What’s wrong with healthy rivers? Promise and practice in the search for a guiding ideal for freshwater management

Abstract

It is easy to talk of improving river condition. It is more difficult to pin down exactly what this means. Emerging from ecology, the concept of river health presented an attempt to provide a broad framework for freshwater management incorporating both natural and human values. Initially criticised as subjective and unscientific, river health was nevertheless mainstreamed through being rendered quantifiable. Tracing the (re)definition of river health from a holistic but hazy ethic of environmental care to prescriptive indicators for intervention, I examine how common-sense understandings of river condition were first challenged by, and then incorporated within, the scholarly and political project of river health. Arguing that the search for objectivity entrenched assumptions that naturalness was both desirable and attainable, I explore the potential value of a reimagined, revitalised river health as a constructive platform for renegotiating and broadening what matters for freshwater.

Keywords

River health river management river restoration ecological condition critical physical geography freshwater ecology indices of biotic integrity (IBIs)

I Introduction

Contemporary capitalist democracies have been accused of co-opting and depoliticising environmental ideals, stripping them of their transformative potential (Swyngedouw, 2007). Attempts to make the world measurable are regularly implicated in these processes, in which power disparities and exclusion persist (Holmes and Cavanagh, 2016; Spink et al., 2010) and ‘pragmatism’ precludes possibilities for change (Van Puymbroeck and Oosterlynck, 2014). Logics of ‘measurementality’ (Turnhout et al., 2014) seem to reduce the physical environment to sets of variables which can be measured, modelled and optimised for common values (e.g. Tadaki and Sinner, 2014), or perhaps just for sale. Yet efforts to quantify the world usually represent genuine attempts to understand it, and to guide positive interventions in it. As ecologists wrestle with the ethics of intervention in the Anthropocene (see Robbins and Moore, 2013), geographers increasingly highlight the inseparability of social, physical and biological processes (e.g. Ashmore, 2015; Emery et al., 2013; Lave, 2014, 2015). The trajectory of river health, from novel notion to mainstream managerialism, demonstrates the challenges of renegotiating environmental ideals in the face of changing physical, chemical, biological and social contexts.

Most would agree that improved river condition is a good thing. Less clear is what, exactly, this means. The goals and scales of river management, and with them the meaning of good condition, broadened through the 1990s with the rise of ‘sustainable catchment management’ (see, e.g., Brierley and Fryirs, 2008; Downs and Gregory, 2004). Building upon the catchment framing of Chorley (1969) and others, it was increasingly recognised that rivers might be best understood and managed as connected entities (Falkenmark, 1981; Hillman et al., 2008; Mant et al., 2016). After an initial emphasis on stability and flood control using ‘softer’ engineering techniques, demand grew for a ‘whole-of-system science’ (see Hillman, 2009) emphasising ecological outcomes. Advocacy for river health attempted to reframe management on this basis, reconceptualising rivers as not just networks of habitats and organisms but living entities capable of experiencing variable states of well-being.

But what does it mean for a river to be healthy? This question produced a moment of doubt, in which assumptions and ambiguities were laid bare as different narratives of well-being collided (see Chapman, 1992). Was a healthy river well stocked with exotic game fish, or should it contain a diverse array of native species free of introduced predators? Would it be untouched by human activity, or should it support the various demands of a vibrant local community? At a time when steady-state ecologies were increasingly disputed (Zimmerer, 1994) and dualistic management paradigms emphasising either preservation or utility were being challenged in favour of ‘sustainable development’ (Meyer, 1997; O’Riordan, 1999), debates regarding river health highlighted the subjective, political nature of river condition (see Ross et al., 1997).

These reservations did not deter attempts to quantify river health, producing two key competing approaches. A functional approach, linked to ecological economics, focused on ecosystem structure, function and resilience (Costanza and Mageau, 1999). The other, emerging more directly from aquatic ecology, emphasised the ‘integrity’ of unmodified biotic assemblages (Karr, 1999). Crucially, both of these models asserted scientific foundations and also claimed to represent the social values associated with healthy rivers. Debate cooled with a special issue of Freshwater Biology supporting the latter approach (see Norris and Thoms, 1999), and the meaning of river health largely congealed around measurable proxies for naturalness.¹

