(river rippling) (birds chirping) (river rippling) (river rippling) - [Piotr] Rivers, the first human civilizations were born in their banks.

They gave us everything we needed to exist and prosper.

(river burbling) We quickly learned how to tame the rivers and harness their force.

We have destroyed most of them so much that they are often unable to support us today.

The rivers themselves are dying because of us.

(tense music) This is a story of despair and desperation, but also of determination and hope.

(tense music) People have stood up against the devastation of life-giving rivers.

They're ready to protect them and defend their rights to the finish.

(tense music) (vocalist harmonising) (gentle music) These are our rivers, and we decide.

(water swishing) I am Piotr Nieznanski.

Rivers have always fascinated me.

I grew up on Bystra, a clean and wild tributary of the Vistula, the longest Polish river.

Diggers destroyed the free-running Bystra in front of me and created an artificial reservoir in a place favoured by trout.

Part of the river was regulated and its bank turned into a concrete embankment.

Anger and a sense of helplessness at the devastation of the wild river of my childhood strongly influence what I do today.

I joined those in different corners of the world, fighting for the same thing: healthy rivers and clean water.

My river conservation work and my journey have shown me that there are more and more of us every day.

(gentle music) (river rippling) (Vincenzo speaking Italian) (gentle music) - [Piotr] I arrived in the town of Nocera Inferiore in southern Italy a few months after a symbolic funeral took place there.

Nearly 1000 of its residents buried their killer.

They buried the Sarno, the most polluted river in Europe and one of the dirtiest rivers in the world.

(gentle music) (Mario speaking Italian) (Mario speaking Italian) (Vincenzo speaking Italian) (Vincenzo speaking Italian) (tense music) - [Piotr] Mario and Vincenzo told me the story of how the Sarno River became a deadly foul-smelling stream.

(Mario speaking Italian) (tense music) (Mario speaking Italian) (Vincenzo speaking Italian) - [Piotr] Fear and death of loved ones were what motivated them the most.

They set up an organisation with a group of friends and challenged the local authorities.

The fight for a clean Sarno River has become their mission.

(Vincenzo speaking Italian) (gentle music) - [Piotr] The town of Solofra in the Sarno River valley.

In the 1960s at the source of the Soloframa stream, a tannery industry was established here.

(upbeat music) Today Solafra is Italy's largest centre of tannery plants.

They treat leathers valued for their excellent quality worldwide.

But the price for this quality is paid by the people who live in the region.

The water from the tanning plants is discharged to this treatment facility.

(Mario speaking Italian) (upbeat music) - [Natural dyes that were used in ancient times have been replaced by chemicals.

(Vincenzo speaking Italian) (Mario speaking Italian) - [Piotr] As a result, a toxic cocktail of heavy metals and chemicals flows throughout the entire Sarno River valley.

In some areas, poisoned water strikes exceptionally hard.

(tense music) On Halloween night, they gathered again in the city for a vigil with the river in a symbolic coffin.

The event sent a clear message: "The Sarno still kills."

(tense music) The toxic river ends its deadly course in the Bay of Naples where it spits poisoned waters straight into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

(tense music) It is just a few kilometres from the Amalfi coast considered to have the most beautiful beaches in Europe.

And the region is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

On the last stretch, the river destroys the coastal ecosystem and still poses a threat to people.

(Mario speaking Italian) (tense music) (Mario speaking Italian) (Vincenzo speaking Italian) (gentle music) (glacier crackling and rumbling) - Yet another funeral for a glacier lost to climate change has been held this time in Switzerland.

Sunday's funeral march was joined by dozens of people who marked the disappearance- - [Piotr] The planet doesn't wait here.

This time, the participants bid farewell to the Pizol Glacier, located in the eastern part of the country.

Since 2006, it has lost nearly 96% of its mass due to global warming.

(gentle music) I'm waiting for a special guest.

(brakes hissing) - [Piotr] Daniel?

Hi, I'm Piotr.

Daniel Farinotti, a professor of glaciology, has been studying for years how climate change affects the conditions of glaciers.

We arranged to meet at the foot of the Rhone, the oldest Alpine glacier.

Glaciers cover 10% of the earth's land surface.

Together with the ice caps, they contain nearly 70% of the world's fresh water.

They are its critical and natural reservoirs.

(tense music) So this is to measure how fast the glacier is melting here?

