The Machángara River flows through the city of Quito, the capital of Ecuador. With almost no wastewater treatment facilities, the river’s water has been polluted by the city’s urban and industrial discharges for years. Until now, the level of contaminants has been alarming, as evidenced by measurement campaigns that have observed poor or very poor environmental quality through physical, chemical and microbiological parameters (Campaña et al., 2017[1]), as well as bio-indicators (Lema et al., 2021[2]), and a high presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (Ortega-Paredes et al., 2020[3]).
However, 5 July 2024 marks an important turning point in the legal history of the Machángara River. On that day, a court recognised the river as a constitutional entity, thereby obliging the city of Quito to take steps to improve the river’s water quality by promoting the installation of water treatment plants[4],[5].
Since 2008, the Constitution of Ecuador has recognised natural elements as having legal personality. This legal status was leveraged to obtain a concrete response to this environmental problem. In other instances, rivers have been granted legal personhood or recognised as living entities, such as the case of the Whanganui River in New Zealand, the Magpie River in Canada, and the Yarra River in Australia.
[1] https://www.revistabionatura.com/files/2017_m3h9s64f.02.02.6.pdf
[2] http://repositorio.utc.edu.ec/handle/27000/7872
[3] https://doi.org/10.2166/wh.2019.195
[4] https://climatica.coop/ecuador-rio-machangara-sujeto-derechos/