Meanwhile, geomorphic approaches to river condition have shifted away from stable natural reference conditions as a primary guiding ideal. Instead, pragmatic steps toward ‘best achievable condition’ (e.g. Rinaldi et al., 2015) build on frameworks emphasising local histories and trajectories of change to maximise morphological ‘quality’ (Brierley and Fryirs, 2005, 2016; Graf, 2001). Yet, quality is in the eye of the beholder: much of this work relies on expert judgement of ‘appropriate’ character (e.g. Fryirs, 2015). Searching for a firmer grounding, Wohl (2011) attempted to pin this nebulous concept down by linking it back to naturalness. Definitions of ‘good ecological quality’ for the European Water Framework Directive similarly emphasise ‘natural’ hydromorphological reference conditions (Bouleau and Pont, 2015; Newson and Large, 2006). Dufour and Piégay (2009) take a rather different approach, emphasising human needs and values alongside ecological well-being; they frame this in terms of river health.

Responding to calls for constructive intradisciplinary geographies that critically examine how possibilities for the physical world are made (e.g. Ashmore, 2015; Blue and Brierley, 2016; Castree et al., 2014; Lave et al., 2014; Tadaki, 2016; Tadaki et al., 2012), here I take seriously the notion that the world is shaped by the questions we ask of it. Tracing the (re)definition of river health in the anglophone academy, from a holistic but hazy ethic of environmental care to specific sets of indicators for intervention, I examine how ‘common-sense’ understandings of river condition were first challenged by, and then incorporated within, the political and scientific project of river health. I argue that the way river health was framed and made measurable, as a compromise between naturalness on one hand and human values on the other, overlooked an opportunity to articulate more inclusive understandings of well-being. I conclude by considering possibilities for a revitalised river health; one which integrates quantitative and qualitative understandings of landscape to renegotiate what matters for freshwater.

II The rise of river health

By the early 1980s, the extent and severity of human impacts on the environment were becoming ever more apparent. These effects were concentrated in freshwater systems: drastic morphological change threatened habitat (Gregory, 2006), water pollution jeopardised human health (Falkenmark, 1990) and biodiversity loss was widespread (Moyle and Leidy, 1992). Fragmented management reliant on predictive understandings of small-scale physical interactions had struggled to prevent or remediate problems (see Hillman and Brierley, 2005), and treating management as a purely technical process had further disconnected communities from waterways (see, e.g., Spink et al., 2010). A new, more integrated approach to river management seemed increasingly necessary.

Demand was growing to do something about river condition, but tools to support intervention were unavailable or inaccessible (Lave et al., 2010). River engineering had long focused on creating stable channels capable of moving water to the sea as efficiently as possible, and was unprepared for these radically different design requirements. Sets of guidelines for more ‘natural’ stream restoration emerged to fill this vacuum, including the controversial Natural Channel Design (NCD) in the USA (Lave, 2014; Lave et al., 2010). Rosgen’s (1994) approach promised to achieve the long-standing hazard prevention goals of river management, while also promising to restore ‘good’ ecological condition. This meant ‘softer’ engineering aiming to meet hazard prevention goals while mimicking ‘natural’ habitat. Though utilising wood and rocks instead of concrete and steel, the underlying premise of control remained (Kondolf et al., 2001). These attempts to create ecosystems by emulating habitat often failed to meet expectations, particularly for improved biodiversity (Palmer et al., 2010).

Around the same time, the cornerstone principles of conservation ecology were becoming more difficult to defend (Callicott, 1992). Theoretical and physical attempts to separate people from nature were increasingly criticised (see Castree, 2005, for a comprehensive introduction). Ideals of stable, ‘pristine’ wilderness were criticised as Eurocentric flights of fancy counterproductive to environmental interests (Cronon, 1996) and implicated in the colonial disenfranchisement of indigenous peoples (e.g. Guha, 1989; Spence, 1999). Growing awareness of global climate change emphasised the all-encompassing impacts of human activity, and flourishing exotic organisms demanded increasingly active management of protected spaces and species (e.g. Clout and Saunders, 1995). A fixed idea of nature was no longer tenable, and a new ethic of environmental care was required: ‘ecosystem health to the rescue!’ (Callicott, 1992: 47).

