City rivers give a sign of human greatness or misery – 06/28/2023 – Josimar Melo

I read the news in this Sheet reporting the decision of a city in Rondônia to guarantee legal rights to a river.

The Municipality of Guajará-Mirim defined the river Laje (actually, Komi-Memen) as a “living entity and subject of rights”, including the right to “nurture” and “be nourished”.

The proposal, reports reporter João Gabriel, is authored by councilor Francisco Oro Waram (PSB), leader of the Waram village, which is in the region of the river, which flows, on the border of Bolivia, into the Mamoré river (which, in turn, , forms the Madeira River, a tributary of the Amazon). The whole report is worth reading here.

From what I’ve read, it’s not the first law that defends parts of nature in Brazil; nor the first to defend a specific entity of nature in the world. The surprise is that precisely Brazil, with its stupendous hydrographic network (and the murder of rivers with weapons such as sewage from cities or mercury from illegal mining), is not at the forefront of this practice.

I have sailed along wild rivers, I am witness to the source of peace, beauty and food, transport and civilization that they can be, in a balanced relationship with human beings. But reading the news, the tragedy of other, less idyllic rivers comes to mind – those that, in urban centers, have been losing their own lives, and the lives they could have given us.

Anyone who lives and travels in São Paulo finds that its two largest rivers, Tietê and Pinheiros, instead of majestic gifts to its citizens, are like two thick tears of incivility tearing our daily lives.

This is what also occurs to me when I think of Recife, whose main rivers, the dying Beberibe and Capibaribe, have already made the city known as the Brazilian Venice (it was always an exaggeration, but at least it was a fair tribute to its beauty).

Among cities that coexist with large rivers, the scenario seems more frightening when they meander through the urban fabric, which contaminates them. In the case of Manaus and Belém –and also Buenos Aires, Montevideo, among many others—, the cities lean over almost oceanic rivers, forming a border with horizons as far as the eye can see. The danger is more imminent in the cases I mentioned, or in cities like Porto Alegre (to speak of Brazil) or London or Paris.

In these European cases, barbarism also befell the rivers. But the good news is that they are examples of what can still be done.

In both cities, at least, interaction with the river never ceased, at least as navigation —but neglect and pollution over the centuries were fatal. The English Thames had its death decreed in 1957: no life existed there anymore. But with billionaire investments and sure, when I recorded an episode of a series for National Geographic there, in 2010, there were already a few dozen species of fish returning to populate its bed. Today there are over a hundred, ranging from seahorses to sharks.

Paris tries to go the same way. And there’s even a deadline: the 2024 Olympics, when some water sports will be practiced on the Seine River. Seeing people in those waters, in the urban stretch, is something unheard of for exactly one hundred years: since 1923 it has been forbidden to swim there (due to boat traffic and also pollution).

São Paulo has been spending billions in cleaning its rivers for years, with dubious results to this day. But there are signs of slow progress. Examples from London and Paris, which resurrected the arteries that should have been pulsing alive in their urban fabric, always give us a hint of hope that a bit of greatness will be imposed where the misery of human beings has long reigned.

PRESENT LINK: Did you like this text? Subscriber can release five free hits of any link per day. Just click the blue F below.