Robert Macfarlane’s writing has ascended mountain peaks and followed ancient trackways, and his previous book, Underland, delved into the “deep-down dark” of caves, mines, catacombs, and the Onkalo nuclear disposal facility. His latest book, Is a River Alive?, straddles the surface and the subterranean, focusing on three main water bodies: the Rio Cedro, flowing through the ‘cloud forest’ of Los Cedros in Ecuador; the creeks, lagoons, and estuaries of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India; and the Muteshekau-Shipu, or Magpie River, on the ancestral territory of the Innu Nation, Canada. There is also a chalk river who flows near to Macfarlane’s home in Cambridgeshire, and he brackets the book’s sections with visits to the swelling and subsiding springs. (Note the ‘who’ used throughout the book to move away from the objectifying ‘which’, ‘that’ and ‘it’ ordinarily used for non-human beings). 

At the heart of the book is the titular question, which Macfarlane asks both of himself and the activists, ecologists, and adventurers he meets along the way. He assures the reader that it is not meant rhetorically; though its answer is complex, it is meant seriously with real-world application and consequences. It is also not supposed to be novel – Macfarlane describes it as an “old-growth question”. But it is thoroughly timely. The book comes in the wake of a number of landmark cases of the international ‘Rights of Nature’ movement, in which rivers, forests, and national parks have been granted legal rights and ‘legal personhood’. The Rights of Nature movement is in recognition of the triple planetary crisis we face of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, and the urgent need for “radical protection and restoration of watersheds, forests, wetlands and biodiversity”, in the words of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN). The movement also acknowledges the relationship of Indigenous peoples to more-than-human entities, often viewed as part of an interconnected web rather than as resources to control and exploit.

So, can a river be considered a living entity – “life-giving and rights-bearing” – and what would this mean for law, culture, and politics? 

Desecrated waters

“If you find it hard to think of a river as alive, try picturing a dying river or a dead river.”

In 2024, storm overflows in England discharged untreated sewage for a record total of 3,614,427 hours, according to The Rivers Trust. No river in England or Northern Ireland is in ‘good overall health’. The River Lym near where I live was declared “ecologically dead” in 2023 due to intense sewage releases, with the local water company making vague promises of change by 2027. The dire predicament of our rivers has become the norm in recent years. Writing of this rapidly shifting baseline, Macfarlane writes that rivers have become “rivers you cannot drink from without falling ill, which have in turn become rivers you cannot swim in without falling ill”.

The privatisation of water companies in England and Wales has, unsurprisingly, proved shockingly bad for the ecosystems treated merely as an endlessly extractable resource. All over the world, commons laws and practices of sustainable use have been broken to allow authorities and companies to use rivers for monetary gain. Of the rivers Macfarlane spends time with, the waters of Chennai are the sickest: litter, sewage, and heavy-metal pollution have poisoned the rivers almost beyond repair. Yet activists, like the young Yuvan who guides Macfarlane in this section, attempt tirelessly to heal and protect the wounded ecosystems. The cloud forest of Los Cedros, meanwhile, was saved in 2021 by a ruling made in 2008 by Ecuador's Constitutional Assembly, granting nature the right to exist, regenerate, be restored, and be respected. When, nearly 20 years later, a Canadian firm came prospecting the forest for mining, the law protected the forest and river by ruling that mining would be a violation of Ecuador’s constitutional Rights of Nature.

What Allotments Reveal About Britain’s Social and Political History

At first glance, the humble allotment might seem like a minor footnote in Britain’s sprawling social history – not quite as central as trade unions, or as romanticised as working men’s clubs. Often situated on land considered unsuitable for anything else – railway sidings, flood plains, or council-owned peripheral strips – allotments appear, spatially and politically, to occupy the margins.

But that would be a mistake. The rise and steady collapse – and now tentative revival – of the allotment movement mirrors broader shifts in our political economy and civic life. For those of us interested in ‘associational life’ and the changing nature of collective organisation, the history of allotments and their national body, the National Allotment Society (NAS), offers insight into the strengths and vulnerabilities of grassroots membership organisations.