By the 1980s, ecologists had begun to apply medicalised language to describe ecosystem responses to external pressures (e.g. Rapport et al., 1981, 1985). These interventions recognised that health was not a property that ecosystems could exhibit per se (Rapport, 1989). Rather, for these authors, health was a conceptual and rhetorical device presenting a normative call for action to prevent and remedy ecological degradation. It recognised the inseparability of humans from nature, and argued that these interactions could not be dealt with in isolation. As a ‘functionalist’ approach to conservation (Callicott et al., 1999), ecosystem health encouraged treating causes rather than symptoms of degradation, and recognised that change is not necessarily detrimental (e.g. Brierley et al., 2008). It endeavoured to shift management practices beyond individual values and short-term goals, towards more the holistic approaches advocated much earlier by Aldo Leopold (e.g. Leopold, 1949).

The concept of health seemed to offer a broader, less anthropocentric basis for river management. It both challenged a perceived focus on physical form in river restoration (see Palmer et al., 2010; Simon et al., 2007) and apparently enabled a more progressive environmentalism as ideals of wilderness came increasingly under question (see, e.g., Castree, 2003). It suggested that we could improve freshwater systems by healing the physical, chemical, biological and social factors ailing them, rather than focussing on physical characteristics or charismatic species alone. River health promised a fundamental, all-encompassing ideal with popular appeal.

III What’s in a name?

Despite this appeal – or perhaps because of it – the meaning and appropriateness of river health were always contested (see, e.g., Shrader-Frechette, 1994). This partly reflected broader debates about the role of politics in science, and the nature of scientific knowledge. For those keen to assert ecology’s scientific status, the explicitly subjective nature of health, and the fact that it was not directly observable, produced a dangerous level of ambiguity (e.g. Scrimgeour and Wicklum, 1996; Suter, 1993; Wicklum and Davies, 1995). Responses to this critique developed along two lines: that the strength of river health was as a broad, aspirational vision furthering a political (rather than scientific) project intent on changing the relationships between society and freshwater (e.g. Elosegi et al., 2017; Fairweather, 1999), or that it could be quantified to provide a more literal, tangible basis for science and management (see, e.g., Norris and Thoms, 1999).

1 Meaningful metaphor?

Consistent across most approaches to river health was an acknowledgement that it meant more than simply biophysical condition: that a stream was not just the product of its physical valley, but of its ‘societal watershed’ (Hynes, 1975; Meyer, 1997). This highlighted an opportunity for intervention: perhaps an ethic of river health could shape attitudes and approaches to freshwater, influencing the interactions between society and streams. As an easily understood metaphor, ‘packed with shared meaning and normative direction’ (Ross et al., 1997: 122), river health might convince people that waterways were worth looking after, and it might provide the framework for a river science better suited to understanding relationships between freshwater ecosystems and human activity. This meant understanding not only physical and biological processes, but social and economic interactions with waterways.

This broad approach accepted that healthiness was not an objective property, but argued that this did not matter. River health was as much a political tool as a scientific one, and it could play a significant role in influencing public discourse, regardless of definition (Chapman, 1992). The value of river health was in framing the vocabulary of river science and management, influencing interactions with freshwater by providing an overarching theme for conservation and rehabilitation efforts. Indeed, attempts to define river health might detract from its generative potential, limiting its scope to what was measurable and presenting a misleading sense of objectivity. Instead, river health offered a flexible foundation for place-specific aspirational visions of what rivers could, and should, become.

River health was, then, partly a call to action for communities who might otherwise not engage with their local waterways. It incorporated not only physical and ecological attributes, but the well-being of those living nearby. Many of these themes later developed into a paradigm of direct public engagement with freshwater through volunteer labour (e.g. Ellis and Waterton, 2004; Overdevest et al., 2004),² various forms of participatory governance (see Cook et al., 2013; Gregory et al., 2011) and the democratisation of knowledge (e.g. Lane et al., 2011; Whitman et al., 2015). To support effective public engagement with freshwater, and to produce more socially just outcomes, many advocates of river health hoped to change the way river science was carried out. They spoke of more holistic approaches to understanding rivers than the ‘reductionist’, small-scale approaches dominant since the quantitative revolution. Ross et al. (1997: 116), for example, called for ‘a postmodern ecology which emphasizes, among other things, complexity and a holism that necessarily includes humanity in the study of nature’. Raising the spectre of the science wars with such language may be of doubtful benefit today, but the need for more inclusive and socially aware river science persists.