- Yeah, exactly.

So the principle is very simple.

So we drill this pole into the ice, and then we measure this distance, and after a while, so typically after half a year and then a year, we come back and check how much the distance had changed.

We have produced a study in the year 2022 where we have analysed how the glaciers have behaved in the last past or in the past century.

So from there we know that since 1930 until now, we have lost more than half of the entire volume of the Swiss Alps.

So in that sense, it's very bad news.

(water rippling) Through the change of climate, through the increased melt, we're getting more and more water from the glaciers.

In the same moment though, the glaciers are retreating and becoming smaller.

So at present, we are probably at the moment in which we see this maximum amount of water coming from glaciers.

So we refer to this as to peak water, and we may really be witnessing peak water at the very moment.

After this peak water, well, the amount of water that will be available will be less.

So we'll have less water coming from glaciers.

(water drops plopping) The year 2022 will be the worst year on record that we'll ever had from the glacier perspective.

But we had for one very little snowfall during winter, and on top of that, we had the very warm summer.

So we double hit the glaciers by first giving it little snow and then giving it a lot of melt.

So that's really the worst combination possible.

- [Piotr] The future is already happening in this part of Switzerland.

Due to rising temperatures, the Rhone Glacier, one of the biggest tourist attractions and a source of business for the region, has been melting for several years.

Local businessmen are trying to stop the ice retreating by covering the Rhone with special sheets.

The white canvas reflects sunlight off the glacier to slow down its decay.

(water rippling) (gentle music) - So here at the Rhone Glacier, we are at the very source of the Rhone River, which makes all the way through the valLey of France in the Mediterranean.

Similarly, just next to this mountain, there is the source of the Rhine River or also of the Danube or of the Po.

So whatever lies downstream of those of those rivers, so Germany and the Netherlands or Austria and any other nation, so they will feel the effect of this missing water from the very top.

The glacier is melting and it's melting fast.

So you get a lot of water, which is able to counteract the potential drought.

In the case that you are the same space, but you remove the glacier, in that case, well, you won't get any water if it doesn't rain.

So certainly the amount of water that we have will be potentially an issue.

So water that we use for irrigation, for drinking water, but also for industrial use.

(river swishing) (tense music) (tense music) - [Piotr] Holland's Waal River is one of the main arms of the Rhine.

The country has struggled with water for over a thousand years.

Nearly one-third of the Netherlands is below sea level.

The fight against water taught the Dutch perseverance and ingenuity.

Henk Ovink is the first water ambassador in the Netherlands.

Today he's its global envoy.

He told me how the Dutch began to perceive water as an opportunity instead of as a threat.

- Now we are here in Nijmegen, directly across the river from Nijmegen.

And this is where we created one of the 39 projects as part of the Room for the River programme, a programme that was developed to ensure and increase water security in the whole riverine system of the Netherlands.

We had too much water.

And because we always try to manage rivers, sometimes these rivers are limited by our development.

And also here, the city of Nijmegen is just across.

And in the turns of the river, turns become too narrow, and then with high water coming in from the south, from Germany and the Alps, there's a challenge of flooding.

(aircraft humming) - [Piotr] The water attacked with all its might in 1995, the Rhine in its tributaries overflowed their banks in most of Europe.

The Netherlands was flooded and forced to undergo the largest evacuation since World War II.

The flood radically changed the way the Netherlands came to manage their rivers.

- 1995 was this wake up call.

And we said, okay, we have to act boldly.

And we came up with a plan, Room for the River.

Here in Nijmegen is one of the examples, you could say one of the most extraordinary examples, because we created a second river.

- [Piotr] In fact, you have created like a bypass channel for flooding.

- [Henk] Yeah.

- [Piotr] And you made a more space for the river.

- [Henk] This is not just another bypass in the river creating more room for the water.

It's not about water, but it is about how water creates opportunity for better quality of life.

- From my perspective, this is a kind of combination between modern technology and synergy with nature, yeah?

(gentle music) (birds chirping) - [Henk] Nature should be our inspiration, but we should not forget the intelligence of people, eh?

It's the combination that can help us progress.

The river itself gave the inspiration to rethink what the value of our river is in the context of water security.

(gentle music) We always thought, you know, and across the world we see it, that when there's too much water, you build a dam.

- [Piotr] Exactly.

- [Henk] Well, it's like with traffic, if you build another road, there's more traffic.

