Notice
Dr Erin O'Donnell - Reshaping the human relationship with water: what happens when a river becomes a person?
- document 1 document 2 document 3
- niveau 1 niveau 2 niveau 3
Descriptif
Globally, the status of rivers in law is changing rapidly, as rivers themselves are beginning to receive legal rights. This growing transnational movement accelerated in 2017 with the recognition of rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand, Colombia and India as legal persons. In Aotearoa New Zealand, this recognition was a way to incorporate the Māori cosmology into settler state law. In Colombia and India, the new status of the river was the result of deep judicial concern for both the health of the river and the people who live along and depend upon it. For the Río Atrato in Colombia, becoming the subject of rights was a way for the court to protect the biocultural values, and the relationship between the river and the people. This connection between the health of the river and the health of people has been central to the ongoing recognition of rivers and lakes as rights holders, legal and living persons in India, Colombia, Bangladesh, Australia, the USA, and Mexico. However, legal personhood does not necessarily result in improved environmental outcomes. In Aotearoa, Māori describe the process as one of ‘generational change’. In India and the USA, the backlash against riverine rights has been immediate and severe, sometimes fracturing communities that were otherwise united by their dependence on healthy waterways. Legal rights for rivers can be a potentially powerful tool in reshaping the human relationship with rivers, but it comes with significant risks.
Thème
Dans la même collection
-
Adapting social-cultural-environmental flows for cold regions.
In northern regions, many rivers remain ice-covered for a period of three to six months and have two distinct low flow periods: mid-winter and mid to late summer.
-
Dave Pritchard - Action for culture and the water environment through the Ramsar Convention on Wetl…
The intergovernmental Ramsar Convention on Wetlands celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Its global treaty provisions and conservation policy frameworks have always been based on the best
-
Dr Tim Badman - Natureculture approaches in the World Heritage Convention, and beyond.
This paper will provide a review of work being undertaken to bring together the consideration of nature and culture in policies, programmes and practices of the World Heritage Convention, and a
-
Nupur Prothi Khanna - Cultural landscapes of Water systems in Asia
In this ‘SDG Decade of Action” we are aiming to facilitate a nature-culture orientation related to water wisdom with a focus on our young citizens. Traditional knowledge related to water has
-
Dr Avril Horne - Participatory environmental flows assessments
Several of the key challenges to implementing environmental flows are related to the social and political context of environmental flows projects. These include community acceptance and buy in,
-
Dr Tim Jardine - Canada’s freshwater deltas as complex and vulnerable social-ecological systems.
In north-western Canada, glacial retreat left behind large lakes that led to the development of three massive freshwater deltas (Peace-Athabasca, Slave and Saskatchewan). The productivity of these
-
Dr Simone Langhans - Weaving together plural values in freshwater management: a case study of the U…
Public participation is an effective way to resolve the tensions between contested objectives, while maintaining ecological integrity. New Zealand is one of the few countries that takes a
-
Dr Nathalie Richards - From the Mau Forest to Lake Victoria: The Journey of the Mara River in East …
The Mara River starts its journey in the Mau forest in Kenya, flowing through diverse waterscapes and famous savannahs into Tanzania, where it reaches the Mara wetland system before spilling into
-
Freshwater megafauna: diversity, status, and cultural importance
By Dr Fengzhi He and Dr Rebecca Tharme : Megafauna species play important ecological roles. Owing to their intrinsic characteristics such as large habitat requirements, long lifespan, and late
-
Prof. Karl Wantzen - Development(s) of the River Culture Concept
Rivers give rhythm to all life in their catchments. Floods and droughts trigger both, etho-physiological adaptations by biota, resulting in biodiversity, and one species, H. sapiens, resulting in
-
Prof. Angela Arthington - Progress with environmental flows to maintain healthy rivers and healthy …
The science and practical applications of environmental flows (e-flows) have advanced rapidly since the early 1980s. E-flows serve as a means to protect the flow regimes and ecosystems of
