"In 2008 Ecuador ratified a new national constitution with a radical addition. In the first national declaration of its kind, articles 71 to 74 of the document granted rights to nature, recognizing Pacha Mama, or Mother Earth, as a living entity with the rights to exist, persist and be restored when damaged. In his latest book, Is a River Alive?, nature writer Robert Macfarlane travels to three different rivers (in Ecuador, India and eastern Canada) to examine the question of a river's sovereignty."
"In my country, England, rivers are in crisis. We do not have a single river in the country classified as being in good overall health. Pollution, drought and [neglect] have rendered many of our rivers first undrinkable, then unswimmable and then untouchable. This collapse is a crisis of imagination as well as legislation; we have forgotten that our fate flows along with that of rivers and always has."
Ecuador's 2008 constitution granted legal rights to nature, recognizing Pacha Mama as a living entity with rights to exist, persist and be restored. Rivers act as central arteries of dynamic ecosystems and sustain life across regions. Legal recognition and grassroots movements are prompting new protections and questions of river sovereignty. Indigenous knowledge has long acknowledged rivers as life-giving, while industrial pollution, government actions and drought continue to threaten freshwater health. In England, rivers face widespread decline, rendered undrinkable, unswimmable and untouchable by pollution and neglect, revealing both legislative failures and a diminished cultural relationship with flowing water.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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