The Confluence of Water Bodies is a translocal initiative by the Embassy of the North Sea, ILP Mar Menor, and the TBA21–Academy exploring how water bodies can be represented, heard, and cared for collectively.
Problems and Purpose
Water governance in Europe is largely organised through jurisdictionally bounded, human-centred institutions structured around states, municipalities, and regulatory frameworks. While these institutions operate within extensive environmental policy regimes, water bodies continue to face documented pressures including biodiversity decline, pollution, overexploitation, and climate-related impacts. Within prevailing governance arrangements, rivers, seas, lagoons, and marine ecosystems are typically addressed as resources, environmental assets, or regulatory objects rather than as entities requiring forms of representation within political processes.
The Confluence of European Water Bodies was initiated in response to these governance limitations and to growing interest in ecosystem representation and rights-of-nature initiatives. Its stated purpose is to create a recurring gathering through which representatives of water bodies can exchange practices, develop shared vocabulary, and explore alternative approaches to water governance across legal, cultural, ecological, and civic domains.
The Confluence does not operate as a legislative or policy-making institution. Instead, it functions as a learning-oriented platform described by organisers as a “learning system for water diplomacy.” Through repeated gatherings, it seeks to strengthen connections among place-based initiatives working on ecosystem representation, stewardship, and alternative governance arrangements. The initiative aims to facilitate coordination and mutual learning while recognising that governance strategies remain shaped by local legal and political contexts.
Background History and Context
The Confluence of European Water Bodies was launched on 18 September 2023 in front of the European Parliament in Brussels through a collective public proclamation by participating water-body representatives. The first full edition took place in September 2023 at the Mar Menor lagoon in Spain, which had previously received legal recognition as a rights-bearing ecosystem under Spanish law. Subsequent editions have been hosted in relation to other water bodies, including the Venice Lagoon (2024) and the Netherlands/North Sea region (2025).
The initiative emerged from the work of the Embassy of the North Sea, founded in 2018 as an experimental platform for representing the interests of the North Sea. The Confluence was developed in collaboration with partners including ILP Mar Menor and TBA21–Academy, combining artistic, legal, civic, and research-based approaches to ecosystem representation.
The Confluence situates itself within wider international developments related to rights of nature, ecosystem legal personhood, and emerging experiments in participatory and more-than-human governance. While primarily European in focus, participation has included representatives connected to water bodies outside Europe, reflecting the transboundary character of water governance challenges. Each edition is hosted in close relation to a specific water body and combines closed working sessions for representatives with a broader public-facing programme.
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The Confluence of European Water Bodies is convened by the Embassy of the North Sea in collaboration with partner organisations, including TBA21–Academy and ILP Mar Menor. Each edition is hosted in relation to a specific water body and organised in partnership with local cultural institutions, research organisations, and civil society groups connected to the host context. The initiative operates under the organisational framework of the Embassy of the North Sea rather than as a separately registered legal entity.
The project has received funding from the Creative Industries Fund NL. Additional support is assembled on a project basis through cultural institutions, research collaborations, municipal partnerships, and in-kind contributions from participating organisations. Public documentation does not indicate the existence of permanent or independent institutional financing dedicated exclusively to the Confluence.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
Participation in the Confluence is structured around the representation of specific water bodies rather than the attendance of individuals in a personal capacity. The initiative describes itself as being formed by "over 30 grassroots communities of artists, activists, lawyers and ecologists, representing seas, lakes, rivers, lagoons and glaciers from all over Europe."
In this structure, the primary "participants" are named water bodies including, among others, the Baltic Sea, Dogger Bank, Mar Menor, the North Sea, the Venice Lagoon, the Rhine, the Loire, the Vistula, Snæfellsjökull glacier, and many additional rivers, lakes, and marine ecosystems. Human participants attend as representatives, guardians, advocates, artists, legal experts, researchers, or community organisers connected to a particular water body. Their participation is conditional on an established relationship to the ecosystem they represent, which may include long-term ecological stewardship, legal advocacy, community-based environmental organising, artistic research, or other sustained forms of ecological care and involvement.
The Confluence does not operate with a publicly documented formal accreditation system or fixed selection criteria. Participation appears to be coordinated through invitation and relational networks developed through prior collaborations, ecosystem advocacy initiatives, and grassroots organising. In some cases, individuals or organisations may approach the convening team to explore participation on behalf of a water body.