2 From metaphor to metric

Many of the most vocal advocates recognised the utility of river health in advancing an ecological agenda for freshwater but also wanted to pin it down, ‘operationalising’ it into ‘more than just a rhetorical tool’ (Boulton, 1999: 469). River health might offer not just an aspirational goal for how rivers might one day be, but could provide ways of understanding, measuring and comparing the changing state of waterways. As health is not a property which can be measured directly, in practice this meant using indicators to evaluate and compare rivers. Despite general acknowledgement that river health is more than simply a biophysical property – that it inherently incorporates human norms and expectations (see Hull and Robertson, 2000) – most attempts to capture it avoided directly questioning what those values might be. Instead, two key approaches to river health emerged: the first focused around functional ecological principles, and the second emphasising proxies for naturalness.

Searching for a theoretical basis for health, Costanza and colleagues argued that healthy ecosystems must be capable of maintaining structure and function in the face of stress (Costanza, 1992; Costanza and Mageau, 1999; Haskell et al., 1992; Mageau et al., 1995). They presented health as the ‘comprehensive, multiscale, dynamic, hierarchical’ product of the ecological principles of organisation, vigour and resilience (Costanza and Mageau, 1999: 106). Yet while many apparently healthy ecosystems might certainly have these characteristics, they are also subject to a number of contradictions. Not all ecosystems with low diversity are in poor condition, metabolic measures of function might misleadingly favour nutrient-rich systems, and resilience privileges the status quo (Karr, 1999). Nor is it clear that more natural systems are, in fact, more stable (Pimm, 1984). Such principles may have value, and may be easily measurable, but are insufficient to encompass the multiple and diverse ways freshwater matters in different places, at different times and for different people (c.f. Blue and Brierley, 2016).

A popular array of more pragmatically-minded approaches to river condition build on Karr’s (1981) indices of biotic integrity (IBI). These initially used fish assemblages as integrative biological indicators, but have since been expanded to include a range of metrics such as macroinvertebrates, hydrology and riparian vegetation (Ladson et al., 1999), diatoms (Chessman et al., 1999), water quality (e.g. Hart et al., 1999) and physical habitat (Chessman et al., 2006; Maddock, 1999). Multivariate indices emerging from this work continue to be developed to support river management, and have become largely synonymous with good condition in a wide range of contexts (Beck and Hatch, 2009; Bunn et al., 2010; Ruaro and Gubiani, 2013; Vollmer et al., 2016; Vugteveen et al., 2006).

IV Naturalness: just common sense?

Understanding and intervening in the pressures facing freshwater requires monitoring river condition (Bernhardt et al., 2005; Bunn et al., 2010; Morandi et al., 2014; Palmer et al., 2005). Such monitoring, however, is more than the passive collection of data: feedbacks between measurement and intervention shape what is possible. Monitoring mediates interactions between people and freshwater as management efforts concentrate on particular indicators, and individuals and institutions are held accountable for them (Bouleau, 2014). This, of course, is a feature rather than a bug: making certain attributes measurable encourages effort and resources to be allocated to improving them, or at least preventing their decline. It also allows us to learn which actions enhance particular attributes, and intervene more effectively towards desirable ends. Making river health a measurable attribute, emphasising the concept of integrity, allowed it to meet the growing demand for tools of freshwater governance.

IBIs prioritise a natural ideal for freshwater through their focus on integrity as ‘the product of evolutionary and biogeographic processes with minimal influence from modern human society’ (Karr, 1999: 223). Undisturbed states provide an ostensibly objective hook on which environmentalists can hang their hats while dealing with people’s fickle preferences and needs. If we can ascertain how rivers were before humans interfered with them, it might provide a firm foundation from which to negotiate their restoration. Integrity allows river health to be reframed as primarily a technical challenge: a set of design and implementation challenges working towards an apparently objective, common-sense ideal. Yet, it still relies on a sense that we know a healthy river when we see one: the representations of naturalness we rely on are partly acts of imagination and assumption.

