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“Water is more than a resource; it’s a relative,” says water professor and protector Kelsey Leonard on the Climate Curious podcast, recorded live at TED 2025. In conversation with co-host Maryam Pasha, Kelsey shares how she’s working to ensure water gets the same legal rights as humans –legal “personhood”. Because even though water is essential to life, it still remains relatively unprotected under the law.

Watch Kelsey’s TED Talk, Why lakes and rivers should have the same rights as humans.

Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston

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00:00 Introduction
00:42 Meet Kelsey Leonard: water protector
00:49 The concept of water protection
02:04 Kelsey’s journey with TED
03:42 Global movement for water rights
05:06 Legal rights for natural entities
06:49 Impact of legal rights on nature
08:46 Future of water governance
10:02 Conclusion

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:00] Ben Hurst: Welcome to Climate Quickies, bite-sized nuggets of Climate Goodness. From our TEDx London experts in under 10 minutes in this week’s climate, curious, we are learning about how water is more than a resource. [00:00:15] It’s a relative. Water professor and protector. Kelsey Leonard shares how she’s working to ensure water.

[00:00:21] Ben Hurst: Gets the same legal rights as humans. Even though water is essential to life, it still remains relatively unprotected under the law [00:00:30] on what it looks like to be a true water protector. Recorded live at TED 2025 with Marion Pasha. Here’s Kelsey Leonard. Stay curious.

[00:00:42] Meet Kelsey Leonard: water protector

[00:00:42] Maryam Pasha: I am joined today by Kelsey Leonard. You are a [00:00:45] water protector, a scientist, and a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

[00:00:49] The concept of water protection

[00:00:49] Maryam Pasha: What is a water protector?

[00:00:51] Kelsey Leonard: So, I think for me, uh, in my language, Shinnecock, which is the nation that I am a citizen of, it means, uh, people of the Stony shore. [00:01:00] So for me, being a water protector, I think my ancestors had this really beautiful, uh. Idea morality around what it means to call yourself shinnecock is to be someone who protects that shore.

[00:01:11] Kelsey Leonard: If you are of that shore, then you’re someone who has a responsibility to [00:01:15] protect it. And so being a water protector for me is protecting that shore, that place where land and water, meat and, and that’s really informed how I’ve, I’ve thought about water protection and I think for different indigenous peoples around the world, water [00:01:30] protection.

[00:01:31] Kelsey Leonard: May mean a little bit different, uh, right. Definition. And, and I think that’s the beauty of it. And I think it’s also about what are the waters that we belong to. And, and in that belonging we find our purpose and responsibility for an [00:01:45] ethic of care.

[00:01:46] Maryam Pasha: Incredible. How so, obviously doing this work is deeply rooted into your who you are and, and and, and what you bring.

[00:01:55] Maryam Pasha: Can you tell us a bit more about your work?

[00:01:56] Kelsey Leonard: Yeah. So. [00:02:00] Very, very long bio probably. But let’s just start, start. We like it. Let’s, let’s,

[00:02:03] Maryam Pasha: let’s go into it.

[00:02:04] Kelsey Leonard: Yeah.

[00:02:04] Kelsey’s journey with TED

[00:02:04] Kelsey Leonard: Let’s start with, uh, maybe what brings us all here. We’re at Ted, uh, 2025 to reimagine humanity, and I was fortunate to become a part of the TED community in 2019 when I gave a talk called Why Lakes and Rivers should have the same rights as humans.

[00:02:19] Kelsey Leonard: I

[00:02:19] Maryam Pasha: remember this talk. I actually really remember this talk and I loved it. It was so moving.

[00:02:25] Kelsey Leonard: Well, thank you so much. It really was inspired by all [00:02:30] of the wonderful, largely women in my life who have mentored me and shared how they’ve cultivated a relationship with water over their lives, and that transcends their.

[00:02:43] Kelsey Leonard: Time on this planet [00:02:45] because it goes back through their ancestors and through their communities, and they really had amplified this message to me that water is more than a resource, it is a relative. And so that’s what brought me to to Ted, was to share that [00:03:00] global movement that’s emerged to really see our current environmental laws transformed into a system that we called.

