See The 4 Books Scientific American Loved Reading In June

Scientific American

01-07-2025

In 2008 Ecuador startled the world. Articles 71 to 74 of the nation's then newly ratified constitution stated that nature had rights —rights to be respected for its existence and the crucial, life-giving services it provided and rights to be restored when damaged. Further, it asserted that the government could intervene when human activities might disrupt these inherent rights. In his latest book, Is a River Alive?, Macfarlane travels to three very different rivers (in Ecuador, India and Quebec) to examine the question of a river's sovereignty. He discovers that rivers create interconnected (and often fragile) worlds of plant and animal species—confirming they are life-giving wherever they run, as many Indigenous populations throughout the world have recognized for thousands of years. Now rivers are fighting for their lives as corporations, governments, pollution and climate change violate their vitalizing flow. 'Muscular, wilful, worshipped and mistreated, rivers have long existed in the threshold space between geology and theology,' Macfarlane writes. 'Rivers are—I have found—potent presences with which to imagine water differently. We will never think like a river, but perhaps we can think with them.' —