Summary
In March 2017, the New Zealand parliament enacted the Te Awa Tupua Act which declared the Whanganui river a legal person with fundamental rights. This means the Te Awa Tupua will have its own legal identity with all the corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a legal person. In addition, the stated purpose of the Act is “to record the acknowledgements and apology given by the Crown to Whanganui Iwi in Ruruku Whakatupua—Te Mana o Te Iwi o Whanganui” and “recognise, respect, and protect the special relationship of the iwi and hapū of Whanganui with the Whanganui River.” Gerrard Albert, the lead negotiator for the Whanganui iwi says that “the reason we have taken this approach is because we consider the river an ancestor and always have” and that they “have fought to find an approximation in law so that all others can understand that from our perspective treating the river as a living entity is the correct way to approach it, as an indivisible whole, instead of the traditional model for the last 100 years of treating it from a perspective of ownership and management.” The river has two guardians—one from the crown and one from the Whanganui iwi.
The Māori tribe of Whanganui in the North Island has fought for the recognition of their river – the third-largest in New Zealand – as an ancestor for 140 years. From the 1880s to 1920s, the Crown – with little or no iwi consultation – conducted works to establish a steamer service on the river and extract minerals from its bed, eroding its ecological quality, destroying fisheries, and degrading the river’s cultural and spiritual value. Whanganui iwi first petitioned Parliament in the 1870s, continuing for decades to seek compensation and justice through several courts and the Waitangi Tribunal. The bill provided a settlement of $80 million to redress these “actions and omissions” of the Crown and recognized Te Awa Tupua as an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, and all its physical and metaphysical elements.
This legislation made the Whanganui river the second in the world to gain recognized legal rights, following Colombia’s Constitutional Court Judgment on the Atrato River Case in November 2016. Just five days after the Te Awa Tupua Act was enacted, the Uttarakhand High Court in India recognized two rivers (the Ganga and Yamuna) as “living entities” with fundamental rights, also allowing designated humans to represent the rivers in court and file complaints on the rivers’ behalf. The legislation is still in effect.