resistance to

20:46

that water became a political issue

20:48

at that moment so evidence

20:50

was increasing about the damaging impact that this

20:52

disconnection was having on individual households

20:54

and there were also concerns that then there was going to be a collective

20:57

public health problem, I mean the public health

20:59

issue is why we developed big collective systems

21:02

of sanitation in the first place to get

21:04

rid of waterborne diseases so there were concerns

21:07

that diseases such as dysendries,

21:09

shingella were increasing again, the British

21:11

Medical Association called out water disconnections

21:14

as an inhumane practice, disconnection

21:16

makes it an individual household problem but

21:19

then it's also a public issue as

21:21

well and it was go directly against things like human

21:23

rights, water and sanitation and therefore

21:26

in 1999 the Labour government then passed

21:28

a law that said the water companies could no

21:31

longer disconnect people.

21:32

We're not just talking of course just about water

21:34

supply to homes, we're also talking about sewage,

21:37

sanitation, public toilets, all

21:39

that as well. If you

21:40

think of household water to our

21:42

homes in the UK now we see that as

21:44

part and parcel of sanitation, our

21:46

water bill is not just for the drinking water

21:49

that comes out of the tap but it's also for the sewage,

21:51

it's to take away our waste to send

21:53

that for processing and hopefully to be clean

21:55

although obviously the recent scandals of

21:58

our breaking down. on their waste

22:01

treatment processing plants causing pollution

22:03

in the river, obviously showing how this is something that we

22:05

take for granted that perhaps doesn't always

22:07

happen. And we're increasingly

22:09

seeing with austerity, the cuts to

22:12

local council budgets, a lack of public

22:14

toilets, for example. I was very surprised to

22:16

learn only recently that Leeds as a city

22:19

hasn't had public toilets since the 1970s.

22:22

And there's an expectation that people

22:25

caught short out and about will go

22:27

and use private facilities or they can use council

22:29

offices. But what we increasingly see in the research

22:31

is different groups lacking access

22:34

to sanitation such as delivery workers

22:36

out and about all day long, homeless people,

22:38

for example, perimenopausal

22:40

women like myself who might need to go to

22:42

the toilet more often. I mean, we talk about hidden

22:45

sanitation needs amongst all sorts of groups.

22:47

And I think that this is how we see some of these sort

22:50

of bigger collective resource problems

22:52

of access to water and sanitation in so-called

22:55

developed countries where we think we don't have to think

22:57

about this. Our Centre for Doctoral

22:59

Training is largely around looking

23:01

at water poverty, water

23:04

problems, water infrastructure in the global south.

23:07

But we're very interested in decolonising how we

23:09

look at development these days. And therefore

23:11

we use this paper as a way of thinking

23:14

about how do we turn this lens of water poverty

23:16

onto the UK and look at ourselves. As

23:18

an anthropologist, I was very interested in what's

23:20

going on behind this definition. So

23:23

how is water poverty being talked

23:25

about in England and Wales? In doing

23:28

this rigorous review of the literature, we're not looking

23:30

at academic literature so much, but we're

23:32

looking at how the water companies talking

23:34

about water affordability, low

23:37

income households vulnerability, how

23:39

are agencies who are supposed to regulate access

23:42

to water off what, for example, talking

23:44

about this same problem. And what we

23:47

see then is this sort of financialised

23:49

understanding of water as a household

23:52

problem. So water poverty

23:54

is expressed as an affordability problem, which

23:56

puts the responsibility for water and

23:58

water provisioning to a house.

23:59

being able to afford it. So

24:02

it takes attention away from water

24:04

poverty and the affordability of water services.

24:06

Your

24:06

research does show an improved understanding

24:09

in the section of water poverty and affordability

24:11

issues, the sort of things that are faced by customers.

24:14

But you still want to argue that despite

24:17

this, well, improvement, let's call it an improvement,

24:19

that structural issues are still

24:21

being overlooked and we're unlikely to end water

24:24

poverty, we'll stay with the term, by 2030.

24:26

I think 2030 is supposed to be the

24:29

target you doubt if we'll make

24:31

it. Well 2030 is the sustainable development

24:33

goal target.

24:35

So

24:36

access to affordable quality

24:38

water and sanitation should be there for everybody

24:40

across the globe. Now it's very unlikely that

24:42

any country is going to meet those but let's think about

24:45

particularly why in the UK that might be problematic.

