Is a River Alive?: A Conversation with Robert Macfarlane

Podcast Summary: “Is a River Alive?: A Conversation with Robert Macfarlane”
Podcast: New Books Network (Open Society Ideas Podcast)
Host: Darius Japlinskas
Guest: Robert Macfarlane
Date: December 1, 2025

Overview

This episode features acclaimed British nature writer Robert Macfarlane discussing his latest book, Is a River Alive? In conversation with host Darius Japlinskas, Macfarlane explores humanity’s relationship with rivers, the rights of nature, ecological loss and resilience, and divergent ways of regarding the living world. The discussion journeys from the chalk streams of England to the cloud forests of Ecuador, the rivers of Chennai, and the wild waterways of northern Canada. Macfarlane draws out philosophical, ecological, and legal insights about rivers, animacy, relationality, and hope amid damage.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Macfarlane’s Origins & Relationship to Nature (01:42–02:48)

Macfarlane recounts formative experiences as a climber in the Midlands, underlining mountains as "the beginning and the end of all natural scenery" (01:52).
He notes “repeated encounters with a very elemental, sometimes hazardous, excitingly indifferent… world dove deep. It’s bone deep” (02:45).

2. Shifting Baseline Syndrome & Ecological Loss (02:48–05:21)

Explains "shifting baseline syndrome" as “the creeping normalization of damage or loss,” originally coined by a fisheries scientist (03:12).
Example: “There was a progressive diminishment in the physical size of the fish, but no corresponding diminishment in the perception… as a good catch” (03:31).
Offers classic “splatter test”—windshield bugs are now largely absent, signifying unnoticed ecological loss (04:10).
Suggests baselines can also shift positively: “I call that lifting baseline syndrome” (05:10).

3. Book Structure: Four River Stories as Global Thread (05:21–08:58)

The book traces four river systems across four continents, tied together by a “little chalk spring… near my house” in Cambridge (05:51).
Chalk rivers, “miraculous but… taken for granted,” become a personal lens on global river issues (06:15).
Macfarlane frames the “radical constitutional shift” in Ecuador (2008): recognition of Rights of Nature in law, which later proved pivotal in the Los Cedros Cloud Forest mining case (07:35).
Landmark ruling: Ecuador’s Constitutional Court safeguarded Los Cedros, recognizing mining would “violate the rights of the rivers and the forests” (08:33).

4. Meeting The Defenders of Los Cedros (09:04–10:34)

Macfarlane travels to Los Cedros with “field lawyer” Cesar Rodriguez Garavita, mycologist Giuliano Ferci, musician Cosmo Sheldrake, and two of the constitutional judges.
Describes the judges meeting the forest they had “helped to save from destruction”—emotionally powerful given the alternative “counterfactual” world where the forest was lost (10:18).

5. Current Threats to Ecuador's Environmental Gains (10:34–13:03)

Updates on rollback of Rights of Nature under President Daniel Noboa: “He has abolished the Ministry of Environment… and placed all its powers under the Ministry of Mining and Energy” (11:45).
Resilience: “There is tremendous… civil resistance, including brave, really brave and courageous resistance from the Constitutional Court” (12:46).
Urges awareness of this “assault” happening with little international scrutiny.

6. Indigenous Ontologies—Kawsak Sacha & Selva Viviente (13:03–15:21)

The Sarayaku and other Amazonian groups assert “the forest itself is a conscious, living being and humans are part of that consciousness” (14:13).
They maintain that this is not a metaphor: “It makes no sense to an oil company executive… it’s untranslatable into [those] idioms” (14:34).
Notably, indigenous leaders reject “standard conservation idiom”—refusing preservation for mere biodiversity's sake, insisting instead on the forest’s own personhood (15:11).

