Q&A with Gary Wockner of Save the Colorado
Interview by Chloe Heskett for ELC.
In early July, Nederland - a small town situated in the foothills of southwest Boulder County - became the first Colorado municipality to pass a resolution recognizing the rights of a body of water. The town’s Board of Trustees approved a Rights of Nature resolution recognizing the inherent legal rights of Boulder Creek and its watershed. We spoke with Gary Wockner, Executive Director of the group Save the Colorado, who was instrumental in achieving this victory with the help of Boulder Rights of Nature and other partners.
The interview has been edited for clarity.
ELC: To start, can you give me a little background on Save the Colorado and the work you do?
GW: Save the Colorado’s mission is to protect and restore the Colorado River. Our primary programs prior to this year were about fighting against proposed new dams and also dealing with some current dams.
In January this year, we started two new programs. One aims to protect rivers around the world, so that we could branch out and expand our mission. The other is a Rights of Rivers program. So in January, we launched our Rights of Nature for rivers program working with Earth Law Center as a partner and we’re currently in communications with about ten towns and cities in Colorado and Utah, exploring Rights of Nature programs.
ELC: I know that you have been involved in advocacy work for the Rights of Rivers before you began working with Earth Law Center--how did you get involved with that work? What drew you to it?
GW: I’ve known about it [Rights of Nature] for quite a long time. I think the fundamental tenet or argument of Rights of Nature is that our current laws are inadequate - and they certainly are inadequate. In the United States, most of our laws are 50 years old, and they were not intended to protect rivers or ecosystems. The rivers and ecosystems in the United States, across the planet really, are under extreme threat. So we need new laws.
ELC: What are the goals of the partnership between Earth Law Center and Save the Colorado?
GW: The program that we have launched is trying to work with communities and do kind of a soft, friendly version of Rights of Nature where we pass resolutions at the local level that help communities recognize that rivers should have their own rights and also have the right to exist and keep flowing through their communities.
There’s another piece to why we launched this program: the rivers that are around the Colorado basin are under extreme assault. There’s been an increasing movement of Wall Street types, big investors and hedge funds moving in and buying up ranches, farms and water rights. So, rivers and communities are increasingly under assault because of the increased privatization and monetization of water. This program is a start to try to move the conversation in a new direction and give communities some tools to at least protect rivers that flow through their towns.
ELC: Where is the focus of that work at the moment?
GW: We’re having this conversation in Nederland, Boulder, Lyons, Fort Collins, Steamboat Springs, Vail, Eagle, Durango, Moab, [and] Bluff. Those conversations are all at different levels = some are introductory and some are a bit farther.
ELC: How does the Rights of Nature framework fit into the work Save the Colorado has been doing the last several years? Has it substantially changed your mission?
GW: We were primarily a law enforcement organization, enforcing federal laws, state laws and local laws. We launched this new program because the laws are weak. In the state of Colorado for example, the local laws vary dramatically. In some places they can be very strong, in some places they don’t exist at all. So there’s a vacuum and there’s a need for stronger laws. We recognize this is a long process, but we want to be at the beginning, at the ground floor you might say. We wanted to help it grow, and that’s what we’re trying to do. I think it’s important for us to just think more proactively about the future, too, and where the legal system and environmentalism in general needs to go.
In the United States the environmental movement has gotten sucked into these big bureaucratic, administrative processes. There are some places where there’s on-the-ground action and work, but it’s primarily big, green organizations who have corporate or large foundation funding and they’re just kind of, in my opinion, stale and old and stuck in a 50-year-old paradigm. Or worse, the environmental movement is being dragged into what I would call a neo-liberal approach to environmentalism which is around markets and market-based environmentalism, and especially around [creating] water markets as a tool to try to protect rivers.
ELC: Do you think the counterfactual to that neo-liberal model starts with the kind of work you’re doing with these individual townships or cities?
GW: Yes, I think we’re trying to create points of light and we’re trying to connect those throughout the watershed. Over time we’re trying to grow a movement. It’s small, it’s dramatically underfunded, but in my opinion, it’s going in the right direction. It’s work that needs to happen if we’re actually going to protect nature and it’s work that I want to do.
ELC: What do you think about the potential for Rights of Nature resolutions or ordinances at the local level to spread and become integrated into state or even federal law? How far down the road do you think that is?
GW: That would be the ultimate goal. What we’re trying to do at Save the Colorado is a softer and friendlier approach than what other Rights of Nature advocates have tried. We work to start a conversation and create points of light. Every resolution that we create will have a clause stating the community’s goal here is to slowly over time change state laws. We’re not being confrontational [and] what we’re doing is not enforceable by law. We’re creating resolutions that are really a statement of opinion about how communities feel about Nature and watersheds and then over time the concept would be that it would start to change the public dialogue. I think once we get one, two [or] three cities in the state of Colorado, the conversation will grow.
What are the primary challenges you see, not just for Save the Colorado, but specifically for the Rights of Rivers movement and this partnership project with ELC?
The good news is that an increasing number of people and decision makers have heard of it [Rights of Nature]. Five years ago, it wasn’t even on the map. But still, when you’re dealing with town boards and city councils, you’ve got to realize that this is new territory for most of them and you’ve got to respect where they’re at and where they’re coming from rather than just try to hit them with something and knock it down their throat. It’s got to be softer and gentler, and it’s got to be introductory.
It takes a lot of legwork. You’ve got to find someone on a board or a commission or find a friendly council member and just have a friendly conversation.
The challenge is you’re introducing a new topic that can seem too far out there or controversial, so you have to be cognizant that you’re talking to people who might be open to new ideas, but they’re going to have to venture into some new territory and learn some new stuff, and that’s a process.
ELC: Finally, what’s your personal take on the Rights of Nature movement?
GW: It’s not a new or foreign concept to me. It’s been part of my mindset since I was in college in the late 1970s. So this has been a part of my life throughout my professional career, and now I’m at a point in my career where I can do exactly what I want to. This is the story I want to tell, this is the story I think needs to be told, and this is the direction that the environmental movement needs to go.
Earth Law Center is excited to continue working with Mr. Wockner and Save the Colorado to advance Rights of Nature conversations in local communities throughout the Colorado watershed. If you are interested in starting a conversation about Rights of Nature in your community, reach out to Gary Wockner (gary@savethecolorado.org) or Grant Wilson (gwilson@earthlaw.org).