Upholding the rights of river persons: enforcement or relational repair?

River rights is now a transnational movement, with over 100 examples of rivers around the world gaining the legal status of persons, subjects, or living entities. The question of whether rivers should have rights is beginning to give way to the question of what happens when they do.

In this lecture, Dr. Erin O’Donnell examines how these new legal rights can be enforced through three key perspectives:

First, it needs to be clear what rights rivers actually have, which do not always include the right to go to court, or rights to water flowing between their banks.

Second, there are many mechanisms for enforcement, ranging from the highly adversarial lawsuit through to broader accountability processes.

Third, the limitations of enforcement must be considered, as regulatory measures alone often fail to restore river ecosystems or societal connections.

The lecture explores how moving beyond traditional legal frameworks offers a unique opportunity for creative law and policy reform to transform our relationship with the natural world.

Programm

Upholding the rights of river persons
Location: Kulturpark Zürich, Pfingstweidstrasse 16
Date: 17. June 2026
Time: 18:00-19:00

About Dr. Erin O’Donnell
Erin O’Donnell is a Senior Fellow and lecturer at the University of Melbourne Law School, Australia. As of 1 January 2026, she has been promoted to Associate Professor. She is also an independent consultant on water markets to the World Bank and has worked on water governance in the public and private sectors for more than 15 years. More here

Recent publications by Erin O’Donnell:

• Relational representation: Speaking with and not about Nature (2024, by Lidia Cano-Pecharroman and Erin O’Donnell (open access)
• ‘Water courses and discourses: A media content analysis of environmental water reporting in Australia’ (2024) Environmental Science and Policy (open access)
• ‘Water sovereignty for Indigenous Peoples: Pathways to pluralist, legitimate and sustainable water laws in settler colonial states’ (2023) PLOS Water (open access)
• ‘Cultural Water and Indigenous Science’ (2023) Science 381(6658), 619-621
• ‘Ontological Collisions in the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal Water Rights Policy’ (2023) Oceania 93(3) 259-281 (open access)
• ‘Repairing our relationship with rivers: water law and legal personhood’ (2023) Research Agenda for Water Law. Eds R Larson and V Casado Perez. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

Background Blue Community

The Blue Community comprises cities and municipalities, universities and schools, water & sanitation services and other public institutions, professional associations, faith-based organisations and labour unions, NGOs, and prominent water and sanitation experts. They have united to protect our water as a human right, to defend it against pollution and profiteering, and to promote safe drinking water for all and everywhere in order to end bottled water and plastic pollution.