Returning water to the earth

Baptiste Morizot and Suzanne Husky

River alliances in the face of climate chaos

On planet Earth, a living river is surrounded by life-protecting wetlands. Yet we've taken these environments away from them to build our cities and industrial farms. Corseted, drained and concreted, rivers can no longer protect us from a deregulated climate. Faced with this peril, it's time to return water to the land, to water the deserts that extractivism has left us as a legacy.
How can we bring water back to life? By investigating the deep history of rivers. We discover that they have co-evolved with a form of life that has been working to hydrate the environment for millions of years: the beaver. It slows down water, infiltrates it into the soil, purifies it and shares it with all living things. In this way, they create oases of life that can help us through droughts, fires and floods. Its action amplifies life. Hunted for centuries as a pest, can it now become an ally? Can the beaver inspire a philosophy of action finally free of the cult of oil, machinismo and control? Can we learn from another animal how to heal rivers?
What is at stake is a paradigm shift towards a way of thinking about living water, capable of quenching the thirst of a thirsty world. In these troubled times, it's time to forge alliances with non-human powers. To explore the possibility of participating, as humans, in the self-healing of the world. And to learn to amplify life ourselves.

[Actes Sud] Nature, Wild Worlds, October 2024
16 x 24 cm
352 pages