- The book ‘Is a River Alive?’ unfolds across Ecuador, India and Canada.
- It explores the Rights of Nature movement, which advocates for granting legal personhood to ecosystems.
- The book explores an ancient belief that rivers are not just for human use but are living beings who should be recognised as such in imagination and in law.
British writer Robert Macfarlane’s latest book, Is a River Alive? is poetic in its description of forests, rivers, the natural world and the efforts of indigenous people and others to keep them and the myriad lives they sustain, alive. It unfolds across three landscapes — an Ecuadorian cloud-forest named Los Cedros; the wounded creeks, lagoons and estuaries of Chennai in India; and the wild interiors of Nitassinan, homeland of the Innu people, in Canada.
Each of the landscapes has become a focus for revolutionary thinking of the relationship between humans and the environment. In all three places, rivers are understood to be “alive” in some fundamental way, and in each of these places the survival of the rivers is under severe threat — in Ecuador from gold mining, in India from pollution and in Nitassinan from dams.
The book explores an ancient belief that rivers are not just for human use, but are living beings who (not which) should be recognised as such in imagination and in law. The journey has not only graphic and lyrical descriptions, but “is lit by many other minds and voices that should open hearts, spark debates and challenge perspectives” on rivers, forests and the role of big corporates in these landscapes. Central to the book is the belief that the fate of humans flows with that of the rivers.
The book explores the Rights of Nature movement, which, over the past twenty years, energised by ecological emergency, has been inspiring environmentalists and local communities to advocate for granting legal personhood to ecosystems. In dozens of countries, river rights, for example are being taken up through the courts. The Rights of Nature recognises nature’s right to be restored when damaged; the relationship between the good health of nature and good living of humans and the obligation of the state to restrict activities that might lead to extinction of species, destruction of ecosystems and the permanent alteration of natural cycles. Human beings were seen as an inseparable part of nature and not as superior.
The book’s journey through the Ecuadorian landscape begins with the information that in September 2008 an extremely progressive Constitution was ratified for the rights and protection of its Indigenous people. It recognised water as a public good — “inalienable, imprescriptible, unseizable and essential for life.” Accompanying Macfarlane to the cloud forest were three people, each differently committed to the lives of rivers, forests and people. Cesar Rodriguez-Garavita who founded MOTH (more-than-human) Rights collective, is a lawyer studying how the Rights of Nature movement can strengthen forest protection against mining. Cosmos Sheldrake, a musician and a field sounds recordist, wants to capture the hisses and beats of the forest. Giuliana Furci, a mycologist and scientist, wrote field guides to the fungi of Chile and advocates for fungi to be recognized as an independent kingdom of life as flora and fauna. The scientific lead to the team, she was looking in particular for two fungi that would help further protect the Los Cedros under Ecuador’s Rights of Nature law.
Though among the most bio diverse habitats of the world, millions of hectares of the Ecuador cloud forests have been lost to logging, farming and mining, especially for copper and gold. The existing legal protections have slowed but not stopped the loss.
The book’s journey through this landscape, joined at various points by activists and even judges who had helped preserve the ecosystem of Los Cedros, is a fascinating narration. They see and interact with the myriad creatures that bring the forests alive — an army of black leaf cutter ants carrying leaves to culture a fungus which is food for their larvae, moths, howler monkeys and hummingbirds. There is the excitement of finding two rare mushrooms that could help in their fight to stave off mining as Giuliana sprawls on the forest floor whooping with joy. They listen to people like Josef DeCoux, who stays deep in the forest interior to protect it and forest communities.
Towards the end of the journey, the team sits together to write the song of the Cedars, with Cosmos providing rhythm and melody! “You raze the forest, you lose the cloud and the rain. You lose the rain and the cloud, you kill the river. You kill the river — and all life leaves,” says Giuliana.
The river had to be killed for the city to live
The second section on the Chennai landscape opens with a telling comment by young Yuvan Aves, a teacher, naturalist, writer and water activist, accompanying Macfarlane so that he can see the ‘ghosts, monsters and angels’ of Chennai. “The ghosts are of rivers who had to be killed for the city to live. The monsters are the terrible forms those river ghosts take every few years, when they are resurrected by cyclones or monsoons. The angels are those who watch over the lives of rivers where they survive, and who seek to revive those who are dying,” the book narrates. Yuvan is one of those angels.
A water analysis carried by a newspaper announces: “Chennai’s rivers are dead. All major water bodies running across the city are dead for all practical purposes.” As Yuvan and Macfarlane walk across the beach they see sea turtles, their shells fractured by trawlers and their eyes eaten from their sockets by the crabs who scurry out at night on their mission of cleaning up the beach.
