It’s Time Rivers Had Rights

What if rivers had formal rights, enshrined by governments and recognized by nations? The right to flow. The right to flood. The right to nurture the life forms that live within them. Does that sound crazy? Why?

Those who live by rivers know them as living entities with moods and personalities. They have meandered through the stories we humans tell ourselves for thousands of years, from the ancient Egyptians’ Father of Life (the Nile) to the powerful, great Muddy (the Mississippi) of Huckleberry Finn. The rivers are alive in these stories. They are forces to be reckoned with. They bring the fertile soil that makes farming possible. They bring indiscriminate death with their mighty flood waters.

But in modern times, we have taken to damming, polluting and siphoning off the great rivers of the world. The Colorado River is near gone, its waters sucked away to irrigate more farms and cities than the arid lands it runs through can support. The Great Mother Ganges is so polluted with human waste, it’s little more than a sewer.

A movement to give rivers rights is actually beginning. The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Rivers seeks to declare rivers as living entities that possess legal standing in a court of law, among other things. I’ve signed in support of the declaration. Will you?