24:47

We've got some very excluded groups,

24:50

fundamentally excluded in the literature we call it

24:52

the dwelling paradox. So if you're not in

24:54

a formal household dwelling,

24:56

you're actually excluded from that understanding of water

24:59

affordability and we see some really interesting

25:01

research emerging around canal boat dwellers, for

25:03

example, around homeless groups,

25:05

around traveler and Roma people and around

25:07

the sort of constraints in fundamental

25:10

human rights to water, to quality water

25:12

and sanitation that those groups face in

25:14

our country. But more fundamentally

25:17

I think, yes, you're right in one hand that the

25:19

water companies have taken

25:21

seriously the affordability. There are

25:23

such things as social tariffs and social tariffs

25:26

are very important. There were certain

25:28

vulnerable consumers are identified and help

25:30

is given in reduction of billing but

25:33

what we know is there's a huge gap between

25:35

the number of households that we think are

25:38

vulnerable and the number of households that

25:40

actually receive support. And because

25:42

the problem is still framed as a structural

25:45

problem there is huge amount

25:47

of bad debt in the system. So when

25:49

a consumer, this household

25:51

that can't afford the water bill, can't pay the water

25:53

bill, the bad debt also goes into the

25:55

system

25:55

so that

25:58

the rest of us who are paying the water bills...

25:59

also have to pay the bad debt of

26:02

the consumers who can't afford it and that's an

26:04

important part of the financialization, marketization

26:06

of how the water companies work. So we also

26:09

see in conjunction with all of this very

26:11

ageing water infrastructure in this

26:14

country, population increasing

26:16

particularly in the southeast, we have no actual

26:18

national system of water charging either.

26:21

Now the Consumer Council for Water has recommended

26:23

that we have one social tariff across

26:25

the whole country but actually each water company

26:28

still sets its own tariffs so we really have no

26:30

sort of strategic plan

26:32

to address this fundamental water poverty.

26:34

I

26:35

want now just to round off this

26:37

program. You were listening to what Veronica

26:39

had to say about her work and I

26:41

think that you and some of your colleagues

26:44

are looking at spiritual,

26:46

cultural relationships with

26:48

water. One very

26:49

interesting part that relates directly to Veronica's

26:51

is something called Riverkin that we've

26:54

been working on which directly thinks

26:56

about in the UK

26:58

how do we develop more of a kinship

27:00

based relationship with rivers

27:03

in particular and we've become very interested in this

27:05

because in Leeds we're very close to Ilkley

27:07

which has become one of the big campaigning

27:09

sites of successfully getting the

27:12

EU river-bathing status. So

27:14

we've been thinking about fundamentally how do

27:17

you become more in tune

27:19

thinking

27:19

spiritually about water. I think the notion

27:21

of kinship is a particularly useful

27:24

one and part of the discussions that

27:26

I've been involved in have been taking

27:28

inspiration from Benedict Jack Anderson's

27:31

classic on imagined communities

27:33

which is all about the different communities we all belong

27:35

to and how we imagine them and extending

27:38

that to think about the non-human communities

27:40

in river catchment areas.

27:42

So the idea being that

27:44

you would extend that sort of

27:47

thinking about their well-being

27:49

into management practices,

27:52

getting people to speak for the river in

27:54

decision-making processes because it's

27:57

all very wonderful to have this stuff at an international

27:59

level. but you need to think how can we bring it down

28:01

to the ground.

28:02

There we must stop. Thank you, thank

28:04

you both very much. And of course your

28:06

emails are hugely welcome at thinkingaloud

28:09

at bbc.co.uk. Last

28:12

words have to be words worth cry

28:15

of despair. Great God,

28:17

I'd rather be a pagan

28:20

suckled in a creed outworn,

28:23

so might I be standing on this pleasant

28:25

glee, have glimpses that

28:28

would make me less forlorn. Have

28:30

sight of Proteus rising

28:32

from the sea, or hear

28:34

old Triton blow his

28:36

wreathed horn.

28:38

That was a Thinking Aloud podcast

28:40

from BBC Radio 4. You'll find a treasure

28:43

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that death may not be inevitable?

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Is it possible that a fundamental

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of existence that we've always had as a species, that we

28:55

will all inevitably die, is that

28:57

still true? And that there are technologists

29:00

promising everlasting life. We

29:02

can and should use technology

29:05

to enhance and expand

29:07

and augment human

29:08

capacities. Who's behind

29:10

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29:12

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29:17

Valley. I'm Alex Kratosky. Find

29:19

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29:21

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29:30

What if I told you that death may

29:32

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29:34

a fundamental of existence that we

29:37

will all inevitably die, is that

29:39

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29:47

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29:49

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29:51

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29:55

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