If you build another dam, it doesn't stop the water.

There's always the need for water to have room.

And the river used to have it.

And across the world we see channelled rivers, you know, beating back at us by overflowing with lots of casualties and economic impacts.

Don't understand anymore what we're doing.

We're only engineering.

So you have to go back to the roots, eh?

And in the roots it is nature and river.

- [Piotr] Today only one-third of the world's rivers flow naturally.

(bird chirping) A result of our interference since we began to tame them.

Europe has one of the most fragmented river systems.

Over one and a half million barriers, many of them outdated today, are destroying European rivers and their ecosystems.

- Dams themselves are not always a problem, eh, but if we don't look at them in this, you know, more comprehensive way, they become failing infrastructure of the past, eh?

Looking at rivers as living creatures that actually hold the asset for sustainable development, dams are not part of that future.

At the same time, also dams help us provide with clean energy, help us mitigate risks.

So smart damming in rivers in the best way possible can be part of the solution.

But the dam as a single-focused piece of infrastructure of the past is not part of a sustainable riverine future.

Rivers are the arteries, are the livelihood streams of our societies and economies.

For ages we know, but we have started to treat them as you know, only financial economic assets.

And that is not the way how you should treat the river.

(tense music) (bird chirping) And we don't treat them like our freshwater resource.

They are key for biodiversity.

And with that, for climate mitigation and adaptation, 90% of those impacts are water related, with floods, eh, that occur more frequently and become stronger, storms and hurricanes, more frequently and become stronger, sea level rise that is only increasing, and longer periods of droughts.

(water swishing) - [Piotr] Michal Zygmunt, a musician and artist, left the city several years ago and settled on the Oder River.

It is the second largest Polish river.

Michal has been involved in its protection for years.

He witnessed the tragedy on the Oder River in the summer of 2022.

(Michal speaking in foreign language) - [Piotr] In the middle of Europe, drought combined with excessive pollution contributed to an environmental disaster.

Just a few days after the first reports, the residents of the Oder region counted thousands of dead fish.

(Michal speaking in foreign language) (tense music) (Michal speaking in foreign language) (flies buzzing) (singers vocalising) - [Piotr] Only when the dead fish appeared in the lower Oder, Polish Waters, the government's institution responsible for water resources management, admitted for the first time that indeed a serious disaster had occurred.

The Polish Angling Association called the drama on the Oder, "The Polish Chernobyl."

A wave of criticism flooded the government.

People blamed it for incompetence and inaction from the first days of the disaster.

(Michal speaking in foreign language) - [Piotr] The Polish government blamed the disaster on a hydrological drought and the bloom of the so-called golden algae.

A European Union report stated that it was one of the greatest ecological disasters on the river in modern history, and it concluded that human factors were most at fault.

The report warned of the risk of similar disasters in other European rivers, especially where rivers have been heavily transformed for the needs of navigation and industry.

It said that the Oder was dying for nearly 500 kilometres and 360 tonnes of dead fish were removed from it.

(Michal speaking in foreign language) (gentle music) (Michal speaking in foreign language) (gentle music) - [Piotr] Although strongly transformed, the Oder still remains a special river.

Its valley is a preserved habitat with species unique on a European scale.

They're protected by Polish and EU laws.

(Michal speaking in foreign language) (Michal speaking in foreign language) (upbeat music) (antler grunting) (upbeat music) (birds quaking) (upbeat music) (Michal speaking in foreign language) (Piotr speaking in foreign language) (Michal speaking in foreign language) (singer harmonising) (river rippling) (vocalist singing in foreign language) - [Piotr] The threat of the devastation of Europe's last wild river awakened the activist spirit of a biologist from Albania.

10 years ago, when the country's government began implementing investments which would destroy the river, Olsi Nika took up an unequal fight to protect the Vjosa River.

His story resonated with the same arguments, passion and determination I found in people I met on my journey.

(gentle music) It is here where the government started the construction of one of the eight planned hydropower plant dams.

(gentle music) - 45 metres dam that was planned actually would not blocking only the water, but most importantly the sediments, which it means less water.

And then it's of course a loss of biodiversity because putting a dam in the river, in the middle of the river like this, it's like, you know, blocking the arteries in your body.

You know, it's really, you would expect a disease.

(gentle music) - [Piotr] The dam would've inevitably flooded apart of the Vjosa valley, destroying the lives of entire communities that lived here for generations.

