On World Rivers Day, councillors, environmental groups, and members of the public gathered at Parade Gardens in Bath to sign the Avon Bioregional Charter of River Rights (ABCRR) — a document enshrining the Bristol Avon's rights to exist, thrive, evolve naturally, flow sustainably, not be polluted, preserve its biodiversity, and be represented by advocates. Nine councils have endorsed it, including Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol City, and North Somerset, making it the most broadly backed river charter in England. The charter emerged from a grassroots movement built around an annual pilgrimage. In spring 2024, 12 people walked roughly 100 miles from Joyce's Pool — one of the Avon's sources — to the sea over eight days, planting trees, restoring footpaths, and presenting the fledgling charter to councillors along the way. We Are Avon, co-founded by Hamish Evans, organised the pilgrimage and is building a wider bioregional movement. About 40 river charters have appeared in England since the Sussex River Ouse became the first to have its rights recognised by a local authority in February 2025. The critical caveat: river charters do not replace statutory duties, create legal obligations, or explain how competing rights should be handled. Josh Levene, a founder of the UK River Rights Network, frames the best charters as "social contracts between humans and the river" — moral instruments whose power depends on integration with existing institutions. Bath and North East Somerset has appointed a river advocate to represent the Avon, and councillor Oli Henman says the charter will be embedded into the council's climate and nature strategy, due in early 2027. Individual councils have not yet published implementation plans. What distinguishes the Avon model is its bioregional approach. Rather than treating the river as a line on a council boundary map, We Are Avon convenes cross-council workshops exploring governance aligned to the catchment as an ecological system. This has reportedly increased communication between councils, Wessex Water, and the West of England combined authority. Eighteen Avon guardian groups now test water quality, pick litter, and maintain local relationships with tributaries. Farm clusters are being convened to share regenerative practices. The movement is deliberately not waiting for top-down implementation. Evans says We Are Avon plans to acquire a community-owned hub to demonstrate regenerative land management. "If the community doesn't have more autonomy over those things, the issues will perpetuate," he says. Meg Avon, who symbolically "married" the river in 2023 to highlight pollution, reports a shift in cultural consciousness: "People are willing to go wading in shit because they get so much joy out of walking with us." Paul Powlesland, co-founder of Lawyers for Nature, identifies the structural limitation plainly: "River rights charters are an amazing way to begin changing our attitude towards rivers, but they don't change the law by themselves." The charter's real test is whether moral alignment at council level translates into different decisions on planning permissions, water extraction, and pollution enforcement. The Bristol Avon catchment partnership has not officially endorsed the charter but is collaborating with We Are Avon. The Avon experiment sits at the intersection of two live questions in UK environmental governance: whether rights-of-nature frameworks can create accountability without legal teeth, and whether bioregional organising — governance mapped to ecology rather than administrative boundaries — can outperform traditional structures. If We Are Avon's model produces measurable water-quality improvements and institutional behaviour change, it becomes a template. If it doesn't, it remains a well-intentioned narrative exercise with nine council signatures.
