A group of students are set to begin a new campaign aiming to provide the River Don with the rights of a human.
Named the “Rights of Nature Action Group”, they are part of the Student Unions’ ‘ChangeLab’ scheme, which allows the student body to create and manage their own community-orientated social-justice projects.
Starting in the new year, it is a six-month project instrumental to bringing change to Sheffield’s largest body of water.
Senaya Fernando, an economics student, and Blesson Ezra, an engineering student have leading roles in the group which works in partnership with the think-and-do tank Opus Independent.
Explaining the importance, Blesson said: “Balance comes to mind, sustainable use comes to mind, accountability comes to mind.”
The eventual goal of the project is giving the river the same legal rights as a human, something that has already been achieved in New Zealand.
Their main aim is to convince Sheffield City Council to pass a bylaw granting such rights to the River Don.
Blesson said: “I also think it’s a very exciting problem to solve, not that we’ll sort of solve it but I think the sort of the engineer in me and I think some other sort of students involved as well find it quite exciting to see what we can discover and what we can tangibly contribute.“
He emphasised the project’s leveraging “of skills and strengths across various disciplines,” revealing there are approximately fifteen students, some of which are studying economics, landscape architecture and law.
The students work in two integral groups.
The first, the stakeholder engagement group, carries the main objective of identifying key figures engaged with the river, such as the community and businesses.
That group will focus on lobbying those identified as connected to the River Don, trying to win their support for the cause.
Secondly, the catchment mapping group, which has the aim is to eliminate obscurity around who already owns the land around the river, planning to gather data and make it public.
They aim to make a visual map that illustrates areas prone to flood risk, pollution and fly tipping – alongside areas identified as being historically significant.
Seneya makes clear her drive to achieve the campaign’s goals: “I’m really passionate about nature and like tying in economics with other concepts such as sustainability and I was really excited to see what this project had to offer.”
The joint-leader linked her motivation to get involved with her past involvement with her school’s environmental service group.
She explained: ”the whole project seemed very abstract to all of us,” describing the group’s initial struggle in deconstructing the outcomes – but as weeks went by, and as they focused their energy, they made the objective clearer.
More information regarding ChangeLab, and how to get involved in future projects, can be found here.
