Should Rivers Have Rights? A Growing Movement Says It’s About Time

Inspired by indigenous views of nature, a movement to grant a form of legal “personhood” to rivers is gaining some ground — a key step, advocates say, in reversing centuries of damage inflicted upon the world’s waterways.

By Jens Benöhr and Patrick J. Lynch • August 14, 2018 @ Yale Environment 360

Chile is a land of rivers. Along its narrow 3,000-mile length, thousands of rivers and wetlands bring freshwater and nutrients down from the Andes Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Together, these river systems drain 101 major watersheds that support both terrestrial and marine ecosystems, ranging from arid lands in the north to blue whale nurseries off of Patagonia in the south.

Chile’s second-longest river, the 240-mile Biobío, once tumbled fast and wild through deep gorges and spectacular scenery on its way from the Andes to the sea. The Biobío was one of the world’s great whitewater rafting venues — until the 1990s, when the first of three large hydroelectric dams was built across the river. Over the past two decades, the Biobío dams have flooded more than 13,000 acres, displaced hundreds of families of the indigenous Mapuche people, turned long stretches of this once-unruly river into placid reservoirs, and caused abrupt fluctuations in water levels that have wrecked nesting habitat for native birds and disrupted the river’s natural rhythms.

Today in Chile, despite citizen opposition, hydroelectric development continues at a steady pace. The Alto Maipo dam, currently under construction, threatens the water supply of 7 million people in Santiago. Farther south, construction is about to begin on La Punilla dam on the Ñuble River, which is expected to flood 4,200 acres in the middle of a World Biosphere Reserve. Another conflict is playing out on the breathtaking San Pedro River, sacred to the Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous group. A dam that had been abandoned because of concerns it was located in a geologcially unstable region is now back in play, despite overwhelming local opposition from both the Mapuche and their non-indigenous neighbors.

With the number of dams in Chile at 137 and counting, indigenous people, citizens, and environmental activists [including the authors, members of the Chilean Free-Flowing Rivers Network] say the time has come to look at granting legal rights — a form of legal personhood — to the nation’s rivers. This campaign is not occurring in isolation, however, and is taking inspiration from other countries where a small but growing number of courts and legislatures have begun bestowing legal rights upon rivers. Three countries — New Zealand, Colombia, and India — have all taken such steps over the past two years, though the practical ramifications of these declarations remain unclear..............

Each river nook and eddy has its own ngen, meaning a single watershed and its people can be protected by hundreds of spirits. Contaminate or dam a river, even a small tributary, and the ngen will leave, abandoning the place and its people. Since ngen are protectors of both the land and its people — Mapuche literally means “people of the land” — their departure leaves the people who remain to suffer. In Western terms, suffering comes in the form of depression, alcoholism, and other mental and social health issues that have been widely documented in Mapuche communities that inhabit the upper, dammed part of the Biobío’s watershed. Thus, for the Mapuche and other indigenous communities, conservation of the natural environment is also a matter of public health................Under the new agreement, the Whanganui has the same rights as a person. ..............To Read More...@ Yale Environment 360