Bid to grant River Wensum 'rights' rejected
It was hoped doing so would help protect the river against pollution
A bid to investigate getting the River Wensum ‘rights’ like a person has been rejected, with Labour councillors saying it risked trivialising the issue of human rights.
Green members at City Hall made the proposals as a means of protecting the river – which is a globally rare chalk stream – from pollution and climate change.
It would have seen the council working with local groups to explore implementing a ‘rights of rivers’, giving it protections similar to a person, and could include things like a right to flow.
The suggestion is not entirely novel - a river in Canada was granted legal personhood in 2021 and similar mechanisms have been used in Bolivia, Mexico and Colombia.
But Labour members at City Hall criticised the suggestion.
Green group leader Lucy Galvin said the river was enormously important to the city and needed protecting.
The motion said: “There is an emerging global movement of governments recognising the rights of nature and in particular of rivers.
“Rights of nature is a way of re-thinking our relationship with nature – from one of dominance to one of interdependency.
“If we can define a corporation as having the rights of personhood, then we can imagine a river having these personhood rights?”
But Labour’s Kevin Maguire, who agreed the river needed protecting, said it was wrong to treat it like a person.
He said: “Rivers are not people, yes, it is a precious resource.
“The Wensum gives us drinking water; it is a conduit for trade, a place of leisure and recreation.
“But a river has no rights in and of itself.
“People have rights and legal protections, they have been hard fought for over time by people.
“To talk of a river having the rights in the way that a human does could be a dangerous step towards trivialising our human rights.”
The motion was rejected despite support from the Liberal Democrat group.