7. Rivers of Chennai, India: Restoration Amid Loss (15:21–21:22)

Contrasts Indian rivers—where harm is already done—with Ecuador, where prevention succeeded.
Waves of pollution and failed infrastructure: “There are stretches… that have 0% dissolved oxygen… zero species count” (16:30).
Introduces young local activist Yuvan, whose biography interweaves trauma and transformation: “He’s tough, like, he fights hard… under threat from state actors” (18:02).
Yuvan dissuades calling rivers “dead”: “Perhaps deadened or mortified or temporarily wounded,” as monsoons can periodically revive them (19:13).
Notes Chennai’s ancient “water literacy” and sophisticated management of alternating abundance and scarcity—now lost, but recoverable (19:57).
Celebrates small victories: e.g., “moving a very large number of farmers off pesticides… onto organic methods” and winning legal protections for wetlands (20:45).
Quote: “He is like a mongoose, like he’s darting, nipping at power, beating things that shouldn’t be beatable. It’s really inspiring” (21:09).

8. Chennai Seacoast—Turtles and Thresholds (21:22–23:18)

Describes patrolling with Yuvan for nesting sea turtles: “Ancient mothers… dig their nests… lay around a hundred eggs… and dive off back into mystery” (22:10).
The shore becomes a space “where life and death are actively commingling” for Yuvan, who scattered multiple family members’ ashes there (21:50).
Also confronts death: “Every hundred yards we would find these huge shelled dead… mothers killed by trawler strike” (22:50).

9. Quebec’s Nitasinan—Animacy and Rights of a River (23:18–25:55)

Explores Innu territory (Nitasinan), threatened by Quebec’s dam-building for hydropower.
The Mutuhekau Shipu (Magpie River) becomes “the first Canadian river to have its rights declared and recognized” (24:30).
Notes a model coalition: “An alliance of resistance” between Innu and local entities (24:53).
The river’s legal recognition: “As a living and spiritual entity whose life is continuous with that of the Innu people across 4 to 8,000 years” (25:21).

10. Core Philosophical Question: “Is a River Alive?” (25:55–31:04)

Grapples with animacy vs. biological life; references fellow writer Melanie Challenger’s views.
Macfarlane insists—“The book itself is an exploration. It doesn’t come to hard answers… For me, the importance… is the provocation that life, as it is understood within a technocracy… is… an ultra-restricted category” (27:32).
Cautions: “It is possible to recognize the rights of rivers without deeming them to be alive. Corporations… have rights, and yet nobody would claim a corporation is alive” (28:27).
Celebrates alternate epistemologies: Relation-based views where “life is something always lived in relation” (29:55).
On process: “If the river helped me think about anything, it was to move away from substance and towards process… we are all always already in the flow, in process, even when we think we’re standing dry footed on the bank” (30:25).

11. The Animating Force of Language & Future Work (31:59–33:40)

On writing style: “Part of the project of animating the idea of river… was going to require the remarkable animating force of language” (32:04).
Views language as failing but striving: “I’m much more interested in how language fails than some dream of correspondence…” (32:36).
Upcoming work: “A reimagining of the field guide form (‘The Book of Birds’)... and a graphic novel retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh” (33:13).
Personal touch: “The only tattoo I have… the two cuneiform symbols for river from the Epic of Gilgamesh that keeps me honest” (33:31).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On mountains and origins:
“My heart is still made of mountains, and I think it always will be.” (01:48, Macfarlane)

On shifting baseline syndrome:
“We rapidly normalize a situation as the baseline. The baseline shifts, but you don’t recognize the shift that’s happened.” (03:53, Macfarlane)

On Rights of Nature in Ecuador:
“Any citizen… can bring a suit in the Ecuadorian legal system on behalf of nature. So, remarkable document, very revolutionary, very radical…” (07:53, Macfarlane)

On Sarayaku beliefs:
“The forest itself is a conscious, living being and humans are part of that consciousness… That’s why it makes no sense to an oil company executive…” (14:13, Macfarlane)

