10/15/2026
Over the past year, ACAP Cape Breton and researchers from CBU have been working with a group of passionate young volunteers from around the CBRM on a wetland restoration project we call Riparian Zone Ready.
As planning and restoration have unfolded, at every step the group has carefully considered the perspectives of the species that rely on optimal wetland health for survival. Eventually, our work led us to an important question: How might our restoration project, which incorporates the perspectives of nonhuman ‘co-researchers’, inform policy around wetlands in Nova Scotia?
With financial help from CBU’s Community Student Research Connections Program, we were fortunate to be able to hire CBU student Akshay Adana to do a deep dive into the literature on the Rights of Nature, Eco-Democracy, Earth System Law, and Multi-species Justice in an attempt to answer this question.
As Akshay expressed an interest in responding in part through artistic expression, we suggested he create a piece as an introduction to his research paper. Here is the poem that Akshay wrote:
Call of Countless Creatures
Unusual wildfires from Australia to Canada
Igniting the question asked by uncountable Creatures
Who are thought to be mute and the background
Asking who needs to be blamed
Nature or humans
How a human separated from nature
How justice became so narrow
Why a communication of humans becomes so dominant
Caused thunderstorm-like loud voice to be denied
Our survival depends one these countless Creatures
The faster we understand this, the better future we Create
Seen results of centuries of Injustice
How the green of a few people
Cost the need of millions to billions of people
Dichotomy of Ganaga River
Most respected, followed and lifeline to million
Yet struggling for its own survival
They have been here before us
Have the right to live the unique life they have
Time to look at what anthropomorphism gave us
And what it cost to others
Those who caused this have to fix it
Create new ways to live
Be empathetic, curious, open to those who have been muted
Move from politics that have invested in profit
Generated by the exploration of the muted
No more at the mercy of humans
Now want to be a rights holder
Those who think it is impossible
Need to know how injustice to one
Is an injustice to everyone
And see the web of complex relations
We created over a millennia-long run.
No longer they can silence those who know the truth
Time to take truth to Triumph.
