Book Review: Macfarlane, R., (2025), Is a River Alive?, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin

This book details the author’s explorations regarding three rivers, Los Cedres in Ecuador, Chennai in India, and Muteshekau-Shipu in Quebec, Canada. Mr. Macfarlane, accompanied by a few others, spends time on these rivers, also travelling the latter two of these rivers. While a lot has been written about rivers, the issue of rivers’ modern rights, being entities of nature, is relatively new, but now dynamically expanding. This book is full of passion, it is lyrical, beautiful and poetic. Many aspects of nature along the rivers – forests with birds, trees, flowers and animals are also vividly described. The author’s own reflections, and dialogue with key actors in each of these settings, is also impressively recalled – a lot of honesty and detail.

A key driving force for what is written in the book is to report on how these rivers might be preserved and kept “alive”. For Los Cdres it is a matter of stopping gold exploration and logging, for Chennai it is about saving animal life in a highly polluted context, and for the third, it is a matter of attempting to stop further development of hydro-electric power installations.

Thus, the book sparks debate when it comes to exploration of nature. New ways of thinking are offered when it comes to rivers, increasingly being recognized as living, in our own minds as well as legally. The author seems to succeed in stressing that nature is changing, for the better as well as for the worse.

English rivers

The contrast is portrayed through three small sections, with a small stream flowing in the author’s back garden, which originates a few miles from his house. It is though-provoking to learn that even in England, most rivers are heavily polluted, even “dead”, according to a recent study.

Let us now briefly discuss each of the three rivers.

River of the Cedres (Ecuador)

This river is relatively calm, but there are small rapids, ravines and backwater ponds. It is located in the so-called cloud forest (in contrast to a rain forest, being at a higher altitude) in Northeast Arizonas, and ending up by running into this huge river. The Cedres River runs through heavy, varied vegetation. Therefore, with huge, old cedars standing out. Bird and insect lives are abundant and of high variety. One of the members of the “expedition”, dr. Giuliana Ferri, is an expert on swamps and there are many seldom species here.

Chennai Rover System

There are three rivers, all running east-west, ending up in the Bay of Bengal. There are the Kosanthalayar, the Cooum, and the Adyar. All rivers run through relatively flat terrain and are therefore relatively slow running in contrast to Los Cedres. The city of Chennai with its 6.5 million population is located at the end of the rivers, on the beach of Bengal Bay.

Regrettably, all three rivers are heavily polluted. Some 55 million liters of sewage is emptied from the city into the river every day. And there is a large factory area, with chemical and fertilizer plants, as well as a coal-fired electricity-generating facility, that add to the pollution, both in the rivers and in the air. People have to use protective masks for breathing! The rivers are dead, with too high toxicity levels. For instance, in 1949 there were more than 50 different species of fish, dropping to around 20 by 1970, and to zero now.

Surprisingly, there are forest on the riverbanks too. For instance, on the bank of Adyar, there is a small thriving forest park, with around 500 planted trees.

The sea turtles spawn on the beach where the rivers run into Bengal Bay. But it can be difficult for the turtles to reach the beach, due to them being caught in fishing nets as well as in the gears from trawlers. Also, the turtle eggs are in danger, above all from stray dogs and from vehicles that drive on the beach. A huge effort is undertaken to dig up the eggs and to relocate them to a safe hatchery. Some 10,000 turtle eggs have been hatched so far.

Mutehekau-Shipo/Magpie River

This is a wild river with a lot of rapids and waterfalls. And it runs over a shield of solid rock, the oldest and hardest on this earth. The author, and his team of four, paddled in single person kayaks down the river, north to south from Lake Magpie to where it ends in the St. Laurence, in 11 days, a distance of some 100+ miles. The descent down the rover was indeed dramatic, with seven capsizings in the rapids, and with strenuous treks on land to circumvent various rapids. Heavy forests surround the river, mostly pine and fir.

River “arche-types”

The arche-type for the Los Cedres River was the hummingbird (there were a lot of them), for the Chennai rivers, the bee-eaters, and for the Magpie River, the brook trout.

Conservationist efforts

All these rivers were under environmental threat. For Los Cedres, the danger was that gold mining was creeping in, and also excessive logging. There was, however, intensive lobbying against these activities. Ecuador had been the first country in the world to include a section on nature’s rights. But the lobbyists found it hard, but not impossible, to uphold the law.

For the Chennai rivers, the basic damage had already been done. But there was intensive lobbying against further pollution. And protection of the small riverbed forests had been put into law. Many, including the author, felt that it might be difficult, and unrealistic, to bring thee rivers back to life.

For the Magpie River, the issue is to stop further developments of building hydro-electric facilities, with dams, tunnels and new waterways. There is an organized group of lobbyists attempting to uphold the river rights. But the Quebec hydro-electric company is powerful, and a tempting, while short-term, incentive for them is to offer a large number of new construction jobs.

Conclusions

This book offers an exceptional tale of nature’s beauty, stemming from the author’s exploration of these rivers, located in diverse parts of the world. The “story” of how these exploratory expeditions took place is quite different in each case, but always full of detail regarding bird life and insects, as well as with detailed descriptions of the forest adjacent to the rivers. The author sees all of these as key elements of “live” rivers.

But there are significant threats to the future of these rivers. The author describes that lobbying, often quite effective, tends to be in place. And he makes the key observation that such lobbying is often most effective when coming from below, i.e., local anchoring! A multidimensional definition of rivers seems to be emerging, i.e., not only unidimensional, focusing on economic profits, often for entities far away, but also on fishing and other interests of locals, as well as on preservation interests to safeguard the nature as it is! Legislation measures also seem to go in this direction.

So, the question mark at the end of this book’s title seems to call for a response, clear and encouraging: Rivers are alive!