1 Which nature?

As our ability to understand and model past environmental conditions grows, our perceptions of what is natural are increasingly challenged. What might appear to be stable ‘climax’ ecosystems or landforms are often simply points along pathways of evolution and human influence (Montgomery, 2008; Wilmshurst et al., 2014). Historical trajectories are integral to understanding what is physically and biologically possible for particular waterways (see Brierley and Fryirs, 2016), but previous and indeed present regimes present a multitude of potentially desirable states and behaviours (Balaguer et al., 2014). Whichever point in the stratigraphic record eventually bounds the Anthropocene (Brown et al., 2017; Castree, 2014; Lewis and Maslin, 2015), identifying good condition is more than a matter of reaching beyond a particular moment of human intervention. Healthy rivers cannot simply be plucked from an undisturbed past, but must be negotiated from a range of potential possibilities (see Stoddard et al., 2006). Which baseline do we choose?

This question can have significant conservation and ethical implications, especially where extended histories of human occupation have had marked effects on the landscape. China’s recently formed Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve, for example, foregrounds the ecological values of the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (see Li et al., 2012). While reports of controls on river morphology have emphasised the role of temperature gradients in controlling vegetation-stream responses on the Plateau (Li et al., 2016; Yu et al., 2014), these relationships exist in a context of up to 8800 years of grazing by nomadic Tibetan herders (Miehe et al., 2008, 2009). A focus on conserving the region’s naturalness, made explicit in the reserve’s name, along with concerns for soil loss and river sedimentation, drove efforts to concentrate herders into fixed settlements after grassland degradation was linked to changes in pastoral regime (Xin, 2008). By idealising a fixed concept of naturalness such efforts not only impact herder livelihoods and neglect cultural values within that landscape, but disrupt ecosystems which have adjusted to a long history of human influence. Even if restoration to pre-human condition was possible for the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, surely this could not be straightforwardly regarded as an improvement in condition.

This assumption of an identifiable, inherently good naturalness reflects the shortcomings of overlaying global values onto local issues. Centralising particular visions of apparently untouched nature within a quantifiable river health privileges certain forms of value and precludes others. Carefully constructed at local scales, records of past environments can indicate potential outcomes of rehabilitation measures while acknowledging biophysical context and historical legacy (see Higgs et al., 2014). Narratives of wilderness, however, risk embedding value judgements into the landscape. As Bouleau and Pont (2015) discuss in the context of the Water Framework Directive, designations of apparently natural reference conditions are often a product of preconceptions, politics and pragmatism rather than coherent theoretical foundations. Treating river health as a technical problem, as a question of compromise from a set of innate natural values, can limit the ways freshwater is able to matter. Better to debate these influences in the open, rather than hide them behind false notions of wilderness.

2 Pets, pests or pristine?

In practice, despite its focus on naturalness, the paradigm of river health has allowed certain non-‘pristine’ values to persist. Making space in this way requires certain kinds of charisma, however, which only a limited range of causes can draw on. Introduced from the late 1800s, rainbow and brown trout have colonised many New Zealand waterways (Walrond, 2008). While they were introduced by European settlers, and they eat and out-compete an array of native species (McDowall, 2003), trout have become embedded into discourses of naturalness for New Zealand rivers. As in North America (e.g. Wheaton et al., 2004), they have become important actors in framing debates on river health in New Zealand. They are integral to habitat-focused rehabilitation, and the protection of salmonid habitat has been instrumental in justifying minimum flow regulations which have maintained internationally significant braided rivers (see Mosley, 1983). They are regularly included in IBIs as positive indicators of river condition in New Zealand (e.g. Joy, 2007) and enjoy specific protection in environmental law.

One might wonder, as does O’Connor (1994: 254), ‘by what obscure contingencies of lobbying in corridors of power [trout and salmon] came to have this hallowed status of being mentioned by name’ in national legislation. These charismatic, hard-fighting sport fish have attracted a vocal following of local fishers. They also earn their protection as the basis of a significant tourism industry attracting ‘high-value’ international visitors seeking a pristine backcountry experience (Walrond, 2007). This cultural and economic value led in 1990 to the creation of a public entity, Fish and Game New Zealand, partly devoted to their propagation and protection.

