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Paper short abstract

This paper develops the concept of the ‘charismatic river’ to examine how charisma shapes the ethics of river protection and mediates relationships between people, rivers, and law.

Paper long abstract

In recent years, rivers have become the focus of significant juridical developments in environmental protection and governance. Countries including Ecuador, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Colombia, India, Australia, and Bangladesh have developed legal frameworks for river protection, informed by an emerging global discourse advocating for the recognition of the ‘rights of nature.’ Despite the proliferation of these legal developments across diverse geopolitical and socio-cultural contexts, little scholarship has asked why rivers, rather than other ecological entities, have emerged as the principal beneficiaries of such protection. Building on the concept of nonhuman charisma (Fordahl, 2024; Lorimer, 2007), I develop the concept of the 'charismatic river' to explain why rivers have become especially compelling subjects of legal recognition and ethical concern. I argue that river charisma is relational, affective, and culturally mediated, and examine how these qualities shape the ethics of river protection across different cultural and legal settings. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork with two rivers experiencing intensifying ecological precarity alongside novel forms of legal recognition. The Birrarung (Yarra River), located in south-eastern Australia and the River Ganga in northern India, provide distinct but parallel case studies. Together, these case studies demonstrate how river charisma mediates relationships between people, rivers, and law, helping to explain why rivers have become particularly powerful subjects of environmental rights claims. In doing so, the paper contributes to anthropological debates on more-than-human relations, environmental governance, and the ethical and legal recognition of rivers in an era of accelerating ecological change.