A legal person or a juristic person signifies an entity that has the capacity to possess some rights and duties. Salmond identifies legal personhood as one of the 'most noteworthy feats of legal imagination' embraced by entities other than human beings. Applying such 'legal personhood' to nature and other environmental entities to settle ecological conflicts is not peculiar at all. The practice is surely innovative; however, the idea is not fully developed yet. 
Environmental personhood owes its origin to the brilliant work of Dr. Christopher D. Stone who has proposed in his book Should Trees Have Standing? Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects that legal right should be extended to 'natural objects' of the environment we live in. We still talk about his contribution because his understanding spectacularly shaped and influenced many judicial minds. Back in 1972, Justice William Douglas of the US Supreme Court implemented the idea of environmental personhood and upheld the legal standing of environmental elements in Sierra Club v Morton by referring to the work of Dr. Christopher Stone. 
What Justice Douglas initially put into practice in 1972 is still treated as an emerging notion going through various phases of development. Among all states, Ecuador was the first to respond to the need of environment protection and to recognise the rights of the nature. In 2007, Ecuador's newly elected president, Rafael Correa, called for the formation of a new constitution, chapter seven of which recognised "Pachamama" (Mother Earth) as a legal entity satisfying the demands of its indigenous people. Ecuador's remarkable acknowledgement and appreciation for environmental personhood outlined the bio-centric approaches of other states. For instance, the Bolivian Government enacted the 'Law of the Rights of Mother Earth' in 2010 pronouncing mother earth as the collective subject of public interest. These developments reveal that there has been a gradual change in people's perception which is no longer governed by the anthropocentric view towards environment and its entities. 
The idea of environmental personhood witnessed its massive repercussions when it was finally attributed to an environmental entity crucial for human survival, i.e. the rivers. It is known to all that humans immensely depend on rivers for satisfying their basic and minimum needs. However, this knowledge has not prevented us from polluting the river and causing more damage to our surroundings. The outrageous, shocking and awful exploitation of rivers caused by the humans led the progressive judicial minds to cloak the rivers with environmental personhood in order to enforce their rights and to shield them from further exploitation. 
The decision on Vilcabamba River pronounced by a provincial court of Ecuador was one of the first attempts to protect rivers under the veil of legal personhood. The provincial government's road construction project continued without any environmental impact assessment leading to the diversion of the natural course of the Vilcabamba River. Two inhabitants from the valley filed the petition and the court ended up making an astounding observation which focused on the right to integral respect of environmental entities. On 20 March 2017, the Whanganui river of New Zealand gained the legal status as a person. It was a remarkable victory for the Maori tribe as they had been insisting on this claim for a really long time. Any harm against the Whanganui River is now treated as harm against the Maori tribe. Likewise, in Lalit Miglani v State of Uttarakhand and Others, the Uttarakhand High Court declared Gangotri and Yamunotri as legal entities. On 03 February 2019, the High Court Division of Bangladesh passed ruling in Writ Petition No. 13989 of 2016 declaring Turag river as a legal person based on the doctrine of public trust. The recognition of 'precautionary principle' and 'polluter pays principle' distinguishes this ruling as a radical one which will surely have far-reaching effect on environmental litigation. The Court appointed the National River Conservation Commission (NRCC) as the loco parentis of the Turag river. 
Legal personhood entitles a river to sue, to utilise compensation for its own wholesomeness, to have a say in multipurpose projects and to have a right in rem not to be affected adversely. Perhaps these factors motivated the judicial minds to interpret the idea of legal personality for the rivers. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that humans also share a practical primacy in safeguarding these rights. Therefore, we need to be more sensible and respectful towards rivers and all other environmental entities for safeguarding our mother earth from any ecological tragedy. 
The writer is student of law, University of Dhaka.