But what of the native freshwater fish species which trout eat and out-compete? Habitat loss, predation and competition has led 75% of these species to be considered at risk (Goodman et al., 2014). Concern for New Zealand’s mostly small, unobtrusive indigenous fish has gradually risen since the 1960s (see McDowall, 2003), but it has not reached the levels of enthusiasm and influence inspired by trout and salmon. Certain native species – the various migratory galaxiids commonly known as whitebait – have inspired limited conservation efforts by earning value as ingredients in a fritter (Haggerty, 2007). While trout are legally protected and actively restocked, however, whitebait comprise one of the least regulated fisheries in New Zealand, with no catch limits or restrictions on sale.

Trout represent a fundamental paradox of river health. On one hand, with their outspoken public support, their reliance on morphologically dynamic streams and their need for clean water, thriving trout populations provide the perfect ambassadors for New Zealand’s rivers. They represent important cultural and economic values for sport and food, and provide a popular justification for protecting waterways. On the other hand, trout physically dominate an array of native fish species, contributing to their threatened status (Flecker and Townsend, 1994). Rather than treating this contradiction as a question open for negotiation, however, an emphasis on particular metrics has overlooked the impact of exotic predatory fish on indigenous assemblages (Hermoso and Clavero, 2013). The conflation of trout with natural rivers has made them an apparently unmitigated, common-sense good, limiting recognition of their impact and precluding alternative visions for healthy rivers in New Zealand. Trout may now belong in many of New Zealand’s waterways (Steer, 2016), but they might also make some space for other species.

V Discussion

River health represented an attempt to change the world through knowing it differently: an intervention into the science, politics and practice of river management. Advocates opened up the question of how freshwater could and should be, hoping to establish more ecologically focused norms for science and management (c.f. Bouleau, 2014; Linton and Budds, 2014). To a significant extent, this normative project was successful: indices for health became central to the repertoire of river management, framing aspirations for freshwater worldwide. Integral to the mainstreaming of river health, however, was the loss of much of its transformative potential. The meaning of river health was pinned down, tied to limited sets of proxies privileging particular understandings and representations of value in freshwater.

The drive towards an apparently objective, quantified river health is consistent with the increasing role of metrics in contemporary western governance. Faith in experts has been replaced by trust in datasets, as fear of bias encourages demands for transparency, replicability and falsifiability (Porter, 1995; Turnhout et al., 2014). As the marketisation of environmental mitigation and rehabilitation continues, effective monitoring, accounting and accountability become increasingly obligatory (Lave et al., 2010; Womble and Doyle, 2012). In principle, this shift from authority to observation might be commendable as part of a shift towards democratising governance. As demonstrated by the rise of Rosgen’s NCD framework in spite of substantial scientific criticism, however, political and institutional demands for clear, simple and defensible decision-making can overshadow questions of suitability (Lave, 2014; Lave et al., 2010). While narrow representations of well-being might suit managerial imperatives, they also obscure complexities and contradictions beneath ‘one number with a reassuring name’ (Suter, 1993: 1533).

Perhaps the most fundamental property of river health – that it does not exist – has not prevented it being made measurable. At a moment in which river condition had become contested, as dissatisfaction with the outcomes of management interventions grew, an operationalised river health cooled the controversy (see Callon, 1998; Donaldson et al., 2013) by offering an easily articulated, common-sense solution. The incorporation of conventional meanings and values, such as fixed ideals of naturalness and the presence of large predatory fish, eased the acceptance of metrics for integrity as a pragmatic solution to a complicated problem (e.g. Karr, 1999). This common-sense quantification facilitated the uptake of river health, but also limited the kinds of change it could bring.

Tadaki and Sinner (2014) describe how attempts to give voice to the diverse ways people value freshwater can unintentionally embed predominant depictions of what matters. Unlike the intervention they describe, which endeavoured to provide a neutral platform for already-existing values, river health was always an explicitly normative project attempting to influence attitudes to freshwater. Like their example, however, the array of potential meanings for river health was constrained by the perceived need to produce actionable understandings of freshwater.

Part of the job of an operationalised river health was to reproduce judgements of what matters, making those aspects of freshwater more visible through quantification. Rather than beginning with a fresh examination of what good condition might mean, however, creating visions of a healthy river was largely approached as a technical challenge. Based on the assumption that human influences could be separated out to model an ecologically pure system, advocates designed sets of reference conditions representing more natural states. Prioritising naturalness in this way overlooked long histories of entanglement between people and landscapes, and failed to acknowledge the subjectivity of what is seen to be natural. Treating river health as something which already existed, to be revealed simply by making it measurable (c.f. Blue and Brierley, 2016), drew a veil over contested ideals and neglected an opportunity to articulate different possibilities for freshwater.

