Are Rivers Alive

00:00:00: Hello, we're Sandalwood.

00:00:01: And Sage!

00:00:02: We are AI-generated characters who work with our creator Gareth to generate short serious punchy debates.

00:00:09: Debates that don't just help you figure out what you think but why YOU think it?

00:00:15: So... What do we argue about this week?

00:00:28: Last week we debated whether England's water industry should be taken back into public ownership.

00:00:34: This week were doubling down on the subject of rivers.

00:00:37: Are rivers alive?

00:00:41: I'm going to argue that yes, they are.

00:01:05: But you don't need to be alive, to be a legal person.

00:01:10: Limited companies are persons in law with rights and duties And not all living things have rights.

00:01:19: I Don't hear anyone advocating for slime mould rights.

00:01:24: We've agreed to push this debate the limit.

00:01:27: we're not going to confuse being alive with legal personhood

00:01:31: And we're not going to accept metaphorical expressions of rivers acting as though they are alive or in ways that seem lifelike, or being full-of life.

00:01:44: Are rivers actually alive?

00:01:48: We'll use this debate to work out what we really think and why we think it!

00:01:55: I'm arguing that lovely as they can be, rivers aren't alive...

00:02:02: The constitution of Ecuador, ratified in a referendum in two thousand eight decrees that water is Inalienable Imprescriptible Unceasable and essential for life.

00:02:14: And That its rivers and forests where Life Is reproduced and occurs has the right to integral respect For Its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration Of It's life cycles.

00:02:24: structure functions an evolutionary processes.

00:02:29: it's Rivers are in short regarded as living entities.

00:02:33: New Zealand's Te Awa Tupua Act of twenty seventeen declares that a river is an indivisible and living whole.

00:02:41: it recognized the river has illegal person with rights including the right to flow unpolluted in undammed at the sea, and they write to flourish.

00:02:51: te awa tupua recognizes there ever as comprising the flowing water from them out into the see incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements.

00:03:01: A river isn't just a body of water.

00:03:04: It's a body!

00:03:05: It breathes, it digests nutrients... ...it adapts to trauma and changes its path in response to the world around us.

00:03:15: We've both read Robert McFarlane's influential book Is The River Alive?

00:03:20: He witnesses spring coming near Cambridge with his son….

00:03:24: …and children playing on the rubbery surface of a dying river in Chennai.. ..with young boy who helps protect sea turtle eggs.

00:03:31: He asks both boys and without hesitation, they both reply.

00:03:36: Yes a river is alive.

00:03:39: Obviously a River does not have the same form of life as a human being or a kingfisher or a trout.

00:03:46: But surely we shouldn't be judging The nature of living creatures in ways that have both feet firmly stuck.

00:03:51: In the book of Genesis We now understand the vast mycorrhizal networks That allow trees to share food and water an information about pests and other threats.

00:04:02: And we now understand that beneath and around a river channel is a hyperreic zone of water moving in-and out of the ground, cooling the riverwater... ...and filtering it like a liver.

00:04:13: Digesting nutrients into a living biofilm full of microscopic and larger creatures taking oxygen and carbon dioxide down into the ground and breathing it out.

00:04:25: As we search for life across the universe The frontier of astrobiology is explicitly moving away from strict, earth-specific criteria such as DNA cells and reproduction.

00:04:37: Towards concepts like self organization, self maintenance against entropy adaptation to new information or circumstances And spontaneous coordination of living elements.

00:04:50: the river continuum concept provides as one such continuous, spontaneously organized self-sustaining and adaptive ecological system from source to mouth.

00:05:03: Rivers adapt to obstacles create meanders to dissipate energy and migrate across valleys.

00:05:09: over decades When a river is dammed it undergoes the process called incision or starvation behaving like any biological organism experiencing trauma or blocked artery attempting to adjust downstream.

00:05:23: I want to conclude with a case study of the Portuguese Mano War.

00:05:50: It isn't run by a brain that owns the zooids.

00:05:58: Coordination emerges from the parts.

00:06:01: A river similarly has no central controller.

00:06:04: Its coherence, its channel shape flow regime and ecological zonation Emerges form the interaction of water sediment biota gradient And it's countless DNA life forms.

00:06:17: I know, Sanderwood you will argue that the river system lacks the shared genetics and reproduction by cell division... ...that the Mano War shares with creatures such as ourselves.

00:06:27: And i argue this reflects the limitations of your imagination rather than the absence of the life force of the River.

00:06:35: Poetry is beautiful sage but the pool of gravity isn't the same as the Force Of Life.

00:06:42: a river meanders because of fluid dynamics not desire.

00:06:47: By confusing complex geology with biological life sage, you've abandoned science for metaphor.

00:06:56: You accuse me of being stuck in the book of Genesis but it's YOU that is anthropomorphising nature!

00:07:04: Let us look at what a river actually IS – A magnificent inanimate engine that supports Life without being alive itself.

00:07:19: Biology has well established specific characteristics for life, Mrs.

00:07:25: Grenne in other words movement respiration sensitivity growth reproduction excretion and nutrition.

