In a packed Salle Colbert, researchers, lawyers, artists, and political leaders advocated for France to adopt legislation that would allow for a radical change in our practices, our relationships, and our dialogue with Nature. These are all values that are at the heart of the Bourges 2028 project, the first low-carbon European Capital of Culture, mobilized to accelerate the ecological transition in the Centre-Val de Loire region and in Europe's more human-sized cities.

On this occasion, Pascal Keiser, Commissioner General of Bourges 2028, European Capital of Culture, accompanied by mayors including Yann Galut, Mayor of Bourges, declared: "the importance of the issue of the rights of nature as a driving force behind Bourges 2028 from the very beginning of the bid in 2021, by leveraging and pooling the strength of civic, legal, research, and artistic initiatives underway across Europe, particularly around the Loire, Danube, Oder, and Dnieper rivers, combined with the visibility of a European Capital of Culture."

During the conference held at the Palais Bourbon, Camille de Toledo was able to present the International Rivers, a flagship project of the European Capital of Culture, at the intersection of art, science, and society, developed with the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study.
This artistic exploration is fully in line with the citizens' initiative presented to parliamentarians, structured around three priorities: a framework law for the recognition of new subjects of natural entity rights; a law recognizing the estuary as an environment of attachment endowed with rights; and a law recognizing the Loire River and its watershed as a "non-human entity" endowed with rights.

These legislative advances are supported by the regions and their representatives, with the cities of Nantes, Lyon, Tours, and Bourges, as well as the Centre-Val de Loire Region, playing a leading role.