This event is a great opportunity to meet UvA’s leading water researchers, along with Dutch water authorities and the business and industrial water sectors.

UvA’s Laura Burgers, Peter Van Dam, Jasper de Goeij, Joyeeta Gupta, André Nollkaemper, and Judy Shamoun-Baranes will take you on a water journey, starting over the North Sea, where birds signal ecological shifts. We trace this water inland, where rivers demand cross-border responsibility. As communities rely on these flows, we face questions of global justice and ownership. Yet history shows we can change—culminating in a legal future that grants the water itself rights. But how can we protect the deep sea if we barely know, let alone understand it?

Tracy Metz, a renowned Dutch-American journalist, author, and presenter, will moderate the symposium as an expert voice on water management, urbanism, and landscape. Two artists will guide us through the evening: composer and cellist Saartje Van Camp (of Spinvis) and a visual note-taker, Silvia Celiberti, who will capture the conversation as it unfolds.

Immediately afterwards, best-selling author Robert Macfarlane will deliver this year's BBC Reith lecture. After London, Bangor and Aberdeen, focusing on the elements of Earth, Air, and Fire, respectively, Macfarlane chose Amsterdam to discuss the fourth element, Water.