"The intrinsic rights of the Laje River —Komi-Memen— are recognized as a living entity and subject of rights, and of all other bodies of water and living beings that naturally exist in it or with whom it interrelates, including human beings, insofar as they are interrelated in an interconnected, integrated and interdependent system." This is how the City Council of Guajará-Mirim (RO) defined Laje in the first law in Brazil that recognizes the legal rights of a river.
According to the text of the municipal law, the river has the right to "maintain its natural flow", "to nourish and "be nourished", "to exist with its physicochemical conditions adequate to its ecological balance" and to relate to human beings as long as "of its spiritual, leisure, artisanal, agroecological and cultural fishing practices".
The proposal was authored by Councilman Francisco Oro Waram (PSB), leader of the Waram indigenous village, which is located in the Lage River region. It is an Amazon river called by the indigenous people of Komi-Memen and flows into the Madeira, which in its turn feeds the Amazon.
The granting of these prerogatives to the river follows a chain of recognizing nature itself as the holder of rights, going beyond the regulation of its exploitation by human beings. The thesis starts from the principle that the environment has rights inherent to its existence, which must be recognized in legislation just like those of citizens.
Translated by Cassy Dias