{"id":6927,"date":"2017-03-27T06:50:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T06:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6927"},"modified":"2017-03-27T06:50:02","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T06:50:02","slug":"the-mississippis-orphan-tears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/03\/27\/the-mississippis-orphan-tears\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mississippi's orphan tears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NAEE blog, on <a href=\"http:\/\/naee.org.uk\/new-zealand-river-granted-human-legal-rights\/\">March 16th<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/naee.org.uk\/two-rivers-get-legal-rights-people\/\">March 24th<\/a>, carried stories about rivers getting legal status as people. \u00a0The rivers in question were the Whanganui\u00a0river in\u00a0New Zealand and\u00a0the\u00a0Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India.<\/p>\n<p>The March 24th post cited an\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/asia\/21719409-odd-legal-status-intended-help-prevent-pollution-and-other-abuses-new-zealand-declares?cid1=cust\/ddnew\/n\/n\/n\/20170322n\/owned\/n\/n\/nwl\/n\/n\/uk\/Daily_Dispatch\/email&amp;etear=dailydispatch\">Economist<\/a>\u00a0feature on both these developments, and quoted how the article ended:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Days after the law passed, an Indian court declared two of the biggest and most sacred rivers in India, the Ganges and Yamuna, to be people too. \u00a0Making explicit reference to the Whanganui settlement, the court assigned legal \u201cparents\u201d to protect and conserve their waters. \u00a0Local lawyers think the ruling might help fight severe pollution: the rivers\u2019 defenders will no longer have to prove that discharges into them harm anyone, since any sullying of the waters will now be a crime against the river itself. \u00a0There is no doubt that of the 1.3bn-odd people in India, the Ganges and the Yamuna must be among the most downtrodden.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Will this idea spread, I wonder? \u00a0Perhaps even to the USA where the Mississippi\u00a0has\u00a0surely cried enough orphan tears for rivers everywhere. \u00a0Giving it First Amendment rights as well would seem in order. \u00a0After all, the US deems corporations to have legal rights as people, so why not rivers? \u00a0Sadly, I suspect that\u00a0expensive\u00a0lawyers are already queuing for two blocks\u00a0for a chance to ridicule this idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NAEE blog, on March 16th and March 24th, carried stories about rivers getting legal status as people. \u00a0The rivers in question were the Whanganui\u00a0river in\u00a0New Zealand and\u00a0the\u00a0Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India. The March 24th post cited an\u00a0Economist\u00a0feature on...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}