Is a River Alive?

Robert MacFarlane

Hamish Hamilton

£25.00

MacFarlane’s introduction sets this book in the current debate concerning the Rights of Nature, as well as widespread anxiety concerning the pollution of waterways across the world. Its central section is an excoriating indictment of the ‘murder’ of the wetlands round Chennai in SE India by clogging, over-building and toxification.

The first exploration is to the ‘cloud-forest’ Los Cedros in Ecuador and its associated river, both potentially at risk from Andean gold-mining, despite recognition of nature’s rights being included in the constitution. Then finally he undertakes a thrilling, dangerous journey by kayak down the Mutekanu Shipu to the Gulf of St Lawrence.

The book was written in these three contrasting locations with input from indigenous campaigners. The rivers themselves become powerful co-authors.