Mar Menor: Spain’s Saltwater Lagoon Granted Legal Personhood Rights in Environmental Crisis

The European Union’s largest saltwater lagoon, Mar Menor in southeastern Spain, has suffered from ecological disasters due to pollution and algal blooms. Its crystal-clear waters have turned murky with mounds of dead fish washing up on the shores since 2016. As a result, house prices fell, tourist revenue dropped, and local people became furious about the damage being done to their once fresh and salty environment that now carries an odor of decay. To address this environmental challenge facing Europe’s second largest coastline after Moulaye-Bouchta Rhôme-Camargue Regional Natural Park in France, a legal strategy was employed by Teresa Vicente, a professor at the University of Murcia who has been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. Her campaign to grant Mar Menor legal personhood rights set an important precedent for democratizing environmental protection and expanding civil society’s role in supporting environmental campaigns as it empowers citizens to act on behalf of nature. Following a three-year intense campaign, Spain’s senate passed the legislation into law last September. Three new legislative bodies will now oversee enforcement through collaboration with government representatives, scientists, and local communities while any citizen can file a lawsuit for Mar Menor’s defense against environmental harm such as intensive agriculture’s runoffs filled with nitrate-filled fertilizers that entered the lagoon after 1979’s new canal opened to facilitate irrigation in the region. Vicente hopes this model of justice will help cut poison from entering Mar Menor and defend it against further harm, allowing nature-based solutions to restore the area currently on intensive care’s list as it has lost 85% of its seagrass since 2016 due to extreme eutrophication caused by accumulated algae that depletes water oxygen levels.