Status: 09/22/2022 11:43 a.m
The saltwater lagoon is heavily polluted: fish are dying en masse, water temperatures rise above 30 degrees. Now the Mar Menor has legal personality and enforceable rights – the first ecosystem in Europe.
The Mar Menor, which translates to “lesser sea” on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, has acquired its own legal personality and enforceable rights. This makes it the first ecosystem in Europe with this status.
The Senate in Madrid approved the granting of legal personality with a large majority, after the House of Representatives had already approved it in April. Only the right-wing populist party Vox voted against it on Wednesday, as it did in April.
Supported by more than 640,000 people
With the conclusion of the legislative process and the publication in the Law Gazette, every citizen, even if they are not affected themselves, can appeal to the judiciary for a suspected violation of rights in Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon. The aim is to protect the lagoon as an ecosystem. A committee made up of six representatives from the authorities and seven from society is to oversee the protection, preservation and recovery of the lagoon.
The decision goes back to a civil right enshrined in the Spanish constitution to trigger a legislative process. At least 500,000 signatures must be collected for this. More than 640,000 people signed for the initiative. For decades, the flat Mar Menor has been threatened primarily by intensive agriculture, but also by mining and tourism.
Fish died en masse
Over-fertilization promotes algae growth. Especially during heat waves, a lack of oxygen can lead to mass deaths of fish and other aquatic animals. During the unusually hot summer in Spain and much of Europe, the water temperature in the Mar Menor had risen to more than 31 degrees in August. Environmentalists and fishermen removed more than 14,000 tons of biomass from the lagoon this year.
The last time the Mar Menor tipped over was in August 2021, when five tons of dead animals were taken out of the water after days with air temperatures of 40 degrees. 70,000 people then formed a 73-kilometer human chain around the lagoon. Granting the environment its own enforceable rights is a “revolution that will set limits to the current economic system that is destroying the planet,” University of Murcia philosophy professor Teresa Vicente said in April.