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How far will we follow these rivers?

with Pedro Teiga
Pedro Teiga is the founder and executive director of E.RIO, a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR), and a member of the Iberian Centre of River Restoration (CIREF). He has a doctorate in environmental engineering from the University of Porto, and he works on river rehabilitation resorting to nature-based solutions (NbS) and public participation. He is the mentor of the Rios+ brand, the LabRios+ labs (implemented in more than 20 Portuguese municipalities), the River Guardians movement and the Strategic Waterline Rehabilitation Plan, which has been implemented on a municipal and cross-municipal level.
With 23 years of experience in this field, Pedro Teiga coordinates a multi-disciplinary team that specialises in executing river rehabilitation plans, projects and interventions, and that has analysed and intervened in more than 1000 km of watercourses, 500 of which safeguarded with natural engineering techniques, having already promoted the planting of roughly one million native trees and bushes, and carried out technical training, public participation and environmental awareness sessions for more than 15 000 participants.
Centro Ciência Viva do Alviela

The territory where the Materiais Diversos Festival takes place is known for the ancient importance of water, which can be seen in the rivers crossing it and in the abundance of underground aquifers that reappear in rainy winters and have determined the settlement of human communities. Here, water means origin, as in the case of the Alviela River; resource, having supported industries, like that of textiles and tannery, or intense cattle farming over time; and, who knows, it can even come to be and end.
In a territory that is part of the Tagus Basin, which is an indispensable reference when one discusses water resources management, we wonder what civil society can do about this, but also what is our role in the safeguard of rivers as key elements in ecosystems that comprise much more than human beings.