Is a river alive?

"From the celebrated nature writer, observer and advocate Robert Macfarlane, a brilliant, immersive and paradigm-shifting book that says an emphatic yes to the question it asks. Robert Macfarlane writes, "At the heart of Is A River Alive? is a single, powerful idea: that rivers, forests, glaciers and mountains are living beings, and that as such they have rights that should be recognized both in imagination and in law. The river has the right to flow unimpeded to the sea; the old-growth forest the right not to be felled; the mountain the right not to be disembowelled for coal." This idea -- known as the Rights of Nature -- is driving a conceptual and legal revolution, largely led by Indigenous and non-white activists who are succeeding at challenging the Western legal system to think beyond the idea of nature as material for humans to exploit to a future where regarding all of nature as a living entity may ensure our survival. The book flows like water, from the mountains to the sea, following three major journeys Macfarlane undertakes with local activists: to Ecuador where a recent court decision protects the ancient cedars of the cloud forests from Canadian mining activity; to India, where the fight to revive rivers that start in the glaciers of the Himalayas and empty into the ocean and polluted lagoons of Chennai is not yet won; and to northeastern Quebec where in 2021 an alliance between the local Innu nation and the regional municipal council declared the Mutehekau (Magpie) River a living being, with legal rights. Along with the voices of his fellow travellers, Macfarlane's own voice and incomparable gifts of expression carry immeasurable power to open hearts, spark conversations and challenge perspectives, making Is A River Alive? not only a wondrous literary experience but a powerful rallying cry in the environmental justice movement"--