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Since New Zealand granted legal rights to a river in 2017 and courts in India and Colombia did the same, a whirlwind of excitement is sweeping through the world of water management. In a special issue of the journal Water International an interdisciplinary group of scholars from Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ discuss the implications of granting rights to rivers and other aquatic ecosystems.

Guest editors of this special issue were Cathy Suykens, Herman Kasper Gilissen and Marleen van Rijswick, all involved in the Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law.

Can a river sue? And what does it want?

Wilk, Hegger (Geosciences, Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ), Dieperink, Kim, & Driessen (Geosciences, Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ) conceptualise the rights of rivers by zooming in on different categories of substantive and procedural river-related rights, and use the Rhine as an example to guide the reader through their analysis. They rightly wonder whether an ecocentric approach can be achieved by granting rights to rivers, as humans will need to interpret what the river might want. 

Gillissen et. al (Law, Economics and Governance) discuss custodianship. If a river becomes a legal person, it can in principle sue (to protect its health, for example) and be sued. Therefore, the river needs to be represented by a custodian to defend and enforce its rights. The question of custodianship is explored through the lens of the Scheldt and Ems multijurisdictional rivers.

Economic well-being

Argyrou and Hummels (Law, Economics and Governance) have looked into the Whanganui River in New Zealand, not from the perspective of private property regimes but from the perspective of social entrepreneurship. They applaud the set-up of the Te Awa Tupua Act as the basic framework enabling the river’s sustainable economic well-being.

The Wadden Sea

Lambooy (involved in the Utrecht research group Water Oceans and Sustainability Law) et. al explore in a think piece the possibility of granting legal personality and ‘self-ownership’ to the world’s largest interconnected tidal flats and wetland system, the Wadden Sea. Lambooy et al. aim to inspire Dutch, German and Danish policy makers and academics worldwide to find new legal arrangements to better protect aquatic ecosystems.

Colleagues from other universities and fields of research have also contributed to this special issue with essays and articles.

This work was supported by Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ's research theme Pathways to Sustainability. This financial support allowed the editors of this special issue to bring the authors together for an inspiring workshop in Utrecht, exchanging ideas and discussing the implementation of legal personhood for rivers in their respective home countries.

The special issue is Volume 44, issue 6-7, 2019 of the journal Water International.