The Rights of Rivers

Title: The Rights of Rivers

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Brian Lehrer: It's Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For the last few minutes of today's show, we're joined by the decorated nature writer Robert Macfarlane. The title of his latest book poses an interesting question: Is a River Alive? While skeptical at first, after traveling to converse with rivers in Ecuador, India, and Canada, the answer to him becomes obvious. Macfarlane invites us to see our rivers not only as alive, but beings that deserve rights in law. Robert, thanks for joining. Congratulations on the book. Welcome back to WNYC.

Robert: Thanks, Brian. Good morning to you.

Brian: We all know rivers are ecosystems. What made you ask, are they alive? How is that different?

Robert: Partly because my rivers are dying. I'm English, and we have a pretty shattered and wounded river system as a result of privatization, 36 years of privatization. We have not a single river in good overall health in England. There's a crisis there. I suddenly began thinking about rivers not as ecosystem service providers, not as resources, but as neighbors, as friends, as citizens. They float for 10,000, 12,000 years in our landscape, but here we are treating them very, very badly. It's an attempt to reimagine our relationship with rivers away from resources and towards the life forces that they absolutely are.

Brian: What do you mean rivers you know are dying? I guess if we ask, are rivers alive, we can ask, can rivers die?

Robert: Yes, they can. A dying river, deadpools. That's what hydrologists call it. That's when a river doesn't have enough flow to move itself along its own bed. A dying river, its fish float belly up in England. We have two measures of river health. One is ecological health, one is chemical health. We have not a single river in good chemical health, and we have 14% in good ecological health, but a living river. I think we all know what that feels like, what it looks like, and it enlivens us. It's an enlivening force.

Rivers flow through people as well as through places. We all have rivers that speak to us, that help us tell stories about ourselves. I'll ask you, Brian, I love asking this question, who are your rivers? Who are the rivers who have flowed through your life, through your childhood, the river you live near now? Who are your rivers?

Brian: Oh, I have a clear winner, the Hudson River, which I do live right near now. I absolutely love the Hudson River from the bottom of it in Manhattan, where I live, to the very top of it in the Adirondacks, where I've spent many, many, many summers hiking near the very top of the Hudson River, which flows from the top of Mount Marcy, the highest point in New York State. I love my Hudson River. I've also seen, though, my Hudson River come back from, I don't know if the brink of death, but from much worse condition decades ago. We could name somebody like Pete Seeger-

Robert: Exactly.

Brian: -and the concerted environmentalists of decades ago who really brought back the Hudson River, including places that were not swimmable once upon a time, that are again, that were not fishable once upon a time, that are again. If you didn't bring that up, I was going to because, as you decry rivers you know that are dying, I think it's also good to say dying rivers can be brought back to life.

Robert: Totally. Yes, brilliant example. Rivers heal themselves. Given the chance, they heal themselves incredibly fast. They heal us, too, when they do that. This is a book of hope and joy and wonder, as well as one of loss and damage. I suppose I began from that rationalist position, river as resource, and then I began realizing that rivers are radically differently imagined in different parts of the world.

For example, in Ecuador, rivers have rights in the constitution, constitutionally guaranteed rights. The right to exist, to flourish, to persist. In 2021, the rivers of this cloud forest called Los Cedros, the Cedar forest, were due to be killed by gold mining, and this amazing judgment was handed down by the constitutional court that recognized their rights and compelled the mining companies to leave the area. In Canada, I traveled to this immense river called the--

Brian: Can I just jump in on Ecuador?

Robert: Yes.

Brian: How do they put that into law? Translating to English, I assume it's in Spanish, as well as you can. What's the language that gives a river rights under the law?

Robert: In 2007, Rafael Correa was elected. One of the first things he did is to pull up a complete reimagining of the constitution. Into that constitution, that revised, reimagined constitution, went these four articles, 71, 74, the so-called rights of nature articles. The first of them guarantees the right of nature to exist, to flourish, to persist, and to respect. Then the last of them makes the state, the guarantor of those rights, and allows any citizen to bring a case within the legal system if they feel that the river's rights, the forest rights, are being violated or are under threat of violation. Incredibly powerful and very different to the anthropocentric structures of law and imagination that we abide by in this country, my country, and yours.

Brian: It's interesting because some people who might be labeled anti-environmentalists would say we shouldn't give nature "rights" over the interests of humans. Yes, everybody loves nature, but if it's going to cost so much in tax money or loss of economic opportunity to protect something that may be beautiful or that we feel sentimental about in nature, we shouldn't look at it that way. We should look at how much they serve people and maybe other living beings.

Robert: They do serve people. Rivers are givers. Marx talks about nature's free gift to capital. Nature is giving to us all of the time. Some of that we can cost in terms of natural capital, in terms of ecosystem services, and some of it is much harder to price up. That's the spiritual-- If we think of a river as beautiful or decorative or ornamental, we fundamentally misunderstand the basis of life.

We have built all our cities on or by rivers, sometimes over rivers, are flourishing as a species has been more or less coeval with that of rivers, particularly in the Northern hemisphere since the ice left at the end of the Pleistocene. The Holocene is when rivers have flourished, and it's when we have flourished. To think of them as somehow disposable is just a misunderstanding.

Brian: Separate from us. Did you want to touch on the one in India, the one in Canada, or one for me?

Robert: Yes, just I guess because it's slightly closer to home for some of your listeners. In 2021, same year as that judgment came down from the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court, this amazing mirror resolution came out that recognized the Mutehekau Hipu, also known as Magpie River, up in northeastern Quebec or Nitassinan, the Innu lands as a living being. Amazing, amazing phrase to find in a declaration and also a rights-bearing being. I went there. I was dropped by float plane way up that river, and we paddled out over best part of two weeks. It's a jaw-dropping presence for us. It rivered me good and proper. It opened me to all manner of new ways of thinking about time, about rivers, about life itself.

Brian: You see them as so alive. You consider the rivers you wrote about in this book as your co-authors, don't you?

Robert: Yes, I do. That may sound cute or trite, but I mean it very fundamentally. At one level, I couldn't have written the book without the rivers. I couldn't have written it by sitting still, staying in the library. In another, particularly the final pages of the book, I had the strongest sense I've ever had in 11 books, 20 years of being written by the river of the river, absolutely pouring words onto the page and shaping the flow of language there. It was thrilling and perplexing and exhilarating.

Brian: In our last 15 seconds, what do you hope comes of this book?

Robert: I hope it pumps energy and hope into the river guardianship movement worldwide. It's an incredible force for reviving rivers and us and hope.

Brian: Robert Macfarlane, a fellow at the University of Cambridge and author of several books, including Underland and now his new one, Is a River Alive? Thank you so much. It was a joy to have you.

Robert: Thanks, Brian.

Brian: That's the Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our daily politics podcast. We had Shayna Sengstock and Milton Ruiz at the audio controls. Stay tuned for Alison.

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