On Chennai’s wounded rivers:
“You have to have oxygenated water to have life within the water mostly. And they have zero species count. Like zero species count. I laugh at the awfulness of it.” (16:40, Macfarlane)

On Yuvan’s activism:
“He is like a mongoose, like he’s darting, nipping at power, beating things that shouldn’t be beatable. It’s really inspiring.” (21:09, Macfarlane)

On metaphysical ambiguity:
“The book itself is an exploration and it doesn’t, it doesn’t come to hard answers… for me the importance here is… the provocation…” (27:32, Macfarlane)

On writing and language:
“Language… can make us fall in love with people we’ve never met, grieve for people who’ve never existed. So it could surely shake some of its readers out of a set of rationalist, instrumentalist recognitions of water…” (32:04, Macfarlane)

Key Timestamps

01:42 – Macfarlane’s childhood and love of mountains
03:06 – Shifting baseline syndrome explained
05:40 – Structure and rationale of the book’s four river stories
07:35 – Ecuador’s constitutional Rights of Nature, Los Cedros legal case
09:04 – Visiting Los Cedros, meeting judges and activists
10:48 – Present-day threats to Ecuador's environmental gains
13:18 – The Kawsak Sacha / Selva Viviente declaration
16:09 – Chennai’s rivers and activist Yuvan
21:34 – Chennai seacoast and turtle patrols
23:28 – Quebec’s Nitasinan / Mutuhekau Shipu river rights recognition
25:55 – What does it mean for a river to be alive? Animacy vs. biological life
31:59 – Writing style, the power and limits of language; next projects

Tone and Language

The episode is thoughtful, poetic, and occasionally urgent, blending scientific observation, legal analysis, philosophical questioning, and personal storytelling. Macfarlane combines erudition with humility—returning again and again to the complexities and ambiguities at the heart of his central question.

For More:
Pick up Is a River Alive?, forthcoming works by Macfarlane, and follow the New Books Network for further conversations with authors challenging current paradigms.

Overview

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Macfarlane’s Origins & Relationship to Nature (01:42–02:48)

Macfarlane recounts formative experiences as a climber in the Midlands, underlining mountains as "the beginning and the end of all natural scenery" (01:52).
He notes “repeated encounters with a very elemental, sometimes hazardous, excitingly indifferent… world dove deep. It’s bone deep” (02:45).

2. Shifting Baseline Syndrome & Ecological Loss (02:48–05:21)

Explains "shifting baseline syndrome" as “the creeping normalization of damage or loss,” originally coined by a fisheries scientist (03:12).
Example: “There was a progressive diminishment in the physical size of the fish, but no corresponding diminishment in the perception… as a good catch” (03:31).
Offers classic “splatter test”—windshield bugs are now largely absent, signifying unnoticed ecological loss (04:10).
Suggests baselines can also shift positively: “I call that lifting baseline syndrome” (05:10).

3. Book Structure: Four River Stories as Global Thread (05:21–08:58)

The book traces four river systems across four continents, tied together by a “little chalk spring… near my house” in Cambridge (05:51).
Chalk rivers, “miraculous but… taken for granted,” become a personal lens on global river issues (06:15).
Macfarlane frames the “radical constitutional shift” in Ecuador (2008): recognition of Rights of Nature in law, which later proved pivotal in the Los Cedros Cloud Forest mining case (07:35).
Landmark ruling: Ecuador’s Constitutional Court safeguarded Los Cedros, recognizing mining would “violate the rights of the rivers and the forests” (08:33).

4. Meeting The Defenders of Los Cedros (09:04–10:34)

Macfarlane travels to Los Cedros with “field lawyer” Cesar Rodriguez Garavita, mycologist Giuliano Ferci, musician Cosmo Sheldrake, and two of the constitutional judges.
Describes the judges meeting the forest they had “helped to save from destruction”—emotionally powerful given the alternative “counterfactual” world where the forest was lost (10:18).

