00:00Last year, Mark and I committed to walk the length of the river wharf as part of Extinction Rebellion's World
00:07Water Wedding Campaign.
00:08We wanted to get to know our local river better, and we walked 92 miles along the length of the
00:17river from its source at Beckermans to where it joins the River Ouse.
00:21Along the way, we made sure that we talked to people that we met, to talk to them about what
00:27they liked about the river, what it meant to them, their memories, their feelings.
00:32And we also talked to them about what issues the river was facing, so sewage, pollution, litter, climate change, etc.,
00:41biodiversity loss.
00:42As part of that journey, we realised how much the river meant to people, so we've helped to organise this
00:49event today to give people an opportunity to actually come together and celebrate the river.
00:55We've got the Blue Water Beings coming to do a procession through the park, and we've got musicians playing, we've
01:01got offerings to the river, we've got a blessing, we've got lots of things going on.
01:06We're also asking people to write some little pledges as well, so saying what the river means to them and
01:12also making a pledge as something that they can do to help restore the river and help to improve its
01:17state.
01:19We owe it to the planet to take care of everything that is provided for us, and it's not a
01:26finite resource.
01:27And as you will be aware, with climate change, we see different measures of problems with water, either a shortage
01:35or a flood.
01:36And the irony is, in this part of the world, we have a flood, at the same time we have
01:40a hosepipe ban.
01:42So it helps people reflect about what's important for their community and for the planet as a whole.
01:49We need water for life, and we've got to make sure that everybody has access to safe, clean water.
01:56We did water sampling at several points all the way along our River Wharf Walk.
02:03I think, to start with, yeah, the water quality was good, and actually, surprisingly, it was reasonably good most of
02:10the way along,
02:10apart from at the edge of Ilkley, when it was actually off the scale of, yeah, as bad as it
02:15can be.
02:16Following dirty business and things like that, programmes that are happening at the moment,
02:20a lot of awareness about the state of the rivers at the moment, and generally, waterways, seas, lakes.
02:27There's a lot of sewage pollution.
02:29There's a lot of issues with what's been pumped into our waterways, which we haven't been aware of in the
02:34past.
02:36It's awful.
02:37People are really shocked and horrified about what is happening to their rivers.
02:42And they're really angry.
02:44They really, really want to see them restored.
02:47They want to see an improvement.
02:48We just want to bring people together, share their thoughts, make pledges.
02:52Yeah.
02:53The more people, I think, that are aware of what's happening, the more we can do to actually make a
02:58change.
02:58Alexander Cronin EUWEND
02:58The X bear your mind is great.
02:59Let's talk about Scotland.
02:59The X bear your mind is beside you.
03:00And this has been on top of the corner.
03:00There's a very strong level of use.
03:00Twenty years ago I'm going to follow up with theę¹å,
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