Steven Gaskell: The Day the River Lawyered Up

Treaty settlement negotiations where iwi argue a place is an ancestor. The Legal Personhood Status Con Exposed.

New Zealand has always been a practical country. We built bridges across rivers, dams across valleys and farms across… well, everything else. Then one day the river hired a lawyer.

Not metaphorically legally.

Under what’s politely called “Rights of Nature”, parts of the landscape are no longer scenery. They are now legal personalities. The outdoors has entered the justice system and, unlike most citizens, it doesn’t have to pay rates.

Take the Whanganui River.

For generations it flowed to the sea performing the usual river duties: flooding paddocks, drowning gumboots and ruining council culverts. Now it also files submissions. Two appointed guardians speak on its behalf one Crown, one iwi meaning the river finally has better representation than most taxpayers at local hearings.

The key reassurance offered to the public is: “No one owns the river.”

Comforting right up until you realise that also means you don’t really get to argue with it either.

If you want irrigation consent today, you are no longer just negotiating with planners, ecologists and neighbours. You are negotiating with the river itself. And unlike a neighbour, the river cannot be compensated with a fence, a hedge or a bottle of whisky at Christmas. Its interests are permanent, spiritual and immune to compromise.

Then there is Te Urewera formerly a national park, now a self-owning legal entity.

We have progressed from Crown land, to public land, to land that owns itself. The next logical step is probably land that sends us rent invoices.

The innovation here is subtle but profound. Western law used to ask a simple question:

Who owns the property?

Modern law asks:

What does the property want?

And before you laugh courts now consider “mauri”, the life force of a place, as a legal factor. Not metaphorically. Statutorily.

Supporters say this isn’t religion entering law. Technically correct. Nobody must worship anything. But if a consent decision must consider the spiritual wellbeing of a mountain, we have undeniably moved from geology into theology adjacent administration.

Consider Mount Taranaki.

The mountain is legally an ancestor. Which raises fascinating procedural possibilities. If the maunga is offended by a road, is the appropriate remedy mitigation planting or an apology?

None of this removes private land ownership yet. Your title still exists. Your mortgage still exists. Only your certainty has been nationalised. The practical shift is that economic benefit is no longer the dominant argument. Cultural impact, spiritual impact and relational impact now sit in the courtroom wearing equal judicial wigs.

To be clear, Parliament passed these laws openly. There was no midnight coup. The change occurred the respectable way: slowly, politely and incomprehensibly. By the time most people noticed, the bush had standing and the farmer needed permission from a concept.

Supporters call it reconciliation and environmental guardianship. Critics call it constitutional evolution via footnote. Both agree on one thing: it changes how ownership works without ever quite saying ownership changed.

Example is in South America: Ecuador (whole ecosystem rights — 2008 constitution)
- Entire natural world recognised as having enforceable rights
- Citizens can sue on behalf of forests, rivers, wildlife
- First country to embed Rights of Nature in a constitution
Practical effect: Courts have stopped mining, road building and oil activity where ecosystems were deemed harmed.

We once believed law governed people and government governed land.

Now government governs people, and people co-govern land, and land occasionally governs decisions.

Progress, in New Zealand, is when nobody is quite in charge but the river definitely gets a say.

Steven is an entrepreneur and an ex RNZN diver who likes travelling, renovating houses, Swiss Watches, history, chocolate art and art deco.