On the occasion of the 46th meeting of the National Federation of Urban Planning Agencies in October 2025, attention is given to how the projects Toward an International of Rivers… and the chair Living within Planetary Boundaries have converged to foster a shared reflection. Speaking from Strasbourg, at the heart of the European Parliament on the banks of the Rhine, Caroline Lanciaux - responsible for partnerships and the scientific development of both initiatives - explains how this dialogue has opened up new ways of approaching the role of water in our societies and in our ways of inhabiting the living world.
“Sharing Water: Connecting Living Beings, Linking Territories”
Invited to speak at the 46th meeting of the National Federation of Urban Planning Agencies on October 15, 16, and 17, 2025, we (Camille de Toledo, Rémy David, Laurent Devisme, Yann Thoreau la Salle, and Caroline Lanciaux) traveled to Strasbourg, at the heart of the European Parliament, within this cosmopolitan chamber bordered by the Rhine, to offer “a renewed perspective on the role of water in our societies, our ways of life, and to question our relationships between living entities.”
Over three days, the 500 representatives (elected officials, technical experts, etc.) from 50 urban planning agencies and their partners gathered and “called upon history, ways of life, and cultural identities to imagine a vision that would place water back at the center of our concerns: living on water, living with ports, water and energy, culture and education to understand water-related challenges, or the coexistence between biodiversity and human presence. A set of challenges that are both technical… and profoundly cultural.”
1. A Global Water Crisis: Scientific Findings and Urgent Realities
In response to the request from the urban planning agency of the Nantes region (AURAN) and the National Federation of Urban Planning Agencies (FNAU), our contribution aimed to open new perspectives, moving beyond a predominantly technical approach to reinvent water governance in a context where access to sufficient quantities of quality water is under strain—even though it is essential to life on Earth for all living beings.
The stakes are immense. On a global scale, Carmen de Jong, professor of hydrology at the University of Strasbourg, explained that according to the UN, global freshwater use for human purposes doubled between 1964 and 2014 due to population growth, urbanization, industrialization, and increased production and consumption. “Water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change—the year 2023 was the driest year for the world’s rivers in more than three decades (WMO 2023)—could cost some regions up to 6% of their GDP, drive migration, and trigger conflicts,” declared the World Bank in 2016, and water demand in cities is expected to double by 2030.
A study on micropollutants in European rivers (Finckh et al., 2024), presented by Loïc Maurer, lecturer at ENGEES Strasbourg, shows that 74% of the sites examined exceed toxicity thresholds.
To address these challenges, Carmen de Jong recommends long-term, regionally scaled water management strategies instead of isolated solutions to temporary and local shortages; and adaptation strategies based on a representative network of stakeholders with local and historical knowledge—both upstream and downstream—rather than relying on a small number of large-scale actors.
2. Rivers as Legal Persons: Camille de Toledo’s Contribution
In response, Camille de Toledo—artist, writer, and literary scholar, and associate member of the Institute—proposed during the plenary session held in the European Parliament hemicycle on October 15 to reconsider non-humans, and rivers in particular at the scale of their watersheds, as legal subjects: “a recognition intended to ensure that human communities, economic actors, and public authorities take better account of the interests, needs, values, and perspectives specific to these ecosystems.”
“In our technical cultures, all forms of the world beyond humans are considered objects of law. It is their designation as objects that gives us the right to act upon them, intervene, manipulate, and transform them in order to extract added value.
Since the end of the last century, we have been witnessing a legal revolution—what I call the legal uprising of the Earth—where non-human forms, long regarded as objects, are becoming subjects of law. We may ask what it would change in our decision-making if we recognized these new legal subjects, what it would provoke to have a river appear and assert its own perspective within our institutions. This would compel us to transform, in a performative way, our spaces of negotiation and speech, so as to make room for the invisible or for what has, until now, had no right to express itself.
By granting personhood to rivers and waterways, we introduce into the arena of actors and into the human social space the long time-scale—a dimension we sorely lack, to be honest. We accept the risk that this long time-scale, which is also that of future generations, will watch us and in some way oppose short-term decisions. We want to develop something, and then a ‘more-than-human’ person says to us: ‘No. You will be careful,’ or in negotiation will favor one technique over another, one project over another. The world I am trying to imagine is a world in which we maturely welcome the voices of entirely different temporalities—those also of future generations.”
This crucial challenge is the one that the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study, Camille de Toledo, and the Council of Witnesses—a group of 12 citizens engaged for more than two years in reflecting on the shift toward the rights of nature within the framework of the Toward an International of Rivers project—together with researchers, sought to address by drafting, in line with similar initiatives elsewhere in the world, three citizen-led legislative proposals to recognize the Loire, the Loire estuary, and natural entities more broadly as legal subjects in French law.
These proposed laws were entrusted to members of Parliament (Charles Fournier, Chantal Jourdan, and Lisa Belluco) during a symposium at the National Assembly on April 30, 2025. To facilitate their dissemination, they were transformed into card decks, to be discussed during “laws-to-come” workshops. It was this workshop that we led during the meeting, for 40 representatives from urban planning agencies, water agencies, and local authorities from across France.
Testimony of Léa Guilloy-Martos
Exploring Water Governance Differently
“The workshop allowed the various professionals present—those working on water issues, particularly with an operational focus—to explore governance challenges within a setting that was both unusual and stimulating.” explains Léa Guilloy-Martos, Director of the Innovation and Transition Division at AURAN. “This moment of exchange, which was particularly rich, opened up numerous questions: those relating to governance models and their limits, to our legal frameworks, but also to our relationship with territory and with natural entities.
Camille de Toledo’s plenary intervention enabled us to address these issues collectively through the concrete and inspiring projects he is leading. Through his narrative about the Loire, he opens up another universe, a new semantic field and new postures, which enrich and renew our usual approach.”
Testimony of Laurent Devisme
When Law Opens New Ways of Inhabiting the Living World
“Entering the language of law has a powerful effect: we alternate between smiling and being struck by the seriousness of the linguistic implications. It also heightens our awareness that things can change—and in a workshop among professionals, that is exhilarating!” explains Laurent Devisme, professor of urban planning in Nantes and member of the Council of Witnesses for the Toward an International of Rivers project.
“Water is becoming increasingly political, just like soils, and this is ‘disrupting’ the knowledge and practices of spatial planning. Urban planning agencies stand to gain both in competence and relevance by developing expertise related to territorial ecology. The social sciences also have much to contribute—whether environmental history, Anthropocene urban studies…
In such a context, we can see that the reflection on the river as a subject of law is part of a moment of knowledge creation. Law invents categories (property, family, for example), and given the conditions we face today, it is expected to help explore new normative adventures.”
