River rights: exploring how river personhood could connect to EU river laws

Cathy Suykens, Katie O’Bryan and Erin O’Donnell

Chapter 8 in Research Handbook on EU Water Law, 2026, pp 112-136 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: “Rights for rivers” is one of the most recognisable manifestations of the Rights of Nature movement. The examples of rivers that have received rights which are included in this chapter demonstrate a significant disconnect between the laws that grant rights or living-entity status to rivers and the laws that govern access to water quantity. The objective of this chapter is not to evaluate the appropriateness of rights-based regimes in the EU but rather to evaluate how the river-rights approach could “fit” into the EU legal framework and to identify the obstacles that would need to be overcome from the perspective of the connectedness of legal frameworks. Connectedness in a rights-based regime is particularly relevant to the EU context. Indeed, there is already a disconnect between water law and the laws that govern (transboundary) rivers. To be successful in the long run, any new river-rights regime would need to explicitly address this disconnect. A specific EU transboundary river, the Scheldt, is used throughout the chapter as a key example to highlight the tangible implications of the argument.

Keywords: Rights of Nature; River Rights; EU Water Framework Directive; Environmental Flow; River Basin Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035336425
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