The 2025 edition, held from 21–24 September in the Netherlands, brought together representatives from 35 European water ecosystems and approximately 70 human participants. Several water bodies have been represented across multiple editions, while others have joined as the network has expanded. This dual structure — water bodies as named collective participants and humans as their situated representatives — reflects the Confluence's framing as a "European learning system for water representation."
Methods and Tools Used
The Confluence employs a combination of structured assemblies, workshops, artistic practices, and facilitated exchanges across multi-day gatherings. Each edition typically spans three to four days and includes both internal sessions for water-body representatives and public-facing events.
Core methods include facilitated dialogue and shared assemblies with moderated panels and thematic exchanges; World Café–style discussions, such as the University of Amsterdam session during the 2025 edition addressing pedagogy, tactics, financing, local communities, and indigeneity; future-thinking workshops including a structured "Water Bodies Future Thinking Session" at Museum Kranenburgh in 2025; internal network days beginning with meditations and small-group exchanges to strengthen relationships before engaging external audiences; and comparative case sharing, where representatives present ongoing legal, ecological, and community-based initiatives connected to their respective water bodies.
Artistic and performative methods are central to the Confluence's format. These have included opening performances such as the ritual choral work "Drop, Ripple, Puddle, O" by Snæfellsjökull fyrir forseta; the participatory sound installation The Waterbodies Orchestra, in which audience members collectively generate water-based soundscapes via mobile devices; the travelling exhibition The Diplomatic Suitcase, curated in 2025 at Mediamatic in Amsterdam, presenting artefacts and small water samples representing participating ecosystems; and workshops including "Weaving Our Waters," "Body Territory," deep listening sessions, watercolour workshops, and embodied or site-based exercises conducted in dunes and along the North Sea coast.
A closing water-mixing ceremony, in which representatives combine water samples from their respective ecosystems in a shared vessel returned to a local waterway, is a recurring element across editions and does not constitute a formal decision-making act.
In some instances, affiliated initiatives convened during the Confluence employ formal decision-making tools. The inaugural meeting of the Dogger Bank Coalition in 2025, for example, included the reading and voting on foundational statements by an assembled body. Such decision-making processes occur within coalition or project contexts and are not established as a standard governance mechanism of the Confluence itself.
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
Each edition of the Confluence unfolds over multiple days and combines internal working sessions for ecosystem representatives with public events.
The 2025 edition opened on 21 September at De Balie in Amsterdam with a public event titled "Is a River Alive?" featuring author Robert Macfarlane, followed by a performance by Snæfellsjökull fyrir forseta — an Icelandic rights-of-nature collective that nominated the Snæfellsjökull glacier for the 2024 Icelandic presidency, and whose choral opening ritual "Drop, Ripple, Puddle, O" wove together the human languages represented across the gathered water-body communities. The 2024 Venice edition (3–6 October 2024) similarly combined academic, legal, and artistic panels, public events, field trips, an assembly with local activists, a grief circle, and ceremonial practices. These public sessions functioned as outward-facing moments where representatives presented ongoing initiatives and engaged broader audiences.
Following public openings, representatives participated in closed sessions reserved for members of the network. In 2025, the internal day took place in Bergen aan Zee and began with a meditation session and a guided silent walk toward the North Sea, followed by small-group exchanges, future-thinking exercises, and thematic workshops. The structured "Water Bodies Future Thinking Session" at Museum Kranenburgh was moderated by named facilitators and focused on developing shared insights across ecosystems rather than drafting binding resolutions.
Across editions, workshops combined legal, artistic, and embodied formats. In 2025, documented sessions included "Weaving Our Waters" facilitated by Natural Contract Lab, "Body Territory" led by Rosa Jijón, a deep listening session, a watercolour workshop, and story-based exchanges. Participants also engaged in site-based activities including walking along dunes and beaches, shared meals, and informal discussion periods. A structured university-based session at the University of Amsterdam brought together legal scholars including Laura Burgers and colleagues for World Café discussions addressing pedagogy, tactics, financing, local communities, and indigeneity. The Diplomatic Suitcase exhibition was activated in Amsterdam, presenting artefacts and water samples associated with participating ecosystems alongside space for visitors to reflect on their relationship with water. The participatory sound installation The Waterbodies Orchestra, first premiered in Venice in 2024 and reactivated in 2025, involved audience members using smartphones to collectively generate water-based sound compositions.
