River rights: Currents, undercurrents and free-flowing planetary vistas

Abstract

This paper focuses on recent legal innovations that recognise rivers as having rights in countries and cultures of the Global South. These innovations arise from the urgency to look into the interests and health of both rivers and indigenous/local peoples who depend on the resources of rivers for their material and spiritual sustenance. The article proceeds in three sections. In the first section, we outline the main currents in the formal legal doctrine that are shaping the granting of river rights worldwide. The second section brings out the political and religious undercurrents which tend to reshape legal initiatives in different national cultures and give rise to diverging socio-legal trajectories. Here we track these movements in three countries, namely Colombia, New Zealand and India. In the final section, we outline imaginaries that envision new and recast planetary institutions – including a parliament of rivers – in the context of emergent ecological concerns.