Photo credit: Matt Boyle

The campaigner who married the River Avon in protest at sewage pollution is now leading a push to grant the river legal rights. Meg Avon, who took the river’s name after a Bristol ceremony on 17 June 2023, is working with the We Are Avon campaign and the Conham Bathing group on what would be the UK’s first cross-council declaratory motion recognising a river’s rights, developed with research support from the University of the West of England.

What the charter would do

The proposal asks the four councils whose areas the Avon runs through, Bristol City, Bath and North East Somerset, South Gloucestershire and North Wiltshire, to declare the river a living entity holding inherent rights: to exist, to flourish, and to be protected from pollution. If adopted, council policies from planning to the management of agricultural runoff would have to weigh the river’s ecological health. Campaigners say Meg Avon intends to renew her vows and act as an advocate for the river should the motion pass.

The campaign grew from a wedding ceremony staged to draw attention to the discharge of untreated sewage into local waterways, and to the Avon’s poor ecological condition. Conham, on the river’s Bristol stretch, has been a focus for bathing water campaigners.

Precedent and debate

Rights-of-nature approaches have gathered pace. New Zealand granted the Whanganui River legal personhood in 2017, appointing guardians to represent it, and courts in Colombia have made comparable rulings. Domestically, Herefordshire Council’s adoption of rights for the River Wye offers a template, and charters already exist for rivers including the Ouse at Lewes and the Dart at Dartington. Campaigners count more than 17 river charters across the UK, with further declarations announced regularly.

The approach remains contested. A House of Commons Library briefing notes that supporters see rights recognition as raising the profile of river health where conventional regulation has fallen short, while critics question how such rights fit within existing legal models and how they would be enforced. The UK government has not adopted proposals to recognise the rights of nature, though the question has been discussed in the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament. Campaigners present the charter less as an immediate change in law than as a shift in how councils and communities value their rivers.