Walking along the River Wye’s banks, it seems elegant and everlasting, but beneath the surface all is not well.

In this episode, we meet people living along the river who have trained as “citizen scientists” to monitor water pollution themselves. Braving muddy banks and wet feet every week, what drives them to protect a river that they say is dying?

Led by indigenous groups, a movement to recognise the natural world as alive and with rights is gaining momentum around the world. We speak to Mumta Ito, a lawyer for Nature’s Rights, about how the legal construction of nature as a dead thing - resources that humans can own and extract - goes hand-in-hand with our exploitative economic system today.

Do rivers really belong to us? How can the actions of a small group of determined people reframe our relationships with nature and one another?

Writer, producer and presenter: May Robson