The politics of multispecies justice in practice? An analysis of the Grensmaas river restoration project in the Netherlands

The Grensmaas river restoration project at the border between the Netherlands and Belgium tries to combine flood control with economic profit and ‘nature development’. It involves various actors and has been publicly portrayed as a success story. Nevertheless, different points of contention, disagreement, and occasional convergence reveal the politics in practice of contested river territories like this. I approach the Grensmaas case through a political ecology perspective focused on multispecies justice, demonstrating that river restoration projects are always informed by power and politics that impact a multiplicity of human and non-human beings; and that these projects are fundamentally about which species matter, why, and for whom. I reflect on how river restoration narratives and practices may be transformed by engaging with the notion of MSJ, namely by challenging dominant frameworks of river management and governance to acknowledge and respond to the agency, needs, and interests of non-human beings.