Saving the Whanganui: can personhood rescue a river?
Adam Daniel wades waist deep through the glassy water. Pumice stones spiral in the shallow eddy, while the shrill whistles of a male whio (blue duck) echo upstream through the green canyon walls. The mountain stream’s deep current slows around a lone tree standing on a small rocky island before rushing toward the sea.
Like a doctor, Daniel spends the morning checking the pulse of the river’s upper arteries, taking temperature readings and drawing water samples to diagnose its vitality. Thirty kilometres to his south-east, the Whanganui River’s pristine headwaters begin in the internationally renowned Tongariro National Park, on the western flanks of three cone volcanoes, Ruapehu, Tongariro and Ngauruhoe.
From there the river carves through two national parks, a national forest, farmland, two large towns and many smaller communities on its journey 260km to the south, where it empties into the Tasman Sea.
But the body of water flowing past Daniel is more than a geographical feature. Granted personhood in 2017 by an act of the New Zealand parliament, the
Whanganui is the first river in the world to be recognised as an indivisible and living being.
The Māori tribes that live along the Whanganui have always seen the river as sacred – its waters have nourished and blessed the people throughout the 700 years they have lived beside it. The law set in motion new intentions to uphold the mana (prestige) and mauri (life force) of the river.
Yet despite the river’s new legal status, it still faces challenges from farming and forestry to dams and development. And Daniel – a biologist charged with monitoring river habitat health – is troubled with recent temperature and clarity readings.
The river is sick, and he needs to know where the illness begins.
Defining the river’s rights
Spring rain cascades down the Ngapuwaiwaha Marae’s decorative roofline in Taumarunui, the first large town the Whanganui River meets. Hundreds gather at 8am to celebrate the river, the new act and the inauguration of the two people selected to speak on behalf of the river: Dame Tariana Turia, an influential Māori political leader, and Turama Hawira, an experienced Māori advisor and educator.
Visitors await the powhiri, a ritual welcoming people to the marae, a fenced-in complex of carved buildings belonging to a particular tribe.
As the rain subsides, Gerrard Albert steps up to the microphone. He is one in a long line of leaders who have fought for recognition of their deep relationship to the river since the 1840 signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document. He address the crowd in Māori and then in English.
“The settlement legislation recognises Te Awa Tupua as this: a living and indivisible whole comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating its tributaries and all its physical and metaphysical elements,” Albert says. “For the first time, a framework stems from the intrinsic spiritual values of an indigenous belief system.”
When the New Zealand parliament passed the Te Awa Tupua Act granting the Whanganui River system legal personhood, the decision sent waves across the globe, settling the longest water dispute in the nation’s history and establishing a unique legal framework rooted in the Māori worldview of the Whanganui tribes, who revere the river as a tupuna, or ancestor.
The law begins by recognising the river as an indivisible and living being called Te Awa Tupua and outlines four core principles from the tribes’ perspective, including their inalienable connection to the river. Then, it states this being “has all the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of a legal person”.
Tom Barraclough, a legal researcher and expert on the Te Awa Tupua law, says the legislation will give tribes “significant influence” over the future of the river. “As a consequence of giving iwi greater rights, there may be greater protection for nature.”
Dr Erin O’Donnell, a senior fellow at the University of Melbourne law school and author of a book on river rights, agrees. “The act shifts us away from this resource construction where we ask, ‘what do we want from the river?’ and into a space where we can say, ‘what do we want for the river and how do we get there with the river?’”
Over the course of six months, the Guardian travelled the Whanganui to investigate the impact of the new protections – and good intentions.
“You are defining, essentially, the