The New York Times wants to give 'rights' to rivers

The New York Times (NYT) recently published an opinion piece, signed by the poet Robert Macfarlane, which appeals more to sensitivity than to reason. Under a poetic and almost spiritual tone, he celebrates the removal of four dams on the Klamath River in California, describing how "an explosion of poppies, goldenrod and other native plants" marked the first spring after what he calls the river to be "liberated." As if it were a political prisoner, the Klamath was unshackled from its dams, and now - according to the NYT - begins an almost miraculous healing process.

In this way, one of the most influential media in the world is doubling down on its effort to humanize nature, granting it rights, feelings and even legal representation. "The river is healing itself," the article quotes a biologist from the Yurok tribe. It all falls under what the paper enthusiastically describes as "the rights of nature movement," a current that proposes to recognize "the inherent and inalienable rights of ecosystems and natural communities to exist and flourish."

One of the examples that NYT proudly highlights is the case of Ecuador, which in 2008 amended its Constitution to recognize nature as a subject of rights, becoming the first country to do so. In 2021, that same legal framework allowed the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court to stop a mining project on the grounds that it violated "the rights of a cloud forest and its associated river system." Two companies had to withdraw. Not because they affected a community or the human environment, but because they affected the forest itself, as if it were a legal victim with violated rights.

Another case cited is that of the Whanganui River in New Zealand, declared in 2017 a "spiritual and physical entity," with legal guardians appointed to protect its mauri or life force. And more recently, that of the Marañón River in Peru, legally recognized as a living being with "inherent rights to exist, flow, give life to animals and plants and remain free of pollution."

According to the NYT, all this is not only logical but hopeful. "Rivers as life-giving forces, and as rights-bearing presences," the article states. To bolster the argument, it even throws in a peculiar comparison: if corporations have legal rights, why not a river? But of course, what he omits is that corporations exist to represent human interests, while rivers do not speak, do not vote, do not elect lawyers.

The logic proposed by the article is so tinged with mysticism that it borders on the religious. It speaks of a "doctrine of human supremacy" as the cause of all environmental ills, and presents as an alternative a worldview where the human being is no longer at the center, but is subject to an interdependence with "living entities" such as watersheds, glaciers and so on.

The political intention behind environmentalist criticism

There is also an explicit political intention: the text harshly condemns the Trump Administration, accusing it of weakening the Clean Water Act and promoting mining, forestry and energy expansion, while disparaging this ecocentric vision. A vision that, incidentally, does not solve concrete problems such as energy production, jobs or food security, but replaces them with a spiritualization of geography.

And while recognizing rights to a river or a lagoon, the human being, the communities that depend on those resources, and the sustainable development that seeks to balance conservation with progress, are made invisible.

Thus, with a narrative loaded with sentimentality, the New York Times offers a vision of the future where nature not only has a voice, but also lawyers, advocates and constitutions in its favor. And where the human being - so imperfect, so polluting, so capitalist - begins to be left out of the picture.

The author's paradox

But there is an obvious irony in these arguments: the author writes for one of the most powerful media corporations on the planet, which does not operate from a mud hut but with state-of-the-art technology, glassed-in offices in Manhattan, servers in the cloud and a profoundly capitalist business model.

Put another way: rivers may have rights, but their voice is spread thanks to servers, electricity and digital advertising. Not thanks to community solar power or a banana leaf loom. Even the most fervent activists rely on industrial, communicational and technological structures - the very ones they denounce - to spread their message.