Save the Blue Heart of Europe - A campaign for the protection of Balkan Rivers
Webinar: Rights of Nature in Europe – Should our rivers have rights too?
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Join us for this critical conversation about the potential and challenges of granting legal rights to rivers in Europe.- How has the Rights of Nature debate evolved globally and within Europe?
- What lessons can European river defenders draw from successful cases elsewhere?
- What does recognising rivers as rights-bearing entities mean in practice?
- What legal or ethical added value could recognising rivers as rights-bearing entities bring to European river protection efforts?
Speakers
MARIE TOUSSAINT is a French environmental activist and jurist in international environmental law. She founded the NGO Notre affaire à tous and co-founded the Ecocide Alliance, advocating for the recognition of ecocide and the rights of nature. She initiated L’Affaire du Siècle, Europe’s largest climate litigation case. Elected Member of the European Parliament since 2019 with the Greens/EFA group, she campaigns for environmental justice, human dignity, and a politics of care in Europe and beyond.
EDUARDO SALAZAR ORTUÑO, PhD on Environmental Law, is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Murcia (Spain). He was a Public Interest Enviromental Lawyer during 25 years, specialized on Environmental Law Enforcement, Aarhus Convention and Rights of Nature. Member of Environmental Law Worldwide Alliance (ELAW) and the UICN Environmental Law Commission. Promoter of the Mar Menor Act 19/2022, nowadays is the Vicepresident of the Reoresentatives Commission of Mar Mneor and its basin's Tutorship.
ANNETTE MEHLHORN is based at the Humboldt University of Berlin where she is researching practices and foundations of critical environmental knowledge production
in an international project. Priorly she was an investigator in a project on the Rights of Nature at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, where she also completed her PhD, focusing on law and radical politics.
GRANT WILSON, Esq., is the Executive Director of Earth Law, which advances the Rights of Nature and Earth-centered laws worldwide. He has helped advance these movements in dozens of countries over the past twelve years. He is also a co-lead editor of the law school textbook Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law—A Guide for Practitioners (Aspen 2026). Grant earned a J.D. with a Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from Lewis & Clark Law School.
ZOE LUJIC is the founder and leader of Earth Thrive, advancing Rights of Nature initiatives in Europe through the Balkan Centre for the Rights of Nature and the Rights of the Mediterranean Bioregion Declaration. A Rights of Nature advocate since 2012, she contributed to the early development of the international Law of Ecocide, organised two Rights of Nature Tribunals, submitted three landmark Bern Convention complaints against Serbia and co-drafted a National Law on the Rights of Rivers in Serbia.
Discussant
MALGORZATA SMOLAK is an environmental and energy lawyer specializing in EU and international law. She advises NGOs on river protection and energy transition. Her work focuses on compliance with and enforcement of EU environmental law, particularly in relation to hydropower development and river infrastructure projects affecting freshwater ecosystems. She is actively involved in the Save the Blue Heart of Europe campaign and the Lawyers for Rivers initiative.
Join us for this first, critical conversation and help shape the future of river protection in Europe.
A Zoom link will be sent to registered participants prior to the event.