“The ruling makes defenders of all the indigenous peoples who live on the banks of the tributaries of the Marañón River.”
Kukama Kukamiria leader Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari has won the Goldman Environmental Prize 2025, the world’s highest award for environmental activists, for her fight to defend the rights of the Marañón River. She won a landmark ruling in Peru in which the Mixed Court of Nauta, in the Loreto region, granted the Marañón River the status of rights-holder.
Juan Carlos Ruiz, a lawyer with the Instituto de Defensa Legal, which prosecuted the case, explains that the ruling ‘makes it possible to move from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric approach. This means taking care of the river because it has value in itself.
What does it mean when a river is declared to have rights?
The Huaynacanas ruling is the first to formally recognise a river, not as a subject of rights, but as a holder of rights, which is actually the same thing, but it is careful not to use the word ‘subject of rights’.
What does it mean for a river to be declared a riparian? It means that it has enhanced protection. When you recognise the rights of a river, you set new limits for the state and for individuals. For example, the right to live free from pollution is incompatible with the fact that in Iquitos, for example, there is no sewage treatment plant, so the excrement goes into the Nanay River. If you recognise the rights of a river, you can no longer dump the excrement.
Rights become limits, criteria of validity for the decisions of the state and private individuals.
Who represents the Marañón River in these decisions?
In the case of the Huaynacanas, the courts say that different state bodies and indigenous peoples are, in three words, the guardians, defenders and representatives of the rivers. What does this mean? It means that if the state wants to make a decision that affects the rivers, it has to consult them.
The Marañón River has suffered more than 60 oil spills in its history. How will you continue to defend your rights after the ruling?
In the Marañón River there are systematic spills because the pipeline is a disaster. Half of the spills are due to sabotage and the other half to the lack of maintenance of the pipeline.
This ruling, which benefits the Marañón and all its tributaries, recognises rights not only for the Marañón but for all its tributaries. The vast majority of Amazonian rivers are tributaries of the Marañón: Huallaga, Ucayali, Morón.
So from now on, for example, oil spills not only pollute the environment, but also affect the rights of the Marañón River. For example, the right of the river to live without contamination, to its own ecosystem, to its own flow, has been recognised and the transfer of water is prohibited. The spills would in some way affect the rights of the Marañón River and open up the possibility of legal action.
And specifically in terms of the impact on the Marañón River and this ruling, if there was an oil spill in the area, does it mean the same thing? Yes, this ruling raises the standards and provides more tools for protection. Of course, approving it does not make everything good. In other words, if I approve a constitution and recognise new rights, for example the right to drinking water, it doesn’t mean that from now on everyone will do the same.
It means that you have a stronger tool to demand your right to drinking water. It is the same here. This ruling is important because it recognises rights, not only for the Marañón River, but for all its tributaries.
The Huallaga is a tributary of the Marañón. And it makes defendants not only the Huaynacanas, who brought this case, but all the indigenous peoples who live on the banks of the Marañón’s tributaries. That is why it is important.
Now, to the extent that this ruling is taken up by the different indigenous leaders, made their own, known and demanded, this ruling will fulfil its purpose.
Does the Peruvian state have any interest in preventing this recognition of rights?
The Civil Chamber of the Court of Loreto has issued a judgement and there is no right to challenge this judgement before the Constitutional Court. It’s only possible, let’s say, to appeal to the Court if the plaintiff doesn’t agree. The possibility of appealing to the Constitutional Court as a last resort is available only to plaintiffs whose rights have been infringed, not to defendants.
Consequently, it is a final judgement that has the force of res judicata and must be enforced. Therefore, the judgement of the civil court comes to the Nauta court, which is the court that has to enforce the judgement. In this case, what the Nauta judge has to do is to convene follow-up hearings to ensure that the sentence is complied with. In other words, the sentence doesn’t end when it is pronounced, let’s say, the judicial process doesn’t end when the sentence is pronounced, but when it is obeyed. And here it is up to the judge to make sure that the sentence is carried out. In this case, it would be the Nauta court that would be responsible, as part of its jurisdiction, for ensuring that the sentence is carried out.
Can this category of rights holder be granted to other living bodies?
There are 33 judgments in the world that have been given for something similar. The most recent is a lake in Murcia, Spain. This was basically in the United States. In Colombia there is the famous case of the Atrato River. In New Zealand you have the Whanganui case. You have many cases, but what is the central idea? I want it to be understood. We live with a system that is, let’s say, anthropocentric.
What does that mean? I have to look after the rivers, not because they are important in themselves, but because they are useful. The anthropocentric view is to look after nature because it is useful to me. I look after the anchovy because it may become extinct and no longer be useful.
The fact of this sentence, and this is the great merit, is that it moves from an anthropocentric scheme to an ecocentric scheme. What does that mean? I have to look after the river not only because it is useful to me, but because it has value in itself. What I have done since that sentence is to take a big step in that direction.
We no longer look at nature as dead things, as objects, but as living beings. And this first step was taken by the Inter-American Court in several rulings. The Constitutional Court has also made a decision along the same lines. So the idea is to go to another system. The river is a living being. It therefore has a value of its own.
