Biodiversity 13:
Rivers, Forests, and the Rights of Nature
A 10-week course with Jim Laurie
September 24 – December 3, 2025
In this 10-week journey, we will explore the profound question raised by Robert Macfarlane in his new book Is a River Alive? (2025)—can rivers, forests, and other ecosystems be recognized as living beings with rights?
Macfarlane’s travels take us across three continents—Ecuador, India, and Quebec—where communities, scientists, and activists are protecting rivers through law, culture, and ecological restoration. Along the way we meet in Giuliana Furci, the Chilean fungi expert advancing the rights of fungi; Yuvan Aves, a South Indian naturalist and activist, restoring rivers and protecting birds, insects, and sea turtles; and Indigenous leaders in Quebec working to safeguard wild rivers from massive hydroelectric projects.
Each week we’ll connect these stories to larger ecological truths: that rivers, forests, wetlands, and fungi-rich soils function as one interconnected system, critical to rehydrating continents and cooling the climate. We’ll also examine how biodiversity infiltrates water into soils, how plants cover and protect landscapes, how fungal networks sustain resilience, and how living shorelines can buffer rising seas.
Course Projects
- Totem Rivers – Share the story of a river that has shaped your life
- Nature’s Rights – Investigate cases where legal or cultural rights have been recognized for ecosystems, such as Lake Erie, New Zealand’s Whanganui River, and Ecuador’s Amazon.
- Future Rights – Imagine where and how you would like to see “rights of nature” declared in the future.
By weaving together science, law, philosophy, and personal reflection, this course offers a holistic perspective on rivers as lifelines of the planet. As global warming dries out continents and fresh water and ice flow rapidly to the oceans, we will ask: how can biodiversity, guided by human wisdom and humility, restore the water cycle and help heal the Earth?
Format
This is a 10-week course that meets every Wednesday, starting September 24, 2025 and will run until December 3, 2025. Classes will be held from 12 – 2 pm ET and 7 – 9 pm ET on Zoom. Students can choose either class time to accommodate their schedules.
The course will have reading assignments, slide presentations, videos, and breakout sessions to discuss topics raised in class and to get to know your classmates.
Instructor Jim Laurie’s goal is that each person shares something and learns something new in each class. There are many “old timers” who have taken several courses, but we also have new people in each course. The Old Timers are eager to encourage the “Newbies” and help them catch up and feel comfortable as part of the Symbiosis Team.
Course Book
In this book Is a River Alive?, author Robert Macfarlane asks whether rivers can be considered living beings with rights. Traveling to Ecuador, India, and Quebec, he documents struggles to protect rivers from Ecuador’s constitutional recognition of nature’s rights, to India’s sacred river restorations, to Quebec’s fight against damming.
Alongside these journeys, he reflects on his own local river in England and explores how rivers, forests, and fungal networks reveal the intelligence of ecosystems.
The book blends adventure, philosophy, and law to challenge our relationship with nature and inspire recognition of the living world as kin rather than resource.
Your Instructor
Jim Laurie is a restoration biologist, consultant, and co-founder of Biodiversity for a Livable Climate. For twenty years, Jim worked as a biologist and technical trainer in the chemical industry in Houston, Texas, where he pioneered the use of living machines to biologically remediate wastewater more effectively than conventional technology. In 1995, he relocated to Vermont to manage the world’s largest “Living Machine” designed by ecological visionary John Todd to clean raw municipal sewage without toxic chemicals. He then consulted on projects to restore the redwood forests and Pacific salmon fisheries, and implement flood prevention and ecological design. In 2017, he developed “Scenario 300,” an analysis demonstrating that if just half the available land on the planet were restored, atmospheric carbon concentrations could fall to 300 ppm within four decades.
Jim studied Holistic Management of grasslands with Allan Savory and the Savory Institute, built a lab to study fungi and grow mushrooms, learning from the work of Paul Stamets, and worked with the International Wolf Center in Minnesota to learn about predators and the biology of the North woods. Jim received his B.S. in Biology at Rice University and his M.S. in Future Studies at the University of Houston in 1997 where he completed his thesis on “Biological and Educational Tools for Reversing the Loss of Biodiversity in the 21st Century.”
Jim discovered the magical power of nature in his work as a biologist in the chemical industry to clean toxic wastewater with “Living Machines.” His career turned to restoration biology and teaching. You will enjoy his interactive and thought provoking style which makes science accessible, while still being comprehensive.
This Series of Biodiversity Courses
Are you ready to transform your understanding of how life on the planet works and how we can play a role? Join us as we follow the transformation of leading writers and thinkers to a deeper understanding of natural systems, our role, and the ability of nature to cool the planet.
While each course builds on our understanding, you do not need to have taken any of the previous Biodiversity Courses. Whether this is your first or tenth course, please join us if you are curious about nature and its power to restore ecosystems to abundance. The veterans of previous classes will help you catch up in your learning. We are developing into a “Symbiosis Team” to ameliorate or reverse the impacts of global warming. Everyone has much to learn and share and there is much to be done. We need and appreciate your enthusiasm on the team, and encourage people to join at the level that they are able to. Sliding scale pricing is available, as are scholarship options. To join us, register below!