Robert Macfarlane: Is River Alive Review

 

Robert Macfarlane is a popular nature writer who has been on the NewYork Times best seller list several times and won many prestigious awards for nature writing. I personally own The Lost Words, a book he co-authored with Jackie Morris who created absolutely beautiful illustrations for the book. Is a River Alive was published in 2025 to a generally favorable reviews. Even though I consider myself a committed enviromentalist I wasn’t planning to read this book (not enough time in the day).  But I read it because it had a section on the rivers and waterways of Chennai, the city where I presently live. I will confess that I only read the section on Chennai rivers. My town is very close to where the Cooum river flows and even when one becomes inured to its deadened state, it registers in a sad way every time I drive past it. Most regular inhabitants of Chennai feel this sense of sadness. There is a feeling of hopelessness that nature does not stand a chance against uncontrolled, unregulated industrial development and those who care about protecting the rivers and waterways are fighting a losing battle against corruption and rapacity of the political system. In a society where even certain groups of people are denied equal rights and equal protection under the law, an argument for personhood of and legal rights for rivers can seem quixotic. Macfarlane’s interlocutor in Chennai was Yuvan Aves, a 30-something naturalist and an environmental defender and, the founder of Palluyir Trust for nature education and research. As an active member of resistance and community movements against ecocide and industrial violence, he is one of many inspiring figures who keep fighting the system to prevent industrial encroachment of protected lands and to restore lost wetlands. Perhaps the most heartwarming is the story of Turtle Patrol— a group of vounteers who between January-March patrol Chennai beaches at nights to protect the Olive Ridley sea turtle nesting sites, relocate eggs to hatcheries, and assist hatchlings safely reach the sea. They have been doing this for more than three decades. Macfarlane himself is not optimistic about the survival of Chennai waterways but people like Yuvan give us hope. 

The section on Chennai makes one serious factual error that is repeated throughout—Cooum and Adyar rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, not the Indian Ocean as the book keeps mentioning. Again, the beach where the sea turtles come to nest is located on the Bay of Bengal not the Indian Ocean.