Robert Macfarlane: The Soul of Rivers and the Rights of Nature

What if a river is alive–but we’ve forgotten how to recognize it?

This is the radical idea at the heart of the global “rights of nature” movement, which seeks to grant rivers, forests and ecosystems legal standing. Rooted in ancient traditions and emerging in modern law, it challenges the notion of nature as property and a resource to be exploited.

In “Is a River Alive?”, acclaimed writer and explorer Robert Macfarlane travels to remote waterways in Ecuador, India and Canada, meeting mycologists, Indigenous river-keepers, and activists who see the natural world as animate and ensouled. Known for celebrated books like “Underland,” “The Old Ways,” and “Mountains of the Mind,” Macfarlane blends storytelling, natural history and philosophy in an invitation to reimagine our relationship with the living Earth.

If rivers have rights—and perhaps even a kind of consciousness—how would that change the way we see the world?

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• To the Best of Our Knowledge – Macfarlane describes the allure and our fascination with the underground world of caves, mines, catacombs and glacial shafts beneath the earth's surface. 
• To the Best of Our Knowledge - Macfarlane offers a book recommendation: “The Living Mountain” by the Scottish poet and writer Nan Shepherd.
• University of Cambridge – Robert Macfarlane’s faculty page

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00:00:00 Introduction

00:03:00 Is a River Alive?

00:10:50 Ecuador's Cloud Forest

00:19:40 Chennai's Dying Rivers

00:24:15 Wild River in Quebec