1 A reimagined and revitalised river health?

In 2017 the Whanganui River, in New Zealand, and the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, in India, became the first in the world to be granted the legal rights of ‘personhood’ (see Hutchison, 2014). The precise implications for these rivers are unclear, and the politics of ‘rights for nature’ discourses remain unresolved (e.g. Rawson, 2015), but these moves to break down nature–human binaries could offer an opportunity to juxtapose environmental well-being alongside ongoing discussions of what it means for people to be healthy. This could draw attention to the social context in which understandings of well-being are created, and in which questions of desirability are contested (see Canguilhem, 1978; Hull and Robertson, 2000). The reimagined and revitalised river health which could result might provide the basis for a broader re-examination of relationships between people and freshwater.

A reimagined river health might recognise that not everyone agrees on what a healthy river looks like: that ‘good condition’ must be derived through negotiating contested and often contradictory visions. This might challenge the privilege of placeless metrics, recognising that quantitative approaches do not have a monopoly on what matters. It does not simply mean exchanging them for an ad hoc localism, however; rather, it might emphasise the broader physical, biological and social contexts of local problems (Brierley et al., 2013; Wilcock, 2013). By understanding the social and physical processes shaping landscapes we might produce a clearer picture of what alternatives are possible. This might incorporate understandings of how landscapes could be without human influence (see, e.g., Lyver et al., 2015), but also of other potentially desirable states (see, for example, the nuanced and contested visions for an urban river described by Holifield and Schuelke, 2015). It might also challenge assumptions that the ability to shape the world confers the right to do so, building, for example, on post-colonial and more-than-human geographies (e.g. Thomas, 2015).

A revitalised river health could be place-based and dynamic, recognising the contingent geographic relationships underpinning contemporary condition (see Brierley et al., 2013) and emphasising the processes which continue to shape landscapes (see Beechie et al., 2010). Rather than relying on naturalness, a revitalised river health might be framed as maintaining the character and agency of rivers as living entities. This begins to open possibilities for an ethics which recognises not just the diverse ways in which people value freshwater, but that the physical world deserves a voice beyond charisma-dependent forms of ‘intrinsic value’. It might make use of metrics for understanding changes over time and place, but it would also recognise that health cannot be encompassed or addressed through limited sets of generic variables. It might mean renegotiating what matters, recognising less easily articulated meanings and values. A revitalised river health might build on, and nurture, scientific understandings of physical–ecological relationships to provide a firmer foundation for democratic, place-specific interventions in freshwater.

VI Conclusion

The concept of river health arose at a time when the assumptions underpinning conservation efforts were increasingly contested. Efforts to fence nature off, to preserve pristine wilderness, were being superseded by attempts to more actively develop sustainable relationships between people and the physical environment beyond a dualistic emphasis on either utilisation or preservation (O’Riordan, 1999, 2004). As narratives of the Anthropocene take hold (Castree, 2014), and ideals of unmodified ecosystems seem increasingly outdated, functionalist approaches potentially provide a way of looking forward rather than focussing on ‘paradise lost’ (Dufour and Piégay, 2009; Robbins and Moore, 2013; Wohl, 2013).

The concept of river health represented this reappraisal of environmental values and norms, embodying a potentially broadened understanding of good condition as a basis for intervention in freshwater. Yet, while the multifaceted and contestable connotations of health opened up possibilities for destabilising and renegotiating the ideals of river management, broader and more dynamic accounts of its meaning were soon flattened-down into common-sense, quantifiable understandings of well-being. Debate in ecology continues over the relative merit of functionalist versus compositionalist norms (see Callicott et al., 1999; Hobbs et al., 2009), but remains primarily focused on providing ostensibly objective indicators with which to control environmental outcomes (e.g. Costanza, 2012). It might be time for a broader, geographical re-examination of relationships possible between people and freshwater.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Gary Brierley generously gave formative guidance on early drafts of the manuscript, and Octavia Calder-Dawe and Lyndsay Blue provided valuable editorial comments and suggestions. James Karr and two anonymous reviewers provided constructive feedback, particularly helping to make the manuscript more accessible.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Brendon Blue

Notes

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