Reinier Hoon, voorzitter van Stichting Leve de Jeker en zelf landbouwer binnen het stroomgebied van de Jeker, hield deze speech tijdens de bijeenkomst van Mayors for a Drinkable Meuse. Omdat de aanwezigen Frans, Duits, Nederlands en Engels spraken, is de speech in het Engels gehouden.
We are gathered here today because we care about water quality. But water quality is never only about water. Water quality is the symptom of whether a landscape is functioning. The river simply shows us the outcome. It reflects how we farm. How we manage our forests. How we eat, drink, party, and how much medication we need. How we do our dishes and how the sugar factory cleans their beets. The river carries all of it.
And that means the challenges we are discussing today are not simply challenges of water. They are challenges of a landscape.
I run an organic farm. But farms like ours remain exceptions within the wider landscape. And that was one of the starting points of Leve de Jeker.
Because we realised something fundamental: however well I may care for my own field, it means very little if the landscape surrounding it continues to degrade.
If I truly want things to change, then care cannot stop at the border of my own fields. It means I must begin caring about my neighbour, especially when we disagree. And that my neighbour might start to care more about his or her neighbour, and so on.
It means I understand and can explain how my work affects the lives of others, or the health of a river. But that is not enough.
I must also learn to understand my neighbour. To understand how they make decisions. How they make a living. And how old, new, or different ways of farming might actually allow them to pass something more healthy on to future generations.
These arguments need to be economic as well as ecological. Because ecological arguments without economic models to sustain them remain empty and ultimately meaningless.
And perhaps most importantly of all: we need to be friends.
Because transitions of this scale do not happen through judgement, pressure or bullying. They happen through trust. Through relationships. Through the gradual recognition that many of our deeper motivations are actually shared.
The desire to make a living. And to pass on something viable to future generations.
Our farm is therefore not simply about us and our land. It is our attempt to contribute to a landscape that functions — ecologically, economically and culturally.
And increasingly, I'm wondering whether that could be a model for politics.
Take the Jeker, crossing linguistic and national borders six times before flowing into the Maas. Nothing will fundamentally change unless we learn to care, cooperate and govern beyond those borders too.
And that is not self-evident. Borders solved important historical problems. They helped create order, stability and democratic societies capable of governing themselves more justly. That was an enormous achievement.
But rivers ignore those borders completely. Ecosystems do not organise themselves according to territories. They function through relationships and interdependence across municipalities, regions or countries.
And thus, cleaning a river requires something new from all of us. It requires we change our relation to ourselves, each other, and the landscape.
Modern society has placed culture outside of nature. And perhaps that is the mistake. We protect small fragments of "nature" while treating the rest of the landscape primarily as a space for personal gain, extraction, efficiency and consumption.
But rivers show us that this separation does not hold. Agriculture affects biodiversity. Industry affects drinking water. Cities affect soil and climate. Everything infiltrates into everything else.
