ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the research project Riverine Rights: The Currents and Consequences of Legal Innovations on the Rights of Rivers, which was set up to study the landmark cases of giving legal personhood to the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Atrato River in Colombia and the Ganga and Yamuna rivers in India. These cases happened over a few months in 2016 and 2017, and the project asked the following three questions: Why did this radical legal innovation of giving rights to rivers happen in three so different countries at almost the same time? What have been the results of this new type of law for the rivers and the people living along them? What can we learn from these cases? The chapter discusses critically how these cases relate to broader debates about rights of nature. Moreover, it describes the research design, centred on in-depth fieldwork in the three river basins, which was carried out by a broad interdisciplinary team with long experience of the three countries and done in collaboration with local Indigenous and grassroots organizations. Finally, an overview of the content of the rest of the chapters of the book is given.
