As ecological and democratic crises intensify, traditional institutional instruments are struggling to ensure fair and sustainable governance of ecosystems. In this context, the recognition of the rights of nature, still recent, appears as a major legal innovation, but one that is fragile and constantly threatened by productivist logics. Faced with these limits, citizen and activist movements are inventing new spaces for expression and action. These struggles directly challenge traditional governance models of the commons and raise the question of a democracy extended to the living world—a “more-than-human democracy.” They reveal the need to rethink relationships between humans, non-humans, and territories, and to how to integrate all these voices into the decisions that structure our ecosystems.
It is this intersection between ecology, social justice, and democratic innovation that was at the heart of the roundtable “Democracy and Nature: Which Tools for Participatory Ecosystem Governance?”, organized as part of the Climax Festival, whose central 2025 theme was democracy. The event, led by NatureRights in partnership with GARN Europe, brought together three speakers: Alessandro Livraghi, an architect exploring how space can become an interface between humans and non-humans and contributor to the work of the Seine Citizens’ Convention; Jonas, an activist from Les Soulèvements de la Seine and Extinction Rebellion, committed to defending the river against artificialization and pollution; and Pierre William Johnson, an international consultant, expert in the commons and biodiversity governance. The discussion, moderated by Lisa Place, allowed for critical reflection on the practices, limits, and potential of participatory governance of ecosystems.
This article does not seek to transcribe the roundtable word for word, but rather to deepen the issues raised: the legal recognition of ecosystems, citizen mobilization, and the conceptual and institutional innovations needed to imagine governance that is truly sustainable and democratic for the living world, using the Seine as a case study.
The Seine, a Vulnerable Queen
The Seine is more than a river crossing 300 municipalities and irrigating a watershed of 17 million inhabitants: it is a major ecological, social, and economic issue. Today, it is under multiple pressures, from intense urbanization to massive industrialization, which threaten its biodiversity and resilience. In this context, a central question arises: how can we transform the perception and governance of this river by integrating the rights of nature and citizen action? This article explores initiatives seeking to recognize the legal personhood of the Seine, from local mobilizations to institutional projects, and assesses their implications for more participatory, sustainable, and democratic governance, where the interests of the ecosystem are considered alongside those of residents and economic actors.
The Seine watershed is threatened by a succession of projects which, under the guise of modernization and “green” transition, in fact perpetuate the same logic of territorial exploitation. The Seine-Nord Europe Canal, the Green Dock project, and the development of La Bassée all follow a common pattern: concreting riverbanks, artificializing land, destroying wetlands, and intensifying logistical infrastructures. Driven by agribusiness, mega-warehouses, and mass transport projects, these developments increase the risk of flooding in Paris, accelerate biodiversity loss, and weaken small-scale farming. Behind the rhetoric of “low-carbon transport” lies a greenwashing strategy to develop a logistics corridor linking ports and warehouses to compete with Antwerp and Rotterdam: at the expense of ecosystems and local jobs.
The Green Dock project illustrates this contradiction: a 600-meter terminal, located near a Natura 2000 zone, generating up to 1,200 truck rotations per day. Far from reducing road transport, these projects intensify it, along with new highway infrastructure, resulting in cumulative effects on pollution and land pressure. Moreover, these projects, backed by public actors and heavily financed with public money, often move forward at the expense of environmental regulations, exposing the complicity of public authorities in a destructive model for ecosystems and populations.
The Seine as a Legal Object
Historically, the Seine was primarily seen as a “navigable waterway,” a mere legal object under the Napoleonic Code of 1804, with no personhood of its own and no recognition of its ecological needs. This utilitarian vision persisted for a long time, until the first poetic and civic awakenings: as early as 1957, the poet Jacques Prévert was already portraying the Seine as a person, signaling a new sensitivity toward the river. Legally, a series of laws adopted between 1958 and 2005 progressively addressed the protection of the environment and natural resources, culminating in the inclusion of the Environmental Charter in the preamble to the Constitution in 2005. Yet, as mentioned earlier, exploitation of the river persists. This fragility has led to the emergence of various citizen initiatives, some of which aim to grant the river legal personality, allowing it to defend its rights and make its voice heard against productivist logics.
The Seine: A Subject of Mobilization for Becoming a Subject of Law
Citizen movements have mobilized with a great deal of experimentation. In 2019, the association Wild Legal began working on the rights of nature in France, including the Seine. In 2020, this was followed by the creation of the Guardians of the Seine collective, whose goal is “to raise awareness and create a space for reflection and sharing among the various actors present in the basin (associations, resident collectives, citizens, public institutions, private actors, etc.), from its source to its mouth, in order to move toward harmony between humans and the Seine ecosystem.”
