Could a river sue a corporation? Robert Macfarlane’s books change the world – now he’s advocating for the world’s waterways

Each river is at the forefront of the emergence of what Macfarlane calls a new-old idea. This idea has been newly pioneered in recent years by the ecologist, historian and theologian-turned-geologian Thomas Berry, one of the philosophical fathers of the Rights of Nature Movement.

Berry has coined the phrase “Earth Jurisprudence” to recognise and uphold the idea of earth as “a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects”. Under this juridical philosophy, “trees have tree rights, insects have insect rights, rivers have river rights, and mountains have mountain rights”.

An idea beginning to happen

Towards the end of Macfarlane’s book, the Innu poet, artist, therapist, river guide and mystic Lydia Mestokosho-Paradis declares,

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.

How to bring such an imagined and imaginative, partly spiritual idea into the realm of law? It has begun to happen, perhaps most strikingly in 2008 when Ecuador under the guidance of the socialist government of Rafael Correa passed into existence a new constitution that recognised the Rights of Nature alongside those of humanity and its corporations.

The major article of the new constitution stated,

Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.

It is possible this declaration in their constitution will in time close the gold mines in the cloud-forest of Los Cedros.

In 2017, extraordinarily, New Zealand passed legislation called the Te Awa Tupua Act, which recognises the Whanganui River in the North Island is alive, is an ancestor to the Whanganui iwi (tribe), and is itself a spiritual and physical entity, “an indivisible and living whole”.

This legislation has encouraged individuals and groups around the world to agitate for their rivers’ lives to be recognised and respected in law.

“There are few things as powerful as an idea whose time has come,” Macfarlane writes, certainly more in hope than hubris at this tipping point for the world’s climate and its climate politics.

Many difficult questions connected to these ideas must be raised, and they have no easy answers. To what, exactly, does a river have a right? Who can speak for a river? What might be the reasonable consequences or compensations to be made when a river’s rights are compromised or denied? Can a river sue a corporation? Can a river act purposefully? What do sciences have to say about the idea of a river being an entity?

And so the conversation goes, on into the night, by riverbanks, around small camp fires, often among people who feel connected to their rivers, responsible for them, or just lucky to have a chance to kayak them before they disappear.

This book will in part be a test of whether this idea’s time has indeed come, and of how urgent we feel it is to find legal, actionable answers to the many claims and consequences it gives rise to. That is the great gift Macfarlane’s “future-dreaming” has given to the world.