5. Current Threats to Ecuador's Environmental Gains (10:34–13:03)

Updates on rollback of Rights of Nature under President Daniel Noboa: “He has abolished the Ministry of Environment… and placed all its powers under the Ministry of Mining and Energy” (11:45).
Resilience: “There is tremendous… civil resistance, including brave, really brave and courageous resistance from the Constitutional Court” (12:46).
Urges awareness of this “assault” happening with little international scrutiny.

6. Indigenous Ontologies—Kawsak Sacha & Selva Viviente (13:03–15:21)

The Sarayaku and other Amazonian groups assert “the forest itself is a conscious, living being and humans are part of that consciousness” (14:13).
They maintain that this is not a metaphor: “It makes no sense to an oil company executive… it’s untranslatable into [those] idioms” (14:34).
Notably, indigenous leaders reject “standard conservation idiom”—refusing preservation for mere biodiversity's sake, insisting instead on the forest’s own personhood (15:11).

7. Rivers of Chennai, India: Restoration Amid Loss (15:21–21:22)

Contrasts Indian rivers—where harm is already done—with Ecuador, where prevention succeeded.
Waves of pollution and failed infrastructure: “There are stretches… that have 0% dissolved oxygen… zero species count” (16:30).
Introduces young local activist Yuvan, whose biography interweaves trauma and transformation: “He’s tough, like, he fights hard… under threat from state actors” (18:02).
Yuvan dissuades calling rivers “dead”: “Perhaps deadened or mortified or temporarily wounded,” as monsoons can periodically revive them (19:13).
Notes Chennai’s ancient “water literacy” and sophisticated management of alternating abundance and scarcity—now lost, but recoverable (19:57).
Celebrates small victories: e.g., “moving a very large number of farmers off pesticides… onto organic methods” and winning legal protections for wetlands (20:45).
Quote: “He is like a mongoose, like he’s darting, nipping at power, beating things that shouldn’t be beatable. It’s really inspiring” (21:09).

8. Chennai Seacoast—Turtles and Thresholds (21:22–23:18)

Describes patrolling with Yuvan for nesting sea turtles: “Ancient mothers… dig their nests… lay around a hundred eggs… and dive off back into mystery” (22:10).
The shore becomes a space “where life and death are actively commingling” for Yuvan, who scattered multiple family members’ ashes there (21:50).
Also confronts death: “Every hundred yards we would find these huge shelled dead… mothers killed by trawler strike” (22:50).

9. Quebec’s Nitasinan—Animacy and Rights of a River (23:18–25:55)

Explores Innu territory (Nitasinan), threatened by Quebec’s dam-building for hydropower.
The Mutuhekau Shipu (Magpie River) becomes “the first Canadian river to have its rights declared and recognized” (24:30).
Notes a model coalition: “An alliance of resistance” between Innu and local entities (24:53).
The river’s legal recognition: “As a living and spiritual entity whose life is continuous with that of the Innu people across 4 to 8,000 years” (25:21).

10. Core Philosophical Question: “Is a River Alive?” (25:55–31:04)

Grapples with animacy vs. biological life; references fellow writer Melanie Challenger’s views.
Macfarlane insists—“The book itself is an exploration. It doesn’t come to hard answers… For me, the importance… is the provocation that life, as it is understood within a technocracy… is… an ultra-restricted category” (27:32).
Cautions: “It is possible to recognize the rights of rivers without deeming them to be alive. Corporations… have rights, and yet nobody would claim a corporation is alive” (28:27).
Celebrates alternate epistemologies: Relation-based views where “life is something always lived in relation” (29:55).
On process: “If the river helped me think about anything, it was to move away from substance and towards process… we are all always already in the flow, in process, even when we think we’re standing dry footed on the bank” (30:25).