Chennai is a city of three rivers — Kosasthalaiyar, Cooum and the Adyar. The Tamil Nadu’s Pollution Control Board reported in 2023 that the water collected from 41 sites of the Adyar and Cooum was unfit for drinking. The rivers had heavy metal concentrations, fecal matter and coliform bacteria. Chennai’s population had grown from 500,000 people in 1901 to 6.5 million. The number of fish species declined from 49 in 1949 to 21 in 1979 and zero in 2000. As the rivers and water waxed and waned, eris or water tanks were constructed to collected the monsoon water for village needs. Later they too were drained and built over. The October monsoons fill the rivers, eris and marshes of Chennai, but the rest of the year the water dwindles. Wetlands become grasslands and marshes become grazing grounds. The 90 sq miles Pallikaranai marsh shrank to around 20 sq miles by the 1970s and now only 5 sq miles remain. The streams that connect Pallikarnai to other wetlands too are choked with garbage and blocked by buildings and roads. So when there is an intense monsoon the water bursts through the constrained channels into the city.
This cycle of floods and drought hit the poorest the most. In 2019, neighbouring states sent water in convoys to Chennai. By winter there is an excess of water and the city is flooded. In 2015, the city was declared a disaster zone — hundreds of people drowned, people on ventilators in hospitals died as power supply was cut and the homes of millions were flooded.
Yuvan’s journey as a self-taught naturalist is woven in as he and Macfarlane trace Chennai’s rivers and water bodies from inland to the coast. They stop at Vedanthangal, the oldest water bird sanctuary of India, 50 miles west of Chennai. An ecological haven on 30 hectares of eri fed by monsoon rains, farmers, villagers and birds live here in harmony. But here too the Sun Pharma factory has been discharging toxins into the sanctuary, poisoning people, ruining crops and killings birds. A fight is on against the factory.
Deep in Chennai, the Adyar reeks. Blocked by sewage and garbage it scarcely flows. Macfarlane proclaims “the Adyar is dying”. Yuvan says the Cooum, now a synonym for filth in Chennai, is in a worse state. Even in this gloomy scenario, a slice of woodland is seen between the Adyar river and the road. It is the Kotturpuram Urban Forest of 600 trees planted 20 years ago on a dump yard by students and activists. Buzzing with life — Burmese lynx spiders, leaf cutter bees, fruit bats and butterflies — the green patch signals hope.
Young environment activists also want to breathe new life into the Kosasthalaiyar river and the Ennore Creek in north Chennai polluted by industries. “To change a landscape for the better you must first have the ability to dream — to dream a good dream.” Thirty years ago children could drink the water of Ennore Creek and swim in the river. Can they do it again?
On the Chennai beach where the Adyar, the Cooum and the Kosasthalaiyar meet the Indian ocean, they see new born olive Ridley turtles struggling to get into the water. Though tossed back by the waves, they don’t give up! Chennai’s young environment activists too are showing the same resilience to restore their rivers, creeks and forests.
Damming rivers, killing forests and rivers
The third landscape to which Macfarlane and his friend Wayne Chambliss travel to meet a living, threatened river is in Eastern Canada. The Magpie or the Mutehekau Shipu, the name given by the Innu people, flows south from the Quebec-Labrador border to the sea at the Gulf of Lawrence, and the two plan to follow the river in kayaks and on foot through the forests to the sea.
A major problem has been the damming of rivers for hydro power by Hydro-Quebec. Of the 16 large rivers in Quebec, 14 were dammed by 2012. Though the Innu community at Ekuanitshit began defence of the Mutehekau Shipu in 2018, by 2020 there were 20 hydro complexes in their territory of Nitassinan. They were joined by four other groups including kayakers, trekkers, river lovers and SNAP Quebec, an influential Canadian conservation body. Watching over them all was the International Observatory for the Rights of Nature. It was decided to get recognition for the river “as a legal person with the right to live” and should a dam be constructed on the lower Mutehekau Shipu all these rights would be violated.
For the Innu community recognition of the river’s life and rights was a means to realigning modern legislative discourse with millennia old Innu values and relationships. The Mutehekau Shipu Alliance drew strength from other river rights recognitions round the world. In January 2021, less than three years after the alliance was formed, the Mutehekau Shipu became the first river in Canada to be recognized as a “living, rights-based being.” At the heart of the success was an Innu poet and activist, Rita Mestokosho, who briefs Macfarlane and Wayne on the almost spiritual powers of the river and how to respect and negotiate through it.
Joined by four others who know the rivers and waterfalls of the region, the journey is scenic, frightening as well as exhilarating as they leave gifts of tobacco for the river and rocks, as suggested by Rita. They fast and even tie red ribbons and scarves around rare trees that have survived in the harsh terrain. This respect shown for the river, the fasting and tying of sacred threads seemed similar to India’s veneration of its sacred forests and rivers — only our rivers are highly polluted and overcrowded like our cities.
Read more: A fascinating book on India’s rivers and their travails [Book Review]
Banner image: An aerial view of the Adyar river in Chennai, parts of which are blocked by sewage and garbage. However, on the Chennai beach where the Adyar and other rivers meet the Indian ocean, newborn olive Ridley turtles are seen making their way to the water. Image by Timothy A. Gonsalves via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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