Mar Menor is surprising for many reasons. Due to the richness of its ecosystem, geography, history and despite being a Mediterranean lagoon, it has the status of a person, that is, a legal entity. Such a condition is confirmed by law and is included in the BOE, which has recognized the lagoon as a “subject of rights” since autumn 2022. There aren’t many cases like yours. In fact, the Murcian Lagoon became the first ecosystem in all of Europe to have its own legal personality.

Now this success has received new confirmation.

A lagoon with personality. October 3, 2022 was an important day in Spain’s environmental history. Also in politics and law. That day, the Official State Gazette (BOE) published the law granting legal personality for the Mar Menor lagoon and its basin; This law was a text that emerged from a popular legislative initiative (ILP) that advanced with overwhelming political support and transformed the region. in an exceptional case the southeast of Spain.

The environmental organization emphasized that the lagoon had become the first ecosystem in Europe to have its own legal personality, “just like people and companies”, as Greenpeace celebrated at the time. Country states that today there is still no other ecosystem in Europe and around the world that has its own rights; Their number can be counted on one finger: barely half a dozen, like the Atrato River in Colombia; or the Whanganui River in New Zealand.

An achievement worthy of the “Nobel” prize. This was over a year and a half ago, but the achievement was significant enough to still have an impact today. And not just at the legal level. Those responsible for the Goldman Environmental Prize, the “Nobel of Environmentalism”, decided to award the award to the person who initiated the political and legislative mechanism in 2019 and resulted in the law in September 2022: Lawyer and professor Teresa Vicente.

“Vicente led a historic grassroots campaign to save the ecosystem of the Mar Menor, Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon, from collapse, culminating in the approval of a new law in September 2022 granting the lagoon unique legal rights,” the Goldman jury recalled; The year recognizes six “grassroots environmental activists” for their efforts. This week Vicente moved to San Francisco (USA) to pick up his belongings. He became the second Spaniard to achieve this. Before that, Pedro Arrojo received this award in 2003.

A show of force. Vicente and his collaborators launched their initiative in 2019, just before the health crisis, and if it lasted, it was largely thanks to the enormous support it garnered on the streets: 639,826 signatures approved a popular legislative initiative that reached Congress. Text recognizing the exceptional status of the Mediterranean lagoon in Europe.

“My colleagues said to me, ‘Teresa, we’re not there,’ and I said we are. The hardest moment was 2021. In October, we needed 500,000 signatures, and in August we had 250,000 signatures,” she recalled in an interview. With elDiario.es.

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“A death scream”. His proposal was a great success. And that’s partly because the ecosystem itself unleashed a “death scream,” Vicente recalls. “When the social movement emerged in defense of the lagoon in 2019, many people were moved by their emotions to see clearly that the Mar Menor in their memories no longer existed,” he says. Country. Between 2016 and 2021, the lagoon left several events that give a clear idea of ​​its extremely delicate state of health: the death of algal meadows and marine fauna, the enormous amount of fish and crustaceans floating lifeless in the water… And the most significant phenomenon is the “green soup”.

“The Mar Menor suffers from advanced eutrophication events due to excess nutrients,” the government explained, “especially nitrates and phosphates from intensive agriculture and other human activities, reaching the lagoon through the drainage basins of Campo from Cartagena.” .

At the end of summer 2021, a group of divers from Ecologistas en Acción dived into the lagoon to analyze the concentration of single-celled algae that feed on high nitrate and phosphate content from the agro-industry, and found that the visibility in the water was “almost zero.”

Personality… for what? The 2022 Act clearly recognizes its purpose: “To grant legal personality to the lagoon ecosystem of the Mar Menor with the aim of providing it with a contract of its own rights as a matter of law.” It may sound abstract, but the practical consequences are stated throughout the regulations. For example, it grants the Mar Meno a number of rights, including protection, preservation, and “natural development”; and delegates representation of the lagoon to three committees with the participation of scientists and citizens.

“Any natural or legal person has the right to defend the ecosystem of the Mar Menor and can enforce the rights and prohibitions of the law. […]. “This judicial action will be represented on behalf of the Mar Menor ecosystem as the actual interested party,” the law states. Evidence of its effects beyond paper is the admission of a court investigating a waste pollution case in Cartagena in September 2023. He announced the legal personality of the lagoon and called on the Committee of Representatives to participate in the process.

The future of the Mar Menor. Just because it has achieved this legal protection does not mean that the future of the Mar Menor is clear. Recently, IEO researchers warned of the first signs of the “extinction” of the nacra, a bivalve mollusk native to the Mediterranean, and Ecologyistas en Acción also warned that the ecosystem remains and moves in a “permanent pre-collapse state.” Towards a “point of no return”. At the political level, there were also attempts to reform the Law on the Protection and Improvement of the Mar Menor. Just a few weeks ago, the PP at the head of the regional government was open to change.

Image | Massimo_b. (Flickr) and Werner Wilmes (Flickr)

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