11. The Animating Force of Language & Future Work (31:59–33:40)

On writing style: “Part of the project of animating the idea of river… was going to require the remarkable animating force of language” (32:04).
Views language as failing but striving: “I’m much more interested in how language fails than some dream of correspondence…” (32:36).
Upcoming work: “A reimagining of the field guide form (‘The Book of Birds’)... and a graphic novel retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh” (33:13).
Personal touch: “The only tattoo I have… the two cuneiform symbols for river from the Epic of Gilgamesh that keeps me honest” (33:31).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On mountains and origins:
“My heart is still made of mountains, and I think it always will be.” (01:48, Macfarlane)

On shifting baseline syndrome:
“We rapidly normalize a situation as the baseline. The baseline shifts, but you don’t recognize the shift that’s happened.” (03:53, Macfarlane)

On Yuvan’s activism:
“He is like a mongoose, like he’s darting, nipping at power, beating things that shouldn’t be beatable. It’s really inspiring.” (21:09, Macfarlane)

On metaphysical ambiguity:
“The book itself is an exploration and it doesn’t, it doesn’t come to hard answers… for me the importance here is… the provocation…” (27:32, Macfarlane)

Key Timestamps

01:42 – Macfarlane’s childhood and love of mountains
03:06 – Shifting baseline syndrome explained
05:40 – Structure and rationale of the book’s four river stories
07:35 – Ecuador’s constitutional Rights of Nature, Los Cedros legal case
09:04 – Visiting Los Cedros, meeting judges and activists
10:48 – Present-day threats to Ecuador's environmental gains
13:18 – The Kawsak Sacha / Selva Viviente declaration
16:09 – Chennai’s rivers and activist Yuvan
21:34 – Chennai seacoast and turtle patrols
23:28 – Quebec’s Nitasinan / Mutuhekau Shipu river rights recognition
25:55 – What does it mean for a river to be alive? Animacy vs. biological life
31:59 – Writing style, the power and limits of language; next projects

Tone and Language

For More:
Pick up Is a River Alive?, forthcoming works by Macfarlane, and follow the New Books Network for further conversations with authors challenging current paradigms.

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Summary

Overview

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Macfarlane’s Origins & Relationship to Nature (01:42–02:48)

2. Shifting Baseline Syndrome & Ecological Loss (02:48–05:21)

3. Book Structure: Four River Stories as Global Thread (05:21–08:58)

4. Meeting The Defenders of Los Cedros (09:04–10:34)

5. Current Threats to Ecuador's Environmental Gains (10:34–13:03)

6. Indigenous Ontologies—Kawsak Sacha & Selva Viviente (13:03–15:21)

7. Rivers of Chennai, India: Restoration Amid Loss (15:21–21:22)

8. Chennai Seacoast—Turtles and Thresholds (21:22–23:18)

9. Quebec’s Nitasinan—Animacy and Rights of a River (23:18–25:55)

10. Core Philosophical Question: “Is a River Alive?” (25:55–31:04)

11. The Animating Force of Language & Future Work (31:59–33:40)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Key Timestamps

Tone and Language

Summary

Overview

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Macfarlane’s Origins & Relationship to Nature (01:42–02:48)

2. Shifting Baseline Syndrome & Ecological Loss (02:48–05:21)

3. Book Structure: Four River Stories as Global Thread (05:21–08:58)

4. Meeting The Defenders of Los Cedros (09:04–10:34)

5. Current Threats to Ecuador's Environmental Gains (10:34–13:03)

6. Indigenous Ontologies—Kawsak Sacha & Selva Viviente (13:03–15:21)

7. Rivers of Chennai, India: Restoration Amid Loss (15:21–21:22)

8. Chennai Seacoast—Turtles and Thresholds (21:22–23:18)

9. Quebec’s Nitasinan—Animacy and Rights of a River (23:18–25:55)

10. Core Philosophical Question: “Is a River Alive?” (25:55–31:04)

11. The Animating Force of Language & Future Work (31:59–33:40)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Key Timestamps

Tone and Language