UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Can You Hear the Rivers Sing? Legal Personhood, Ontology, and the Nitty-Gritty of Governance

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.15779/z388s4jp7m

Authors

Cristy Clark · Nia Emmanouil · John Page · Alessandro Pelizzon

Reported year

2019

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:04:47.526025+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-09T19:11:10.995923+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

Southern Cross University

Reported affiliation countries

AU

Documentary abstract — original language

In 2017, multiple claims and declarations from around the legal world appeared to signal a tipping point in the global acceptance of a new and evolving legal status for nature. Whether it was litigation in the United States, India, and Colombia, or legislation emanating from New Zealand and Australia, the law seems to be grappling with a new normative order in relation to the legal status of nature. However, this shift has been a long time coming, being at least fortyfive years since Christopher Stone famously asked whether trees should have legal standing. This Article explores what this emerging Ecological Jurisprudence means for the legal personhood of rivers. Nature, the environment, and even single complex ecosystems, are seldom easily quantifiable as bounded entities with geographically clear borders. Within the complex spectrum of establishing where a legal subject ends and another begins, however, rivers are more easily identifiable. A river's very being is premised on historicized boundaries that measure its watery ambit from riverbed to riverbank. Still, rivers elude a final, clearly defined, and uncontroversial description. As a result, they inhabit a liminal space, one that is at the same time geographically bounded, yet metaphorically transcendent, physically shifting, and culturally porous. Drawing on comparative case studies from Ecuador, Colombia, India, New Zealand, the United States, and Australia, this Article explores the deep and often murky bond of the river and us. This relational, ancient, and ultimately environmentally urgent bond forms the prism through which the rich story of legal personhood, ontological change, and the consequential nitty-gritty of river governance is told. Indeed, this complex story is best heard through the metaphor of song, since "[i]f we are to take metaphor seriously, we must explore its poetic dimension, the persuasive power of its rhetoric, coupled with its aesthetic appeal."2 In seeking to discern a river's legal personality, we ask, can we hear the rivers sing?

Identifiers

DOI

10.15779/z388s4jp7m

OPENALEX

W2953080449

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

article

Natural entities mentioned

River · Ecosystem

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.15779/z388s4jp7m
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W2953080449

Documented bibliographic relations

Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.

46 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Documentary validated

Library