3 days ago
Does a River Have Legal Rights?
In early May, an orange floral fire burned across Northern California river banks in celebration: an explosion of poppies, goldenrod and other native plants, marking the first spring after the biggest de-damming project in U.S. history liberated the Klamath River from its confinements.
The recovery of the wider Klamath watershed began last year with the demolition of four dams, and the free-flowing river now provides roughly 400 miles of restored habitat for salmon and steelhead trout. It's also creating wetlands, helping the regrowth of forests and brush and leading to major improvements in water quality.
The Klamath's revival is a beacon of hope at a time of deep ecological gloom for the United States. President Trump and his administration have made clear their intention to drastically de-prioritize the natural world in favor of economic interests. Rivers and other freshwater bodies are among the ecosystems most vulnerable to this rapid reorientation.
In declaring a national energy emergency, a Trump executive order effectively waived large portions of the Clean Water Act to fast-track energy projects, weakening protections for free-flowing rivers and increasing the risk of watershed pollution from mining and drilling. River health is also now threatened by the administration's drive to expand American timber production; logging degrades water quality by increasing soil erosion and sediment runoff. By narrowing the definition of 'the waters of the United States,' the Environmental Protection Agency has made it easier for pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides and mining waste to enter bodies of water.
The doctrine of human supremacy, which waxes strong in the current administration, portrays life as a hierarchy with humans at the top, rather than a web within which humans are entangled. Consider that a scant 0.0002 percent of Earth's total water flows in rivers at any given time, yet rivers have been vital, fragile accomplices to human flourishing for thousands of years. To view rivers only as sources and drains is to reduce them to base functions rather than to see them as the life-giving, world-shaping forces they are.
Over the past 20 years, a powerful movement has emerged that contests human exploitation of the natural world. It is usually known as the rights of nature movement, and it calls for recognizing the inherent, inalienable rights of ecosystems and natural communities to exist and flourish. At its best, the rights of nature movement challenges anthropocentric presumptions, which are embedded in our laws and imaginations.
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