The intersection of Sinhalese Buddhist worldviews and the legal personhood and rights of rivers

River pollution has become a recurring issue in contemporary Sri Lanka. This indicates a failure of the existing river protection law regime in the country to safeguard rivers. As a result of the colonial intervention, current state-based river protection laws in Sri Lanka predominantly reflect Western legal concepts which have often been criticised for their anthropocentric bias. By contrast, Sri Lankans maintain profound relationships with rivers, making river pollution fundamentally antithetical to their values. The emerging global trend of legal personhood and the rights of nature aims to shift away from anthropocentric legal principles in river conservation. Notably, efforts to recognise legal personhood and the rights of nature in various jurisdictions draw inspiration from customary, religious, and Indigenous perspectives. This paper examines how the recognition of legal personhood and the rights of rivers could bridge the gap between the profound relational values attributed to rivers within the Sinhalese Buddhist worldviews in Sri Lanka and the Western-influenced legal systems of the country. By drawing lessons from Aotearoa New Zealand, India, and Ecuador this paper makes suggestions for a broader integration of relational approaches in river protection legal efforts in Sri Lanka.