09-05-2025
Robert Macfarlane: Why shouldn't rivers have rights? Companies do
Robert Macfarlane has been thinking a lot about rivers. Sat under the huge limbs of one of his favourite trees, an oriental plane in Cambridge, he points to where the 'elbows' of its branches rest on the ground, drawing water from a nearby chalk stream.
Talking about his new book, Is a River Alive?, the renowned nature writer's conversation is punctuated with his sightings of the birdlife around us: blue tits, goldfinches, a jay making an odd noise. Few would argue they are not alive.
But in a mix of travelogue, nature-writing and philosophy encompassing journeys along waterways in Ecuador, India and Canada, he argues rivers are alive, too — and should have rights. The modern 'rights of nature' movement was arguably born in