Dogger Bank Coalition Launch
During the 2025 edition, a plenary session on 24 September was dedicated to the formal launch of the Dogger Bank Coalition. The session marked the public inauguration of a European partnership between the Embassy of the North Sea (NL), ARK Rewilding Netherlands (NL), Blue Marine Foundation (UK), Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland e.V. (BUND, DE), Doggerland Foundation (NL), and WWF (DK).
The meeting followed a structured assembly format. Foundational statements were publicly introduced and read aloud, organised around four thematic pillars: Worldview (Dogger Bank belongs to itself), More North Sea Democracy, Guarding the Red Line (legal compliance with conservation law), and Restoration (including reef restoration initiatives). Participants were invited to indicate support for each statement, and documentation indicates that the foundational assertions were subjected to voting during the inaugural meeting. A written Declaration of Formation was also introduced, with individuals invited to sign either in a personal capacity or on behalf of an organisation, with support applicable to all or part of the coalition's four statements.
The assembly therefore combined public presentation of principles, collective deliberative listening, open affirmation and voting, formalised written endorsement, and multi-organisational partnership formation. While the Dogger Bank Coalition operates as a distinct initiative with its own multi-year programme including legal action, reef restoration, research, and public campaigning, its formal launch was embedded within the Confluence gathering and drew on the presence of the broader network of water-body representatives.
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The Confluence of European Water Bodies is an ongoing initiative whose outcomes are cumulative and relational rather than attributable to a single decision or policy intervention. No formal external evaluation has been identified in publicly available documentation. However, the initiative operates through iterative cycles of annual gatherings, follow-up communication among representatives, and continued collaboration between editions.
As of 2025, the network includes representatives connected to at least 35 water bodies. Between annual gatherings, representatives maintain contact, collaborate on projects, and participate jointly in public forums and conferences. Organisers describe the Confluence as a "learning system for water diplomacy," and through repeated participation across editions the initiative has supported continuity and sustained interaction among actors working on ecosystem representation and stewardship.
Documentation indicates that participating initiatives employ diverse methods of ecosystem representation, including legal personhood frameworks, artistic installations, public campaigns, monitoring technologies, and symbolic political nominations. The Confluence provides a forum in which these practices are presented, compared, and discussed. Rather than standardising a single model, it functions as a site for exchange among heterogeneous approaches to ecosystem representation. A key observable outcome has been the strengthening of translocal networks linking community initiatives, advocacy groups, artists, researchers, and legal practitioners connected to rivers, seas, lagoons, wetlands, and glaciers across Europe, facilitating peer learning, exchange of legal and advocacy strategies, joint participation in international forums including UN water conferences, and collaborative projects. The network extends beyond annual gatherings through the travelling Diplomatic Suitcase, which has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and embassies.
The Confluence has also functioned as a site for coalition formation. During the 2025 edition, the Dogger Bank Coalition was formally launched within the Confluence programme. The coalition has articulated a multi-year programme including reef restoration, research, legal action, and public campaigning. In January 2025, coalition-affiliated organisations initiated legal proceedings concerning bottom trawling in the Dogger Bank Marine Protected Area. These legal actions are undertaken by coalition organisations and are not decisions of the Confluence network itself. However, the formal launch and assembly process took place within the Confluence setting, illustrating how project-based initiatives may emerge from the network’s gatherings.
Public documentation does not attribute specific legislative reforms or regulatory changes directly to the Confluence network. Its observable effects include sustained European coordination among ecosystem representatives, development of shared spaces for discussing rights-of-nature and stewardship initiatives, formation of cross-border coalitions, public declarations and endorsement campaigns, and participation in international governance forums.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
The Confluence of European Water Bodies operates as a civic infrastructure rather than a formal governance body. Its primary mode of democratic innovation is not institutional reform but the construction of a recurring, translocal space in which ecosystems are positioned as represented subjects within deliberative and cultural forums.
A notable design feature is the dual structure of participation: water bodies are named as collective participants, with humans attending in delegated, relational, or stewardship capacities. This inversion of conventional participation models — where ecosystems are the subjects and humans are the representatives — is the organising premise of the entire initiative rather than an add-on to an otherwise standard deliberative format. Workshop reflections from the 2025 edition explicitly addressed the procedural challenges this raises, including questions about who may legitimately speak for nonhuman beings, whether agency should be treated as relational rather than categorical, and how multispecies deliberation can be evaluated in terms of accuracy and scalability.
