Is a River Alive? (By Robert Macfarlane, 2025, Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin, London) is a narrative of hope in despair. The author, a nature writer and Professor of Literature and the Environmental Humanities, has written numerous bestselling books. Some of them are Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind, which have been translated into many languages and won numerous prizes around the world. His writings have been widely adapted for different modes of creative expression, namely music, theatre, film, radio, and dance. Macfarlane's book, a detailed account of his journeys along three rivers across three different continents — South America, North America and Asia — is equally personal and political. This book on rivers is equally about mountains, seas, birds and all other living beings.
The first narrative is set in northern Ecuador, where a miraculous cloud-forest, Los Cedros, and its rivers are threatened by destruction related to gold mining. The second story concerns the wounded rivers and lagoons of Chennai in southern India and a parallel battle fought by local citizens to save these waterbodies and the surrounding ecosystems. The third case is in north-eastern Quebec, where a spectacular wild river locally named the Mutehekau Shipu (in English, the Magpie River) is being defended from damming primarily by the Innu people living in that area. The ongoing river-rights campaigns in different parts of the world are the unifying theme of the book. It invites readers to join Macfarlane's river journeys not only to imagine rivers as living beings but also to feel that we need rivers more than rivers need us.
Cloud-Forest as River-Maker (Ecuador)
The first part of the book opens with a quotation from Ursula K. Le Guin: "One way to stop seeing trees or rivers or hills only as 'natural resources' is to class them as fellow beings — kinfolk. I guess I'm trying to subjectify the universe, because look where objectifying it has gotten us. To subjectify is not necessarily to co-opt, colonize, exploit. Rather it may involve a great reach outward of the mind and imagination" (p. 35). These words convey a clear message: we need to find a different way to engage with the nature around us. Ecuador was the first country to recognise the Rights of Nature — to exist, to regenerate, to be restored, to be respected (p. 42). Articles 71 to 74 of the Ecuadorian Constitution, known as the "Rights of Nature" articles, recognise the link between the good health of nature and the "good living" or "harmonious life" (sumak kawsay) of humans. It is the state's obligation to restrict activities that might lead to the extinction of species and the destruction of ecosystems. Macfarlane notes that back in 2008, Rights of Nature was not being discussed anywhere, and that sumak kawsay, a phrase from Kichwa — the most widely spoken indigenous language in Ecuador — became a guiding principle for thinking differently.
Cesar, a Colombian lawyer and one of Macfarlane's companions in Ecuador, teaches liberation theology with an emphasis on the "option for the poor." He has dedicated his life to social justice and does not differentiate between human rights and the rights of nature, seeing them as merged (p. 47). Another companion was Giuliana, a mycologist — a scientist who studies fungi, including mushrooms, moulds and yeasts — who hoped to find a new species of fungi that would be scientifically useful in further protecting Los Cedros (p. 51). A Canadian firm called Cornerstone Capital Resources, in alliance with Ecuador's state mining company ENAMI, sought copper and gold in Los Cedros, one of the most biodiverse and bio-abundant places on earth (p. 62). Josef Decoux brought the Rights of Nature case against the mining companies. Since the 1980s he had lived and worked in the forest region in order to protect it, as a practitioner of radical politics (p. 71). Macfarlane has dedicated this book to Decoux, who underlined the intrinsic link between forests and rivers and dedicated his life to spreading the message that the destruction of one will lead to the death of the other. What we tend to see is just one form of river — on the earth's surface — but there is also the sky-river above us: the atmosphere as a water-bearing medium (p. 104).
How a City Kills its Waterbodies (Chennai, India)
The second part of the book is a detailed account of five degrading waterbodies in different parts of Chennai. Three are rivers — the Kosasthalaiyar, the Cooum and the Adyar — and the other two are Ennore Creek and Pulicat Lagoon. Yuvan Aves, a teacher, naturalist, writer and water activist, was Macfarlane's key companion in Chennai. "Cities grow along riversides," writes Yuvan, "then slowly forget their ecological, hydrological genesis. Later they slowly collapse under their own weight — unless perhaps there is a powerful re-invocation of what birthed a city in the first place: a river" (p. 125). In 2021, Yuvan founded a trust called Palluyir — a Tamil word meaning "all of life" — dedicated to advancing ecological knowledge and practice in Tamil Nadu and beyond. Its motif is "a circle containing diverse images of life from four kingdoms: from child to fungus, dolphin to greenbottle fly, earthworm to beech tree" (p. 138). Data-driven citizen science is a core part of Yuvan's water activism (p. 145), and Macfarlane believes it can lead very quickly to powerful change.
