The river that can fight for its own future in court

The 21st century has been a bleak time for our planet’s rivers. According to environmental campaigner Feargal Sharkey, ‘every river in England is dying’.

In China, the Three Gorges dam project on the Yangtze River has diverted so much water that it has actually slowed the rotation of the Earth.

Nature writer Robert Macfarlane and his young son Will were gazing at a dried-up river bed during the searing drought of summer 2022 when the boy asked: ‘Has the water died?’ Although Macfarlane reassured him it hadn’t, he secretly wondered if the planet’s rivers were in fact dying, and whether it was too late to stop this catastrophe.

Travelling to the Indian city of Chennai, he sees a river choking to death on all the effluents and sewage which pour into it. In 1949 there were 49 species of fish in the Cooum River; by 2000 there were none.

One consequence of the river’s degradation is that, at times of heavy rain, water cascades through the city rather than flowing through the river, leaving Chennai ‘locked into a brutal cycle of flood and drought.’ Macfarlane writes that the water is ‘so chemically polluted that it blisters skin’.

In eastern Canada, a hydroelectric scheme threatens to turn the Magpie River into a series of ‘chained reservoirs’. A young Innu woman, whose ancestors lived as nomads on this peninsula, tells Macfarlane: ‘It seems crazy that we give a corporation that’s ten years old rights, but we won’t give rights to a ten-thousand-year-old river.’

Macfarlane believes the idea of giving waterways rights could revolutionise the way we treat our rivers. In Ecuador, he walks through an area of cloud forest in the north-western Andes, home to amazing species like the spiny pocket mouse, the strangler fig and the spectacled bear.

This fragment of land was saved from destruction when Ecuador’s Constitutional Court ruled that the river, the forest and its creatures had a legal right to exist, forcing the mining companies to leave. Similarly, in Bangladesh, hundreds of factories were closed because their pollution was ‘violating the rights’ of the Buriganga River.

In 2017, New Zealand’s parliament recognised that the Whanganui River has a legal identity, with rights and the capacity to represent itself in court via a River Guardian.

And earlier this year, Lewes District Council in Sussex recognised the River Ouse as a living entity – though this isn’t yet legally binding.

This heartfelt, lyrical book makes for rather depressing reading, yet it suggests rivers can be revived if the will to do so is there. Some enlightened places such as Seoul, Singapore, Munich and Seattle are liberating waterways previously concreted over or turned into narrow canals, which has revitalised the city centres and cooled the surrounding areas.

Rivers are not only a vital amenity but an integral part of our history. As Macfarlane says: ‘Our fate flows with that of rivers, and always has.’