Robert Macfarlane — Is A River Alive?
Acclaimed nature writer explores the lives, deaths, and rights of rivers — blending activism, environmental law, and ancient wisdom.
Why we picked this
One of our finest nature writers asks whether rivers deserve legal personhood — a question that's already reshaping environmental law worldwide.
Robert Macfarlane is one of the most celebrated nature writers alive, and in this lecture he takes on a question that sounds philosophical but is increasingly a matter of law: should rivers have rights?
It’s not as abstract as it sounds. Courts in New Zealand, Ecuador, and India have already granted legal personhood to rivers. Indigenous traditions worldwide have long treated waterways as living beings. Macfarlane weaves these threads together — activism, jurisprudence, ecology, and ancient wisdom — into a case for radically rethinking our relationship with the natural world.
If you’ve read “Underland” or “The Old Ways,” you know Macfarlane’s gift for making landscape feel alive on the page. In person, at Town Hall Seattle, that gift should be even more immediate. Free admission through UW Public Lectures.