Robert Macfarlane has worked as a Fellow at Emmanuel College University of Cambridge for many years, but in a parallel life has become well known as a champion of English nature writing. He is also a practitioner in this field, writing accounts of journeys on foot through the countryside and collaborating with illustrator Jacky Morris on nature books for children. He has also co-written albums with musician Johnny Flynn. Every few years, however, he seems to feel the need to test his stamina to the limit on an ambitious project to explore an idea or special place and this book is the result of his latest excursions.
The notion of whether an entity such as a river could be held to have rights which could be upheld in a court of law has become a pressing matter in many countries - particularly in the Global South, where communities rely on rivers and they are under threat from external forces such as mining companies.
Macfarlane visits three different places in Ecuador, south India and Quebec in Canada, to meet and journey with environmentalists who are actively trying to protect river sources in their countries and challenge government policy. In between times, he describes his own special water course near his home in Cambridge, charting its history from its earliest known time and experience during an extensive drought.
In Ecuador, Macfarlane visits the River of the Cedars which flows through the Andean Cloud Forest. This received government protection after a long fight by environmentalists and activists. He hears their stories and encounters its wonders first hand – stretching himself as former mountaineer. He meets Giuliana, who is a fungi specialist and has found many new specimens in the area and has campaigned for its protection.
In India, he travels to Chennai on the coast of southern India and is introduced to rivers which are clinically dead through pollution and others which have been officially written out of existence by the state authorities in order to allow extensive development on the sites. At every monsoon, however, the ghosts of the rivers return to their ancestral places creating devastating flooding. There he meets Yuvan, who has become an environmentalist after an abusive childhood and found purpose and meaning in his work. He encourages volunteers to protect what is left and inspires the children he teaches to care about the birds and other wildlife – fighting against a state government which is largely indifferent to his concerns. Macfarlane helps one night by reburying turtle eggs in a different area of the beach to where they have been originally laid, as the temperature there is too hot to allow incubation because of climate change.
The third trip takes him to eastern Canada to a river called the Mutehekau Shipu, or Magpie River, which is fully alive but under threat of damming by the local hydro-electric company. There he meets Rita Mestokosho, a poet and elder of the local Innu community who have fought to protect the Magpie River and created a statement giving the river official legal rights. MacFarlane, along with three companions, is resolved to kayak down part of the river and experience it at first hand. He is given permission to do so and has an incredible unforgettable journey.
This is a fascinating and thought-provoking book to read and Macfarlane pushed himself to the limit to experience it – he became ill after his trip to Ecuador and came close to drowning on the Canadian river, but he provides the full philosophical background on the movement to give rivers rights, which is being taken up by activists in Britain to protect our rivers from pollution.
His acknowledgements at the end lists the scores of people he knows and works with around the world who are active on this issue where global justice and environmental issues meet.
Review by Alison Skinner