[00:03:08] Kelsey Leonard: We call Earth Law, which is really recognizing that the planet and everything that makes up this beautiful planet, including water, [00:03:15] has a right to exist, thrive, and flourish. And so that’s what being a water scientist means to me today. It’s about that intersection of science, policy, and law, and how we protect water for the planet and for future generations.

[00:03:27] Maryam Pasha: This is so interesting. You know, in the UK right now, there’s [00:03:30] a real crisis around our rivers, right? Mm-hmm. Like, and so I’m curious to know, like. You said this intersection of wor of law, of science, of climate, of, of traditional knowledge, like how does that manifest in, in the world for you?

[00:03:42] Global movement for water rights

[00:03:42] Maryam Pasha: Like what kind of things are you working on right now?

[00:03:45] Kelsey Leonard: So right now we’re actively working to. Advance Earth law movements at a local level. Okay. So for me, what does that look like? Yep. Well, we see a lot of indigenous nations that are passing laws to recognize the inherent [00:04:00] rights of natural beings, including rivers and lakes and the ocean. Uh, we also see nation states doing that as well.

[00:04:07] Kelsey Leonard: We saw one of the. I guess foundational moments in human history was when the Nation of Ecuador, uh, [00:04:15] revised their constitution in 2008 to recognize, uh, the rights of nature. And more recently, um, we’ve seen the, um, sea of mar manure in Spain gain legal rights. We saw the Nui [00:04:30] River and Al New Zealand gain legal rights as well.

[00:04:33] Kelsey Leonard: And so we’re seeing all of these Rivers, lakes, water. Entities around our planet gain these rights. And so as a scientist and a researcher, it’s being able to document those [00:04:45] innovations. And so we have something now called the Eco Jurisprudence monitor. You can go to eco jurisprudence monitor.org and you can find all of these initiatives around our planet, either by country jurisdiction or by ecological actor.

[00:04:58] Kelsey Leonard: So, right. Pretty cool.

[00:04:59] Maryam Pasha: [00:05:00] So for those, and, and here’s a very basic question. Yes. For those of us who are not in the law, mm-hmm.

[00:05:06] Legal rights for natural entities

[00:05:06] Maryam Pasha: Um, why are these natural, natural entities having legal rights? So important, like what does that enable? Why

[00:05:13] Kelsey Leonard: is that a thing we [00:05:15] need? Okay. Very, very good question. So right now in our legal system, if you are not recognized as a legal person under the law, you don’t have any rights to be heard by a court or by a justice.

[00:05:27] Kelsey Leonard: And so the best [00:05:30] example we have is through a series of of case law precedent. In our legal system laws that were established, we gave that legal personality recognition. To corporations.

[00:05:40] Maryam Pasha: Right. And I’ve heard of this exactly. This is a name we’ve heard of. Yes.

[00:05:42] Kelsey Leonard: And so a corporation who is [00:05:45] harmed can go before a court and express that harm and try and have that harm remedied by the justice or the court of law.

[00:05:52] Kelsey Leonard: The same rights are not available to nature as of yet, in many instances, until there’s a rights of nature or [00:06:00] earth law initiative put forward to recognize that entity as a legal person. And so that’s what we’re seeing blossoming in the past two decades around the planet.

[00:06:08] Maryam Pasha: That’s super exciting. Have you seen any, in, in, so in this, um, movement [00:06:15] of gaining rights, have you seen that then be used in any way by, you know, individuals like, by, like, I just, I’m, I guess I’m in, in articulately asking this question of like, what has that been used, has rights ever [00:06:30] been, what am I trying to say?

[00:06:32] Maryam Pasha: Can we, wait, let me reformulate this question. Pause. Um, you, you get stuck in your head. Mm-hmm. Okay. So. This is why it’s important for these entities to have rights are those rights. Or those, that, those new kind [00:06:45] of laws being used in any way have you seen around the world?

