International Day for Rivers 2021

Rivers represent life on earth. Without rivers, humans cannot exist. Rivers provide food for millions of people around the globe; they carry nutrients and fresh water to coastal marine ecosystems, providing food for marine species of all kinds, which again provide for us humans and our families. Rivers provide recreation, transportation and beauty which humans need and enjoy; Natural rivers and their riparian zones (shorelines) belong to the most diverse, dynamic and complex ecosystems on the world’s continents, and damming of rivers has been identified as one of the most dramatic and widespread deliberate impacts of us humans on the natural environment, including impacting the climate; moreover,

“A global overview of dam-based impacts on large river systems shows that over half (172 out of 292) are affected by dams, including the eight most biogeographically diverse.” (1)

We simply cannot continue to alter these massive river systems if we expect humanity to survive on the planet.

The Magpie river on Quebec’s Cote-Nord was recently granted legal personhood by the municipality of Minganie and the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit; this is a first in Canada.(3) It must not be the last.

If corporations can be awarded the rights of “personhood”, then certainly rivers, which are so much more important to life on earth, must be awarded the same protection.

Grand Riverkeeper Labrador Inc. supports The Rights of Rivers on all river systems and we will continue to promote river protection, here at home in Labrador and beyond.

Please visit our Facebook site at (Grand Riverkeeper Labrador, Inc.) on Sunday, March 14^th , throughout the day to  view a selection of videos we think you will thoroughly enjoy about our river here in Labrador and others worldwide, and help us and hundreds of other river protectors celebrate the Rights of Rivers to continue to flow naturally as nature intended.