A Brief History of Allotments

Allotments emerged during a period of profound social transformation. The 1887 Allotments Act – officially “An Act to facilitate the provision of Allotments for the Labouring Classes” – required local authorities to provide land for cultivation, though only where demand existed. Councils were reluctant. So the 1907 Smallholdings and Allotments Act introduced stronger obligations, and remains on the statute books today. If six or more people requested plots, the local council had to act.

But the real explosion came in wartime. Under the 1916 Defence of the Realm Act, councils could requisition land for food production. By 1918, 5,000 new plots had been created across 26 local authorities. The numbers surged again during and immediately after WWII, reaching a high point of 1.4 million plots. But by the 1970s, these had been cut by two-thirds, as mass-produced food and new housing developments took precedence.

By the late 1990s, demand had dipped to the point where 16% of the UK’s 265,000 remaining plots were sitting vacant.

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Where are we today?

That trend has reversed sharply. As of 2023, the NAS estimates that there are around 330,000 allotment plots in the UK – a modest increase, but what’s more telling is the scale of unmet demand. A 2023 study by the Association for Public Service Excellence found that:

• 30% of local authorities had over 1,000 people on their waiting lists
• 57% had more than 300
• 69% reported average waiting times of over 18 months (up 11% on the previous year).

This, despite councils splitting larger plots to increase supply. Allotments have quietly become one of the most in-demand, least disruptive forms of land use in British public life. Planning applications in 2023 included over 100 new housing developments with integrated allotment sites – a development that would have been unthinkable two decades ago.

The current picture is one of contrast: a movement growing in popularity, but under-resourced and politically uninfluential. The majority of allotment land remains council-owned, with voluntary site committees handling the administration. With external pressures on land, there’s definitely a key role for the national association and local allotment holders to become more organised, such as exploring opportunities for Community Asset Transfer from local authorities to community groups, which would enable greater community control over sites and bypass the ‘two-tier’ management system; and to encourage charities and associations to buy land for allotments – like the charity Green Allotments, which buys land with the purpose of creating not-for-profit private allotment sites. In 2009, the National Trust also pledged to create up to 1,000 new plots for use as allotments or community gardens, reviving abandoned kitchen gardens and making use of vacant land on or near their sites. It’s not clear whether they succeeded but, by 2012, they were a third of the way there, having partnered with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s ‘match-making’ initiative for would-be growers and those with land (Landshare, which closed in 2016). A similar initiative spearheaded by a large national association could help to reduce the pressure on local authorities, bring down waiting lists, and extend the breadth of available sites.

It’s a Thursday night. You’ve just left your local and you’re heading further down the high street to see a couple of bands at one of the three music venues in town. There are a few of you going, £10 to get in. Afterwards you’ll probably grab something to eat, maybe even head on somewhere to dance. You actually grew up seeing bands here with your mates, having a drink on a Friday. Your daughter goes to the nightclub they have on a Saturday, and she says she might try putting her own gig on with her mates’ bands.

Except, she doesn’t. And you don’t go there. Because this isn’t 2005, it’s 2025, and the venue closed down in 2019. Another closed during the pandemic, and the only other venue stopped putting on live music in 2023 because it just wasn’t cost effective anymore. 

This is the reality playing out in towns and cities across the UK today. Places that were once home to vibrant local culture, putting on live music week in, week out, for the communities around them, are now closed. For the people who love live music, or simply love the community that a grassroots music venue (GMV) brings, they are forced to travel further afield, to bigger cities such as Manchester and Birmingham that continue to attract touring artists.

Music Venue Trust’s Annual Report shows that 2024 has seen a further decrease in the number of places on the touring circuit. An average tour in 1994 would have included 22 dates. An average tour in 2024 included only 11 dates. Worse, while tours in 1994 were spread over a range of towns and cities across the country, with 28 different locations on the primary and secondary touring circuit regularly accessing exciting new and original live music, in 2024 just 12 locations – all of them major cities – remained as primary and secondary touring circuit stops for grassroots tours. Cities and towns with fantastic venues that used to be tour staples – Leicester, Edinburgh, Bath, Hull, Windsor, and Stoke on Trent – have dropped off the primary route. This means swathes of the country are cut out altogether, resulting in people having to travel further or simply being unable to access live music at all.

