How would it be if the Cooum, the Adyar and the Buckingham Canal and the rest of our long-suffering waterways and waterbodies were to sue us in court? The imagination boggles at the possibility. And yet, this may be reality if not tomorrow then certainly in a few years. If this were to happen, it may force a sharp rethink as regards the way we treat our water resources and extending from that, our other natural resources as well.
Nature has traditionally been viewed as a resource to be exploited. This was the capitalist way of thinking and challenge to it came from Professor Christopher D Stone, who was with the USC Gould School of Law and is considered the father of environmental advocacy. It was he who in 1972 first mooted the idea that environment ought to be given legal personhood, just as corporate entities are, with humans acting on their behalf having the right to challenge in courts of law any act that is destructive or damaging. There have since been debates galore with many opposing points of view, but many countries have been taking steps in keeping with Stone’s postulate.
Ecuador began the trend in 2008, when it gave Nature rights that were enshrined in the Constitution. Others have since followed suit – and most recently, Canada gave its Magpie River nine rights, including the rights to flow, safety from pollution, and legal status. Magpie, or its guardians can sue in a court of law. India too has taken very tentative steps. In 2017, the Uttarakhand High Court gave legal person rights to the Ganga, the Yamuna, their tributaries, glaciers and catchment areas. This was subsequently stayed by the Supreme Court but that did not prevent the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2020 from giving the Sukhna Lake outside Chandigarh full legal rights. Our city’s rivers may still have hope.
The Adyar at Maraimalai Adigal Bridge.
If that were to happen, we may find it a little more difficult to brand all our waterways as Cooum and make fun of their ‘gabbu’ as though they were responsible for the foul odour that emanates from them. Similarly, it will not be easy to write headlines such as ‘levels of feacal coliform found in the Adyar are ten times above the standard safety limit’ – you could imagine that the river was generating all of the feacal coliform. The rivers may also be able to question in courts of law matters such as rampant encroachment of banks, discharge of untreated sewage, and seek redress when crores are spent on cleanups with no evident change in their condition. And they may want to know why enormous masonry pillars have been dug into their beds for transport projects.
At present, letting off foul odour, harbouring mosquitoes and flooding the neighbourhood every once in a while are the only forms of protest that the rivers seem to have. Perhaps legal status will help them in stalling our exploitation in more impactful ways. At the same time, granting of such rights is not easy. There are questions of impact on other states where the same rivers flow. This is not an issue for the Adyar or the Cooum but the Buckingham Canal certainly flows from Andhra. Secondly, if rivers become legal persons, then can they also be sued. What happens if victims of water-caused accidents take the custodians of the river to court? Whatever be the doubts, it is clear that our conventional outlook that Nature exists only to exploited for the benefit of mankind, has to change. And our city’s rivers may see better days.