Australian Blue Ambassador Erin O'Donnell is coming to Berlin on June 18 und 19

In mid-June 2026, Blue Community Ambassador Erin O’Donnell, who is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne Law School in Australia and the author of "Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration and Water Governance", will be in Europe, delivering lectures in Zurich, Berlin and Vienna. The Blue Community Berlin welcomes her with a series of events on June 18 and 19 in Berlin.

What are Blue Communities?

Blue Communities are a network of diverse municipalities, cities, institutions and organisations worldwide that share the goal of protecting water. Although implementation varies, all Blue Communities follow these core principles:

1. Recognition of the human right to water and sanitation.
2. Promotion of publicly funded, publicly owned and operated water‑ and wastewater services.
3. Promotion of safe drinking water for everyone, with the aim of ending reliance on bottled water.

Upholding the rights of river persons: enforcement or relational repair?

River rights is now a transnational movement, with over 100 examples of rivers around the world gaining the legal status of persons, subjects, or living entities. The question of whether rivers should have rights is beginning to give way to the question of what happens when they do. In her lecture, Erin O'Donnell examines the question of how to enforce these new legal rights in three ways. First, we need to be clear what rights rivers actually have, which do not always include the right to go to court, or rights to water flowing between their banks. Second, there are many mechanisms for enforcement, ranging from the highly adversarial lawsuit through to broader accountability processes. Third, we need to understand the limits of enforcement, which may not restore river health, or repair relations between people and rivers. When rivers gain new legal rights, we can continue to rely on existing legal enforcement processes, but this misses a real opportunity for creative law and policy reform that transforms our relationship with rivers.

European Citizens’ Initiative “Rights for Nature” is scheduled to start in autumn.

A coalition of citizens from all over Europe launched the Rights for Nature initiative. The aim is to get the European Union to treat ecosystems as legal entities and not just as pure resources. Such approaches already exist in other countries: the Mar Menor Lagoon in Spain and the Whanganui River in New Zealand have already received their own rights, allowing people to take legal action on behalf of nature. It is precisely this change that the initiative wants to promote by collecting over one million signatures from autumn 2026, which would require the EU Commission to deal with the proposal.

Agenda: Erin O’Donnell in Berlin

Erin O’Donnell will start her European trip in Switzerland on  June 15. She will be in Berlin on  June 18 and 19. The following program is planned for Berlin:

Thursday, June 18

• Morning: visit, lecture and conversation at the Berlin Metropolitan School, hosted by World Peace Service (WFD) (not public)
• 3:00‑5:00 pm: lecture and panel discussion at aquarium (Skalitzer Straße 6, 10999 Berlin, U1/U3/U8 Kottbusser Tor), hosted by Living Rivers Foundation
  • Doors open at 2:30 pm
  • Lecture: Erin O’Donnell
  • Get together with drinks and finger food
  • Registration by email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
• Evening: movie screening followed by a discussion (location and time still to be confirmed)

Friday, June 19

• Visit of greywater management site at Potsdamer Platz, hosted by Erwin Nolde - innovative Wasserkonzepte
  • Limit of 25 people
  • Registration by email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.