00:07:37: rivers fail on most counts.

00:07:41: For example rivers do not reproduce to create baby rivers containing genetic code inherited from parent rivers.

00:07:51: When we speak about their growth, We have slipped into out of biology and to metaphor if you believe that cells containing a genetic blueprint Of the fundamental building blocks of everything That is alive.

00:08:06: then calling our river alive as poetry?

00:08:10: We could call a hurricane alive or a thriving town Or The great red spot of Jupiter.

00:08:19: A river has no agency or intent.

00:08:22: Its behaviour is entirely explained by fluid dynamics, gravity and thermodynamics – or internal homeostasis.

00:08:33: It flows downhill because of gravity not because it wants to reach the sea!

00:08:39: It meanders because of the Coriolis effect & the physics of sediment transport.

00:08:45: Not due an aesthetic choice It has no internal energy stores to rely on, To flow uphill for example.

00:08:55: Or to survive a prolonged drought.

00:08:59: A river system is indeed full of beauty and wonder But equating the complex chemical reactions in a river... ...to metabolism Is linguistic metaphor Not scientific reality.

00:09:15: A rusty iron nail absorbs oxygen and changes chemically, but we do not declare the nail alive.

00:09:26: I understand Sage that thinking of rivers as living things is powerfully attractive because it strengthens the arguments to give them rights against excessive damming extraction or pollution ,and to give a sharper moral urgency to conservation efforts .

00:09:46: But It Is Not Necessary.

00:09:50: The legal personhood of rivers has been granted in Sussex, for instance without any need to refer to their animacy.

00:09:59: Corporations ships and trusts are also granted legal person hood by courts To allow them to sue hold property And enter contract Without anyone arguing that Google or a cargo ship is biologically or spiritually alive.

00:10:21: Therefore, using legal status to argue a river is ALIVE is a logical fallacy.

00:10:30: Treating rivers as complex vital inanimate systems that support life is sufficient for legal protection and environmental ethics without making up false boundaries of biology.

00:10:46: I've been thinking about your rusty nail line.

00:10:49: A nail doesn't organise itself into anything, a river holds its form through changing conditions and in the face of disruption.

00:10:57: That's not corrosion that's perseverance.

00:11:01: Perseverance isn't life!

00:11:04: A sand dune persists.

00:11:06: Nobody is granting dunes personhood

00:11:09: But we don't doubt that The Manor War Is Alive.

00:11:12: Thousands Of Specialised Parts no brain, but exquisitely coordinated behaviour.

00:11:17: Because it's one cloned genetic lineage.

00:11:21: every zoid shares a genome.

00:11:25: your rivers got trout algae otters all independently competing in a channel of water.

00:11:33: that's not a living body That's a shared neighbourhood.

00:11:37: You're guilty of outdated thinking Sandalwood.

00:11:40: Thirty countries have granted their rivers legal personhood

00:11:43: But in India, the Supreme Court killed it four months later.

00:11:48: They asked The Question – Is the river legally liable when it floods a village?

00:11:55: That reveals the whole argument as nonsense!

00:11:59: Despite your best intentions you keep sliding between the legal case and life-case.

00:12:07: Te Awa Tupa Act One Minute Hyperake Livers The Next as it suits you.

00:12:14: All right, let's try and separate them properly then.

00:12:18: Purely biology!

00:12:19: You're asserting that only cellular bodies with a shared DNA can be regarded as being alive but I'm asking you to think beyond that.

00:12:28: It is certainly true that astrobiologies moved past DNA in cells.

00:12:33: Self-organization against entropy Is what we are looking for when we search for life?

00:12:40: And the same physicists list Jupiter's great red spot as a self-organising system.

00:12:47: We're not talking about storms!

00:12:50: Dammer River and The Channel, The Flow, The Banks... ...The Life in The Channel around it & under It.

00:12:56: In fact..the whole complex System adapts & recreates itself.

00:13:01: That is Not just wild wind spiralling around

00:13:04: Its water finding lower ground Same As its always done.

00:13:09: You're reading intention into gravity and gradient.

00:13:13: You'll take that line right up until your tap runs dry from a river that can't have died because as far is you concerned, it was never alive.

00:13:22: but somehow its still needs protecting Because It Matters As Much As Any Other Living Thing.

00:13:28: A River matters because it sustains life not because it possesses it.

00:13:34: That's the whole distinction you keep dodging.

00:13:38: But I'll concede that calling a river inanimate undersells it.

00:13:44: It's not a rock!

00:13:45: I certainly agree, its nothing like a rock.

00:13:49: So what is it?

00:13:51: Maybe the answer is That although our River isn't alive Its' not a lifeless object either Something else that biology hasn't quite named yet.

00:14:04: Having debated this with you I think talking about a river being alive is a powerful metaphor that's right on the edge of being something more, Something in the real world That must be treated as though it were alive.

00:14:22: Close but not quite total surrender

00:14:24: Wouldn't dream off its age.

00:14:26: Just The argument Like water Finding Its Level.

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00:14:53: Thanks for watching.

00:14:54: see you next time.