A bid to investigate getting the River Wensum ‘rights’ like a person has been rejected, with Labour councillors saying it risked trivialising the issue.
Green members at City Hall made the proposals as a means of protecting the river - which is a globally rare chalk stream - from pollution and climate change.
It would have seen the council working with local groups to explore implementing a ‘rights of rivers’, giving it protections similar to a person, and could include things like a right to flow.
The suggestion is not entirely novel, with a river in Canada being granted legal personhood in 2021 and similar mechanisms have been used in Bolivia, Mexico and Colombia.
But Labour members at City Hall criticised the suggestion.
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Green group leader Lucy Galvin said the river was enormously important to the city and needed protecting.
He motion said: “There is an emerging global movement of governments recognising the rights of nature and in particular of rivers.
“Rights of nature is a way of re-thinking our relationship with nature - from one of dominance to one of interdependency.
“If we can define a corporation as having the rights of personhood, then we can imagine a river having these personhood rights?”
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But Labour’s Kevin Maguire, who agreed the river needed protecting, said it was wrong to treat it like a person.
He said: “Rivers are not people, yes, it is a precious resource.
“The Wensum gives us drinking water; it is a conduit for trade, a place of leisure and recreation.
“But a river has no rights in and of itself.
“People have rights and legal protections, they have been hard fought for over time by people.
“To talk of a river having the rights in the way that a human does could be a dangerous step towards trivialising our human rights.”
The motion was rejected despite support from the Liberal Democrat group.
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