River-as-Movement focuses on the new water justice movements and river co-governance initiatives: who they are, how they mobilize and relate, how they embed local in global and global in local, how they involve sidelined actors and alternative river wisdoms. Though hydrocracies’ river system developers have poorly understood the complexities and diversity, as well as the moral and political nature of local riverhood; river communities and movements do not wait passively. They act and react, and coproduce riverhoods. Far from necessarily being egalitarian and “just”, they have the potential to articulate a plurality of experiences, views, knowledges, tools and strategies.

Two main questions are related to this dimension:

How do multi-actor, multi-scale water justice movements learn from each other to support innovative river commons; and what qualities and conditions need to be present or cultivated to foster regenerative river commons? 

How do new multi-actor, multi-scale water justice movements produce innovative riverhoods through articulating experiences, views, tools, and strategies across contexts; and with what impacts on socio-environmental justice?