[00:06:48] Kelsey Leonard: Yes.

[00:06:49] Impact of legal rights on nature

[00:06:49] Kelsey Leonard: Uh, so one that I really like to highlight it, it’s sort of a combination approach, but the Yurok tribe in California, they recognize the rights of the Klamath River simultaneously in recognizing those right.

[00:07:02] Kelsey Leonard: They also were putting forward dam decommissioning. So a lot of rights of river initiatives they call for the river to be able to flow freely. So that would then also allow for greater advocacy or [00:07:15] power in movements to decommission dams to remove them. So that has now happened on the Klamath River.

[00:07:20] Kelsey Leonard: There have been dams that have been decommissioned. The river now has right. Through different tribal initiatives and laws, and we’re now seeing a return of salmon into that river [00:07:30] that they haven’t seen salmon runs like that in decades. Wow.

[00:07:34] Maryam Pasha: Wow. It’s incredible. What, it’s not simple, obviously what you’re doing, but it’s so elegant, like it’s this idea of unlocking the power, like existing power of the [00:07:45] legal system.

[00:07:46] Maryam Pasha: Mm-hmm. What are your hopes around this earth law movement? Like what do you think it can really. Do if, if, um, it gains a scale and a momentum.

[00:07:56] Kelsey Leonard: So I have wonderful colleagues at the Earth Law Center and [00:08:00] nonprofit international organization that continues to advocate for, uh, these initiatives globally. And.

[00:08:06] Kelsey Leonard: There’s a few things that we want to see happen. We want to continue to see these initiatives grow, but folks also need resources. [00:08:15] They need tools at a local level to be able to do these types of grassroots movements. So the Earth Law Center has developed. What’s called the Earth Law Portal, and that’s also available online at the earth law portal.org.

[00:08:27] Kelsey Leonard: And, uh, in using that, you can download legal [00:08:30] templates, you can download letter campaigns to write to your local politicians. Um, at Ted, we’ve, we’ve heard that a lot in terms of how do you activate, and sometimes it’s gonna be something really big and sometimes it’s gonna be really small. And that’s what I love about these different [00:08:45] resources.

[00:08:45] Kelsey Leonard: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:46] Future of water governance

[00:08:46] Maryam Pasha: If you could redesign. Like the global water governance system from scratch, what principles would you instill in its foundation?

[00:08:55] Kelsey Leonard: We had a period in our history where we created environmental laws [00:09:00] almost in a reactionary stance. You know, we had rivers that were on fire, we had cities consumed by smog.

[00:09:05] Kelsey Leonard: We were, we were just trying to make. A world that humans could step outside in and exist in, right? But now those environmental laws, [00:09:15] they’re not sufficient. You know, we’re still seeing massive biodiversity loss. We’re still seeing the impacts of climate change. So we need laws that can be more responsive to the frequency of change that we’re seeing in our world today.

[00:09:28] Kelsey Leonard: And so that’s what I think the earth law can do [00:09:30] it. It really says that. We’re not setting up environmental laws so that we can legalize the discretion of nature up to a certain threshold so that humans can still use it. But we’re saying no, what does nature need to thrive and to exist? And so I think that has to be at the core of what we see for water law and [00:09:45] governance moving forward.

[00:09:46] Kelsey Leonard: Um, it’s not that we need to, you know, throw everything away, we’ve. Really good principles in the world and really good leadership from indigenous nations and other countries around the world. We need to have more democracy and plurality [00:10:00] in how we think about water governance.

[00:10:02] Conclusion

[00:10:02] Maryam Pasha: What a beautiful sentiment to end on.

[00:10:03] Maryam Pasha: Thank you so much for joining us, Kelsey. Thank you for having me.

[00:10:06] Ben Hurst: Thanks for listening to this quickie.

[00:10:08] Maryam Pasha: This episode was created by our superstar podcast team at TEDx London. Until next time,

[00:10:13] Ben Hurst: stay [00:10:15] curious.