The Confluence does not produce binding resolutions, yet it has facilitated coalition formation with documented legal and restoration consequences, as illustrated by the Dogger Bank Coalition launch and subsequent legal proceedings. This suggests a model of democratic innovation operating through networked civic capacity: the annual assembly functions as a coordinating node, local initiatives remain autonomous, and legal or restoration actions are undertaken by affiliated organisations within their respective jurisdictions. The extent to which practices discussed within the network translate into formal legal or institutional change therefore depends on subsequent mobilisation by participating organisations rather than on the Confluence's own authority.
The initiative also illustrates how symbolic, linguistic, and artistic practices contribute to democratic innovation. Through the creation of new concepts, vocabularies, and rituals, participants experiment with what rights-of-nature scholars describe as a 'grammar of animacy': ways of speaking that position ecosystems as living participants in collective life rather than passive resources. Terms such as 'Waterhood', 'Amagua' and 'Water Heretics', together with artefacts such as the Diplomatic Suitcase and practices such as soundscapes and naming ceremonies, operate as representational devices that reshape how ecosystems are imagined within political discourse. These practices operate alongside, rather than replacing, structured legal and civic dialogue, and may precede or accompany institutional reform by shifting the vocabulary through which ecosystem governance is conceived.
See Also
- Rights of Nature initiatives
- Multispecies assemblies
- River and ecosystem representation councils
- More-than-human governance experiments
- Embassy of the North Sea (see related case study: North Sea representation initiative)
References
Embassy of the North Sea. Confluence of European Water Bodies – About.
https://water-bodies.eu/about/
Embassy of the North Sea. Confluence of European Water Bodies 2025 – Programme.
https://water-bodies.eu/confluence-of-european-water-bodies-2025-program/
Institute for Advanced Study, University of Amsterdam. Confluence of European Water Bodies (2025 event listing).
https://ias.uva.nl/content/events/2025/09/confluence-of-european-water-bodies.html
GAR Europe. The Confluence of European Water Bodies 2025.
https://www.garneurope.org/the-confluence-of-european-water-bodies-2025/
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Confluence of European Water Bodies (2024 event listing).
https://www.unive.it/data/agenda/1/92272
Embassy of the North Sea. Dogger Bank Coalition – Declaration of Formation.
Embassy of the North Sea. Launch of the Dogger Bank Coalition (2025).
Dogger Bank Coalition. Making Room for the Dogger Bank.
Govern the Planet. North Sea – Case Study.
https://governtheplanet.org/case-study/north-sea
External Links
Embassy of the North Sea
https://embassyofthenorthsea.org
Confluence of European Water Bodies
Notes
The Confluence of European Water Bodies is a recurring, learning-oriented initiative that convenes ecosystem representatives and affiliated organisations across Europe. It does not operate as a formal governmental decision-making body. Activities documented in this case are based on publicly available programme materials, organisational publications, and interview material with organisers.
Photography referenced in associated materials is credited to the Embassy of the North Sea.
Contributor Positionality Statements
This case entry was prepared by Claudia Fernandez de Cordoba (2026), founder of Living Imaginaries. Living Imaginaries is a social enterprise focused on reimagining how societies govern, relate, and live with more-than-humans. Working at the intersection of climate, biodiversity, food, health, and justice, it combines creative re-imagination with practical pathways for structural change. She is also a doctoral researcher at University College London, where her research examines more-than-human democratic innovation and biodiversity governance.
The contributor attended the Confluence of European Water Bodies (2025), co-hosted a future-thinking session during the gathering, and conducted interviews with members of the Embassy of the North Sea and water-body representatives in a research capacity. She has also undertaken commissioned work with the Embassy of the North Sea related to reimagining governance. She was not responsible for founding, organising, or directing the Confluence, and did not hold decision-making authority within the initiative.
The case draws on publicly available documentation, Confluence materials, interview transcripts, and participant observation. Descriptive sections are grounded in documented materials and participant accounts. Interpretive analysis is confined to the Analysis section and informed by the contributor's broader research on nonhuman representation, relational governance, and democratic innovation.
This entry was developed as part of the project Developing a typology of emerging practices of nonhuman representation and participation, laying the groundwork for more-than-human democratic innovations, conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Deliberative Democracy, the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA), the Centre for Animals and Social Justice, Participedia, and the University of Westminster.
