Another court grants ‘rights’ to an Indian river but that doesn’t address our disconnect from nature
· Scroll
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On July 23, noting that “rivers can’t be polluted in the name of religion”, the Madras High Court recognised the rights of the Tamirabarani River as a juristic person – a non-human legal entity that has the capacity to hold rights and duties just like a human being.
This is the sixth pronouncement in India to grant legal personhood to an element of nature, including to Ganga and Yamuna, Sukhna lake, and animals in general.
These developments are part of a growing international movement towards recognising the “rights of nature”. In 2019, the Dhaka High Court recognised all rivers in Bangladesh as holding legal rights of a living entity. There have also been legal and constitutional developments towards this in Bolivia and Ecuador, among other places.
But this raises a range of scientific, ethical and institutional questions: What rights might a river have? What would constitute a violation of a river’s rights? How can these rights be put into practice within existing governance structures? Are legal rights an adequate framework for protecting nature?
These questions are particularly important in South Asia. Long before Western legal systems began accepting arguments around the rights of nature, social movements and peoples’ worldviews across the region had articulated relationships of respect, reverence and responsibility...