Rulings loom as UNGA meets on biodiversity OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA—A new report by the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice, Earth Law Center, and International Rivers finds that a movement to grant legal rights to rivers and nature is rapidly gaining momentum globally. The report examines how the ancient notion that nature possesses basic rights…
Read More
At the end of a difficult year, I encourage us all to meditate and reflect on rivers, which endlessly flow, which cleanse and renew, and which nourish and sustain life for us all. From the Mekong region to the Amazon and Patagonia, authoritarian regimes and profit-hungry corporations have been using the pandemic as cover to…
Read More
Poet Laureate Robert Hass is joining us live on December 16 at 5pm pacific for our 2020 end of the year event “Rivers Unite Us” for a live reading. A RIVER from “The State of the Planet” The people who live in Tena, on the Napo River, Say that the black, viscous stuff that pools in…
Read More
Finds spate of new hydropower projects to be anything but “sustainable,” calls for an immediate moratorium Charts energy solutions that deliver sustainable jobs, better boost economies, reduce emissions, protect biodiversity Comes on the heels of an announcement that the world’s largest dam removal will proceed More than 225 organizations from 60 countries have signed a…
Read MoreNo 20º aniversário do histórico Relatório da Comissão Mundial de Barragens , um novo relatório da International Rivers and Rivers without Boundaries traça um curso alternativo para o desenvolvimento da energia na pós-pandemia que se contrasta com tentativas de reativar a indústria de barragens hidrelétricas, atualmente em declinio. Conforme detalhado no relatório “Rivers for Recovery: Protecting Rivers and Rights as Essential for…
Read More
Contacts: Constanza Prieto Figelist (cpfigelist@earthlaw.org, 202-621-3877) Monti Aguirre (monti@internationalrivers.org, 707-591-1220) QUITO, ECUADOR—On November 26, a coalition of civil society organizations and law professors submitted an amicus brief to Ecuador’s Constitutional Court calling for the protection of the Piatúa River based on the Rights of Nature and Indigenous rights. The Piatúa River is under threat from…
Read More
By: Anna Maria Cárcamo, Legal Advisor Latin America and the Brazilian National Articulation for the Rights of Nature – Mother Earth Português translation below | Tradução de português abaixo Rights of Nature is a global movement which proposes a profound change in legal frameworks and society as a whole, from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric…
Read More
By: Darryl Knudsen, Executive Director & Bruce Shoemaker, Klamath project Liason The struggle of the diverse and broad coalition of tribes and others who value the fundamental importance of a healthy and free-flowing Klamath cleared a daunting and important hurdle today with the announcement by PacifiCorp, the States of California and Oregon, the tribes and…
Read More
By: Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre Original post in Portuguese. This Monday morning (11/09), over 150 representatives of fishermen, riverbank communities, family farmers and the indigenous Curuaya and Xipaya peoples occupied a section of the Transamazon Highway in a protest against Norte Energia (NESA) the concessionaire of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam complex located in the state of Pará (Brazil). The…
Read More
A young women lawyer working with indigenous Lepcha activists to protect the last free flowing stretch of the Teesta from a destructive dam. By: Ayesha DSouza, South Asia Program Coordinator & guest writer Melanie Scaife The Teesta River originates in the eastern Himalayas, winding its way through the Indian states of Sikkim and West Bengal…
Read More
By: Ayesha DSouza, South Asia Program Coordinator & guest writer Sarah Bardeen What is a river? The dictionary defines a river as “a natural stream of water of usually considerable volume” or, quite simply, a “watercourse.” But at our “Dialogue on the Rights of Rivers,” which took place in Delhi, India from March 6-7, 2020,…
Read More
By: Ayesha DSouza, South Asia Program Coordinator & guest writer Melanie Scaife Mayalmit Lepcha grew up listening to the sounds of the Rongyoung River, which flows past her village in Dzongu, in the Indian state of Sikkim. This tiny state lies in the heart of the Himalayas between Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet, and is a…
Read More