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Relive the Living with Rivers evening, organized at the Musée des Confluences!

The closing event of the international mobilization Living with Rivers, the evening organized on October 27 by IFGR and the Musée des Confluences, was a great success with more than 300 people in the Grand Auditorium of the museum and 1500 people who followed live on social networks. To make people understand, to move them and to set them in motion, these were the objectives of this event, during which IFGR members launched the manifesto For rivers to live.

A unique live event to listen to the voices of rivers

The association Initiatives for the Future of Great Rivers (IFGR) and the Musée des Confluences in Lyon have joined forces for a unique event, live and multi-broadcast, entirely dedicated to rivers: Living with Rivers.

This event is in line with the exhibition Nous, les fleuves (We, the rivers), which is open to the public from October 21 to August 27, 2023, and is part of the international mobilization that IAGF launched at the end of June to unite a wide audience around the cause of rivers. Voices of rivers, artists, experts, water professionals and users have crossed and have grown a movement for everyone to participate in the protection of these common, essential to our lives.

This unprecedented event allowed for a better understanding of the services provided by rivers and the strong ties that unite us with them, all over the world. Erik Orsenna, President of IAGF, member of the French Academy and François Pécheux, journalist and presenter of the program Au bout c’est la mer (France 5) welcomed great witnesses and committed artists to immerse themselves in the life of a river, from its source to the sea, and discover how it tells us about the state of our planet and what we do with it. Among the participants:

Emma Haziza, hydrologist, founder of Mayane
Nicolas Gilsoul, architect, landscape designer and writer
Julie Rousse, sound artist
Carolina Tornesi McKinnon, World Youth Parliament for Water
Romain Troublé, the Tara Ocean Foundation
Serge Zaka, agro-climatologist and storm chaser

The Rhône, Saint-Laurent and Senegal rivers being the focus of this first edition of Living with Rivers, the event took spectators from Lyon to other continents, with live duplexes.

The manifesto So that the rivers live

The event was an opportunity to present the manifesto of IFGR, a group of international actors who, for more than five years, have been alerting, raising awareness and supporting territories for a more sustainable management of rivers. This manifesto was drawn up on the basis of the findings of projects and work carried out in many basins around the world by Erik Orsenna and the IFGR experts, gathered in the book recently published by Fayard: La Terre a soif.

The manifesto is everyone’s: mobilizing means gathering initiatives and wills. Everyone can sign it and then share the solutions they implement. During the evening of October 27, the first organizations and personalities signed the manifesto, including Pierre Athanaze, Vice President of the Lyon Metropolis, Gautier Chapuis, Deputy Mayor of Lyon, Laurence Borie-Bancel, President of the CNR Board of Directors, our great witnesses and the IAGF members, of course, etc. They have been followed by more than a hundred people since then online. To sign the manifesto, click here!