The result is a decrease in the total number of live music shows (down 8.3% since 2023) accompanied by an even steeper decline in ticket revenues (down 13.5% since 2023). Consequently, GMVs are being forced to decrease their live music offer, running fewer shows at a higher cost.

What these venues provide to communities goes well beyond showcasing a live band a few times a week. Of the 810 venues surveyed for MVT’s Annual Report, 50% engage in other social and education projects encompassing cultural initiatives, community work, and courses. A further 43% provide resources and space for musicians, including rehearsal studios, recording studios, and resource centres. For many young people starting out as musicians the commercial hiring of such spaces further afield is unthinkable.

Art needs somewhere to take root.

Bradford, designated UK City of Culture 2025, is no different. Home to a vibrant creative community, many artists in Bradford are experiencing the same affordability crisis afflicting countless neighborhoods in the UK. 

The People’s Property Portfolio (PPP) was founded by members of the local creative community to create affordable, accessible, and secure spaces. Their long-term goal is to create a network of community-owned buildings and assets that serve social needs.

PPP’s founders saw an opportunity for this vision in the shared needs of community members and artists experiencing volatile, short-term tenancies in buildings that weren’t accessible for all or fit for purpose. Many of those buildings were also left vacant. In 2022, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (now MHCLG) reported at least 3,416 homes liable for council tax in Bradford had been unoccupied for at least six months.

“You have these underutilised buildings, and then you have this young, growing and eager local creative scene that doesn’t have access to spaces that can meet their needs,” Carys Fieldson, a Director of PPP, said.

“A tale as old as time”

Far-off investors speculating on community assets are a big part of the problem. Research conducted by PPP in 2022 revealed that nearly 1400 properties in Bradford city centre are owned by external or offshore companies. Many own more than five. Absentee landlordism is sucking wealth out of the community and sending it to faraway shareholders.

This extractive model makes it harder for artists in the City of Culture to build a livelihood. A 2024 report by the Bradford Producing Hub confirmed what many local artists knew, stating that creative workspaces are often insecure and unaffordable. 

Sarah Bird, a sound artist and Director of PPP, says this state of affairs is common across the UK.

“It's a tale as old as time,” she said. “It’s happening everywhere. Nationwide, it’s all the same  narrative. It's heartbreaking.”

What affordability really means

Community ownership models like PPP are a local alternative to extractive landlordism that raises rents on artists. PPP is a Community Benefit Society (CBS), which is a democratic way to hold buildings and land, and ensures that investment, assets, and profit go into the local community. Unlike other co-operatives, their core function is to operate for the benefit of the wider community, Fieldson said.

PPP also enlists the partnership of a range of local actors. This includes public institutions (Bradford’s council and West Yorkshire Combined Authority), social initiatives (Local Access Bradford and Impact Hub Bradford), and tenant and user groups. The creative community is heavily involved, too. Castles in the Sky, an LGBTQIA+ creative company, Common/Wealth Theatre, and local radio stations are trying to set down roots locally despite rampant short-term tenancies. 

“As a social landlord, we see buildings as vital hosts for supporting all kinds of creative and grassroot community activity,” Fieldson said. 

“It’s important that affordability is relative to the average local income for artists and creative freelancers. A lot of people talk about affordable workspaces, but what does affordable really mean when it comes out of your bank balance every month?”

Affordability should also mean reinvestment in the community, so wealth stays put locally. Rather than flowing to offshore tax havens, revenue from PPP goes back into the community. Fieldson says far-off investors have a habit of buying cheap, waiting for the asset to appreciate value, before selling to benefit shareholders – which contributes to high vacancy rates and underutilisation in Bradford's city centre buildings.