The Cork Rivers Group brings together different community groups, organisations and stakeholders across the City (and potentially, County) who are actively involved, or wish to, protect and care for the rivers and water streams in their local areas.
The Group offers a space to share information and learnings, learn from each other, and support each other to take joint actions for the protection and care of Cork Rivers. This is done with the aim to avoid duplicated efforts across groups and make actions more impactful.
We are Nature. Nature is Us
Our Group is driven by a deep realisation among our group members that rivers are a part of who we are, and that a part of us is being destroyed. There is growing concern across different local areas of the City for the state of the City rivers and waterways and a strong need to take action to protect them and nurture them as part of ourselves.
This sense of identity and bonding with city rivers has been lost in our communities due to poor management policies, ignorance, and a view of rivers as dangerous or just a way to carry waste away.
Structural, political and social barriers to the flourishing of our rivers need to be challenged in a coordinated manner by:
* Promoting a better understanding of our rivers and their catchment areas, of how they interconnect and link across different communities, how they change over time, and how clean rivers are fundamental to biodiversity and a healthy environment.
* Creating a new vision to pursue the rights of the rivers through a nature-based solutions and “One Health” mindset, that is, an integrated approach to foster the interconnectedness between People, Place and Nature, and nurture the health of people, animals, and the environment.
Cork River Alliance Group 