In recent years, Chennai has been facing frequent floods while its water-literacy has been diminishing. For thousands of years, Tamil Nadu was a profoundly water-literate region. Its rich hydroculture — comprising water-husbandry and water-reverence — is reflected in a range of water-storage structures such as eris or kammai, ilangi, kooval, kulam, kundam, kundu, kuttai, kuttam, poigei, sengai, thangal, and others (p. 128). The eri system came into being as a response to Tamil Nadu's climate. Venkatesh Ramakrishnan writes that "when the rivers were tapped for drinking water in the 1800s, they began to die" — a process that also led to the decline of Chennai's water-literacy (p. 129). Power stations are dumping fly-ash near Ennore Creek and the Kosasthalaiyar River. The activist-writer Nityanand Jayaraman forced a thousand acres of fly-ash in Ennore to be cleaned up and restored to wetland (p. 168). People living in the area are developing cancer, and fishermen have lost their livelihoods.
Amid the crisis engulfing numerous waterbodies, there are people like Yuvan, Arun Venkatraman and many others who call themselves the "Turtle Patrol" (p. 171), working tirelessly to save sea turtles. Yuvan also organises nature walks and takes schoolchildren to a vast lake called Vedanthangal, fifty miles west and inland from Chennai — an eri of about thirty hectares and the oldest waterbird sanctuary in India. Records show that as early as the 18th century, villagers local to Vedanthangal understood that an abundance of birdlife is good for the waterbody. Local residents informed the author that in recent years the Sun Pharma factory has been dumping chemically polluted water in the area (p. 140), endangering both the waterbodies and the local biodiversity. Macfarlane also offers a vivid image of a vast cumulus cloud above the cooling tower of the North Chennai Thermal Power Plant — a formation that in turn affects both weather and climate (p. 164).
The Living River Magpie (Canada)
The Innu people of the little coastal township of Ekuanitshit were encouraged by the recognition of the Whanganui River in New Zealand as both a legal person and a living being. They too decided to realign their millennia-old values and relationships with modern legislative discourse. The Innu Council passed a resolution whose three key principles are: "first, the river is a living being and relative — at once ancestor and descendant — and, as such, sacred. Second, that each generation has a responsibility to protect the river for those who are yet to be born and those they will never meet. Third, that a continuity exists between the human and the non-human lives of the river, and that large-scale damming therefore threatens the whole riverine community, including people" (p. 216).
Rita Mestokosho, an Innu poet and activist, played an important role in the Mutehekau Shipu becoming the first river in Canada to be recognised as a living, right-bearing being. She sees no distinction between her poetry and her activism and figures poetry itself as a river. Alarmed by the fact that, of the sixteen rivers in Quebec listed officially as "large rivers", fourteen had been dammed by 2012, the Innu people began to unite. After constructing the first dam on the Mutehekau Shipu, Hydro-Québec began to target the river in its strategic planning, proposing a multi-dam project (p. 205). This state company is the world's fourth-largest supplier of hydropower, and its proposed complex would destroy the forests and mountains surrounding the lower river.
Macfarlane admits that this book is different from all his previous writings, as he underwent a spiritual transformation while writing it. He was deeply moved by Yuvan's work in Chennai; his company prompted Macfarlane to recall a phrase by Siddharth Pandey: "Everything is alive and everything is speaking" (p. 157). Similarly, Rita Mestokosho's role as a guardian of Innu culture and language taught him a new way to engage with rivers. She told him, "When you go to the river, you must give to the river what you don't need, and call instead on freedom" (p. 220), and, "We have more need of her, the river, than she of us" (p. 223). Her words seem deeply relevant in the Indian context too, where it is so troubling that numerous rivers are polluted and many smaller rivers have gradually turned into drains. Despite numerous action plans, the condition of two major rivers — the Ganga and the Yamuna — appears to be worsening over the years.
This interdisciplinary book tilts towards the poetic, its political character stemming from the fact that these rivers are under threat. The writing blends cultural history, philosophy and political commentary and eschews a scientific tone. The three lengthy chapters, written in travelogue form, demand patience from the reader in following the minute details of events and surroundings. At a moment when the fate of rivers worldwide is decided primarily by state, corporate and industrial actors, this book makes a strong case for according equal importance to the voices of activists, writers and artists. One might wish that, rather than confining himself to Chennai, Macfarlane had visited other parts of India as well, to bring a more comprehensive picture of the country's rivers to a global audience. And while the author supports the "rights of nature" discourse, the text remains largely silent about the practical ways of translating that discourse into policy and action.
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Dr. Ruchi Shree is Assistant Professor (Senior) in the University Department of Political Science, Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University (TMBU), Bhagalpur, Bihar. A version of this review was first published in the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People website
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