Harry Blair

India's rivers: From conservation movements to legal personhood

While the current push for legal personhood for rivers is facing obstacles and is stalled, it holds potential as a viable long-term strategy for the preservation of India's rivers

Posted on 08 Oct, 2023 12:31 PM

The Ganges and Narmada rivers, in particular, have been severely degraded as a result of India's reliance on dams for irrigation and hydropower. Despite decades of significant environmental movements opposed to dams, they largely failed because they couldn't stop the work already in progress.

River quality deteriorates as demand for hydropower to support economic growth continues to expand. (Image: Yogendra Singh Negi, Wikimedia Commons; CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)

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