Among the most notable initiatives was the mock trial “The Seine, the Rights of a River”, organized in 2024 at the Théâtre de la Concorde, which symbolically placed the river at the center of a legal debate by simulating its ability to assert its interests against industrial actors. This performance, along with its accompanying awareness campaign, paved the way for the Seine Citizens’ Convention, launched by the City of Paris in spring 2025. The Convention brings together 50 to 70 randomly selected citizens tasked with drafting concrete proposals for the ecological protection of the river. Its aim is to involve citizens in decisions concerning the Seine and its watershed. However, this participatory framework remained under the control of Paris City Hall, raising concerns of dispossession and institutional co-optation of the project.
Following the presentation of the citizens’ recommendations to elected officials, the Paris Council adopted a motion calling on Parliament to recognize the Seine as a legal person, in the form of a public legal entity, with an independent guardian authority responsible for defending its rights in court. This initiative is inspired by international experiences, such as the Whanganui River in New Zealand or the Mar Menor lagoon in Spain. According to Corinne Lepage, such recognition would allow for addressing harms suffered by the river as a whole and for acting preventively rather than reactively: “One must never forget that an environmental damage lawsuit is a failure: it is the failure of prevention.” Nevertheless, while this step is promising, it remains limited as long as no law is actually passed to guarantee concrete protection. Indeed, the most damaging projects for the Seine basin, such as Green Dock or the Seine-Nord Europe Canal, have not yet been challenged, raising questions about the real scope of this Citizens’ Convention.
Lessons from Environmental Democracy: The Mar Menor
This leads to a useful comparison with the Mar Menor in Spain, the first European lagoon to be granted legal personhood. This experience provides valuable lessons for the Seine and highlights the current limitations of protection in France. The Mar Menor, severely degraded by uncontrolled urbanization and agricultural and industrial pollution, sparked massive citizen mobilization. Thanks to the Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP), a mechanism under the Spanish constitutional system allowing citizens to propose a law after collecting more than 500,000 signatures, 630,000 residents mobilized to grant the lagoon effective rights: the right to exist, to evolve naturally, to be protected, conserved, and restored. On April 5, 2022, the Spanish Congress adopted Law 19/2022 almost unanimously, followed by the Senate in the autumn, thereby guaranteeing the legal personhood and rights of the Mar Menor, grounded in ecological intrinsic value, intergenerational solidarity, protection, conservation, and restoration of the ecosystem, as well as respect for biodiversity and ecological balance. This law created innovative governance: the Tutoria del Mar Menor, a tripartite system bringing together citizens, scientists, and public authorities. It constitutes a genuine counter-power to productivist logics and the limits of the State. Moreover, the introduction of Actio Popularis also allows any citizen to represent the lagoon’s rights before courts or administrations. This pioneering experience provides valuable arguments for the Seine: beyond reframing the environment as a living entity to protect (rather than a mere economic resource), it stands as an example of environmental democracy and direct citizen participation. Most importantly, it demonstrates the crucial role of citizen mobilization in the long-term protection of ecosystems.
What Future?
Les Soulèvements de la Seine bring together unions and citizen collectives that join forces to defend the preservation of the territory, combining radical activism with concrete counter-proposals. Within this movement, local coalitions have formed to establish a calendar of territorial actions, oppose land artificialization and intensive logistics, and promote alternatives based on sustainability, relocalization, and collective reappropriation.
Their central message is clear: “Let us reclaim the Seine and its watershed, reduce flows, and defend the river, its banks, and its territory.” The emerging hypothesis is that a citizen mobilization—building perhaps on the momentum of Les Soulèvements de la Seine—could demand the legal recognition of the river and initiate renewed governance that also integrates a dimension of social justice.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the recognition of the rights of nature, in France and elsewhere, reflects a profound challenge to traditional state governance, which has failed to sustainably protect ecosystems. The example of the Mar Menor in Spain shows that citizen mobilization can transform a natural space into a true legal subject, opening the way to an expanded democracy where the living world is represented and defended. In the Île-de-France, initiatives surrounding the Seine outline a similar horizon: moving beyond the vision of nature as a mere resource. By placing residents and collectives at the heart of governance, these experiments invite us to rethink our institutions so that they are grounded in social justice, democratic participation, and the effective protection of the living world.