- When we saw that, you know, all these beauty is being threatened by this beast, in a way, by this damn tsunami that is coming, then we thought, yeah, okay, we should definitely get ourself organised and do something.

And then that's how we started a campaign.

(protesters singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) Scientists on one side, we got involved, you know, the celebrities from the local level up to the Hollywood actor that are supporting, we got involved.

The lawyers and the local communities.

We've been present in almost all the village and all the forgotten village, you know, in Vjosa.

Part of the story is that nobody was really informed that there will be a dam next to the door, you know?

And they will have to be resettled, most of them.

(gentle music) - [Piotr] When the local activists gained a strong ally, the campaign for a free Vjosa gained momentum.

(upbeat music) Patagonia private company based in California that produces outdoor clothing and equipment, joined their efforts.

The company's support turned out to be crucial.

- In 2022, the Patagonia, you know, has been interfered, let's say, as a mediator between the civil society movement for the preservation of Vjosa and the government of Albania.

So it's really a trust builder, let's say, a bridge builder of trust between these two parties.

- [Piotr] A new cooperation model emerged between businesses and activists for the river's protection.

- There were European banks.

The European Development Bank was funding the building of dams on that river, which is madness.

They were funding the destruction of nature.

And so we put in place a petition to stop that funding.

And that turned out to be instrumental.

Plus the other thing that we did is we supported with legal cases trying to stop those dams from being built and blocking that river.

(gentle music) The forces that you are fighting against are enormous.

You know, there's big bankers, big money from around the world.

There's a lot of people not understanding the situations or why dams might be bad.

So it's a huge battle and it's very emotional.

And it's also a really long process.

- [Piotr] The people fighting for the Vjosa won their battle and the whole war.

In 2022, the Albanian government decided to create a national park on the whole Vjosa River and its tributaries.

The prime minister of Albania promised that the Vjosa will not join the circus of domesticated animals that the European power system has become, where rivers are circus dogs and cats.

Patagonia became a partner of the Albanian government, and they will work together on the future design of the park.

(gentle music) (water rippling) (gentle music) On the other side of the world, the people defending the river have taken their fight to a new level.

(gentle music) The Magpie River flows for 120 miles in the ancestral territory of the Innu people in eastern Quebec, Canada.

It is the main tourist attraction of the region.

(gentle music) For the Innu, the magpie is a sacred river.

They call her Mutuhekau Shipu.

(gentle music) the Innu faced formidable adversary.

Canada's Hydro-Quebec is the world's fourth largest producer of hydropower.

(footsteps thudding) Over a decade ago, the company built a massive hydroelectric complex on the twin Romaine River.

The project forever changed the life of the indigenous community.

The Innu decided to fight back when Hydro-Quebec announced a plan to build a similar complex on the Magpie River.

(Rita speaking in foreign language) (Rita speaking in foreign language) (vocalist harmonising) (river burbling) (Rita speaking in foreign language) - [Piotr] The Innu did not stand alone in their fight.

Local activists, politicians, and lawyers appreciated the importance of the river for their community.

Together they created an alliance.

That Innu felt their strength in numbers.

A bold idea emerged.

(Yenny speaking in foreign language) (Yenny speaking in foreign language) - [Piotr] This is how the Magpie River will be treated.

As of 2021, the river has nine rights, including the right to flow freely and the right to preserve its biodiversity.

It became the first Canadian river to be granted legal personhood.

Appointed guardians will represent the river in courts.

Critics charged that the new status of the Magpie River is a threat to economic development across the region.

(Yenny speaking in foreign language) (Rita speaking in foreign language) - I think this partnership across indigenous communities, generations, the different sectors and silos in society can really help us step up.

It is these combined perspectives that help us develop solutions and pathways for a better future.

(Mario speaking Italian) (Vincenzo speaking Italian) (bright music) (Michal speaking in foreign language) - [Piotr] Hydro-Quebec abandoned its project to build hydroelectric power stations on the river and stated that it did not intend to return to it in the near future.

(Rita vocalising) (Rita singing in foreign language) (Rita speaking in foreign language) (tense music) (tense music) (Rita speaking in foreign language) (vocalists harmonising) (gentle music) - [Piotr] This is our planet, these are our rivers, and we decide.

(gentle music) (vocalists harmonising) (vocalists harmonising)