“Is a River Alive?” That’s the title of a new book by British author and professor, Robert Macfarlane, which goes beyond thinking of a river as a living entity, as do many indigenous peoples around the world, including Australia’s First Nations people, who worship rivers as life-giving deities.
The notion of accepting rivers as living beings and granting them rights under the law is not new. Many have argued in support of legal protection for rivers, sometimes successfully. In fact, some two decades ago, Ecuador embedded four Rights of Nature articles in its constitution, granting ‘Mother Earth’ “the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.”
Then, as recently as 2017, New Zealand legislated that the Whanganui River, “from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements” is a “‘legal person’ with the capacity to represent itself in court and to bear rights - the right to flow unpolluted and undammed to the sea, for example, and the right to flourish.”
This concept is also close to the hearts of local Clarence Valley activists who have been campaigning for the past seven years to stop mining and mineral exploration in the valley, for fear of potential pollution.
When reading an article on Macfarlane’s exploits and endless campaign to have rivers given the constitutional protection they so clearly deserve, I was struck by the description of that campaign as, “enabling the engagement of constitutional and legal tools in defence of natural systems from their most voracious predators: us.” Certainly, mankind is the most invasive and destructive species this planet has ever seen.
The Clarence River’s water quality is dreadful, mainly through mud from up-stream erosion for which humans are entirely responsible. Thoughtless and often outdated agricultural practices, and a failure to fence livestock out of rivers, along with logging of forests, which are nature’s water filters, are also contributors.
Rivers are our lifeblood, so it’s imperative that we clean up our act.
- John Edwards
