Approach
A relational, nature-connected approach
Most sustainability professionals treat nature as a backdrop to be factored in as part of a quantifiable triple bottom line that considers people, profit and planet, with "planet" framed as a frustrating inhibitor of business goals and requirements.
We work with land and more-than-human communities as teachers, collaborators and co-creators, as well as historically oppressed and marginalised beings we need to attune to with respect and humility.
That might mean:
learning from lichen about navigating complexity as a team or organisation
exploring mutual aid through fungal networks and the wood wide web
rethinking power, stewardship and governance with rivers as guides
being nourished through challenging conversations by nature-connection
grounding conversations about justice in place and lived expertise
This creates conditions for conversations and decisions that are more honest, regenerative, relational and rooted in anti-oppressive practice.
ANTI-FASCIST ENVIRONMENTALISM
REPAIRING RELATIONS
COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION
Building on the term's use in the UK, in particular this paper,* we interpret “Riverkin” as a lens to understand the living world as a web of entangled and interdependent relations we are part of, rather than a resource to manage, dominate and extract from. We acknowledge that for those of us living in Westernised, Anglo/Eurocentric contexts the same harmful paradigms that show up between humans, show up in our relationships with nature.
Rights of Nature focused groups and movements in the UK and beyond rethinking how we* (in Westernised, Colonial contexts) live with rivers are gaining traction (eg. River Guardianship models), highlighting their importance as life-giving entities we belong to, are accountable to and neither we nor our more-than-human communities can thrive without.
We use the framing of "Becoming Riverkin" to recognise:
Our wellbeing is reliant on and interdependent with the health of the living lands and waters
Yet, for many of us socialised in Anglo/Eurocentric, Westernised contexts we are currently not able to behave as "kin" to nature, it is a transformative and collective process of grieving, (un)learning, remembering and repairing together.
We work from a place of recognising ourselves as complicit and advantaged by the genocidal, ecocidal and epistemicidal histories and presents of the "British Empire" where this organisation is founded, and how Britain continues to harm and oppress peoples and more-than-human communities around the world.
The myth of separation and human-supremacy over nature is the same logic at the root of other forms of oppression, hierarchy, exploitation and othering such as white supremacy, colonialism, racism, ablism, misogyny, transphobia, Anti-Muslim hate and other interlocking oppressions.
We can only truly become (River)kin by addressing the root and dismantling all forms of oppression within racial capitalism.
This work is inseparable from commitment to accountability, repair and reparations. We use these terms carefully, knowing we have a lot to learn, in solidarity with others and shaped by those most harmed and impacted, as to what this means and looks like in practice. This is the work.
"The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us." - Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
We seek to bring this framing into our work with initiatives focused on stewardship, commons-inspired governance and community leadership and participation that are anti-oppressive, anti-fascist and oriented towards right relationship between humans and more-than-human. Whilst acknowledging that this is deeply challenging, personal and political intergenerational work, and that some harms can never be repaired.
"There is the labor of repair: the work after harm, after neglect, after failure, after impact. Repair is not a return to innocence. It is the difficult craft of making something livable after damage has entered it. Repair asks for memory, humility, patience, and changed behavior. It is not the same as apology. It is apology made material." - Indy Johar, The Labors
*Paper: Riverkin: seizing the moment to remake vital relations in the UK and beyond, by Joshua Benjamin Cohen, Charles Dannreuther, Markus Fraundorfer, Colin Mackie, Julia Martin-Ortega, Anna Mdee, Nicolas Salazar Sutil
What does Riverkin mean to us?
Practices
This work draws on:
design justice, service design, co-design and participatory design
Racial justice, disability justice and climate justice principles and lineages
anti-oppressive and decolonial scholarship, lineage and practice
systems and futures thinking
trauma-informed research and design
Climate justice, eco-feminism and queer ecology
nature-based and place-based practices
*Coming soon: I commit to naming specific people and ancestors who have significantly informed my work and thinking.
Key Principles
Participatory and co-creative: people learn through doing and having agency within processes
Relational: grounded in connection with ourselves, our human and more-than-human communities
Place-based: shaped and informed by local context, needs and ecology
Power-conscious and anti-oppressive: attentive to power, identity, history, inequity and injustice at the interpersonal, institutional and systemic levels.
Trauma-informed and repair-oriented: As a white, British led and founded organisation, we stay mindful of the forms of systemic advantage associated with our position as individuals and an organisation, and how that can show up at the interpersonal level. We commit to accountability and repair of current and historical harm as ongoing practices.
Invitational: Working with people, organisations and communities we have been invited and have informed consent to collaborate with rather than imposing on communities
Respects lived expertise: Lived and learned expertise are valued within collaboration and compensation.
I work with the lands and waters with humility and respect, as a potential collaborator and co-inquirer in learning and education.
