Teresa Vicente

Teresa Vicente led a historic, grassroots campaign to save the Mar Menor ecosystem—Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon—from collapse, resulting in the passage of a new law in September 2022 granting the lagoon unique legal rights. Considered to be the most important saltwater coastal lagoon in the western Mediterranean, the once pristine waters of the Mar Menor had become polluted due to mining, rampant development of urban and tourist infrastructure, and, in recent years, intensive agriculture and livestock farming.

A Fragile Ecosystem

Beloved for its turquoise waters and special marine flora and fauna, the Mar Menor lagoon, located in sun-soaked Murcia, is the crown jewel of Spain’s Mediterranean coast and a favorite destination for vacationers from around the world. But a building boom in the 1970s and subsequent urban and agricultural development converted large swaths of the environmentally fragile coastline into industrial farms and tourist haunts.

The 52-square-mile Mar Menor (“little sea”) marine ecosystem forms the largest permanent saltwater lagoon in Europe. Separated from the Mediterranean by an 8.5-mile-long sandbank, the Mar Menor was once prized for its crystal-clear waters, rare wildlife, and distinctive fisheries. On paper, it is protected by several international conventions, including the Ramsar Wetland of International Importance, Special Protection Area of Mediterranean Importance, Special Protection Area for Wild Birds, and the Natura 2000 Site of Community Importance under the EU Habitats Directive. However, in recent years, the rapid development of tourist infrastructure and an increase in agricultural runoff have led to severe pollution of both the Mar Menor and its aquifers. Today, much of the sandbar has been converted into high rise apartment buildings, and the lagoon has more marinas per square mile than anywhere else on the Spanish Mediterranean.

Further, the region has become a bastion of vegetable farming for export, providing 80% of Germany, France, and UK’s salad crops. The lagoon’s once-clear waters are now choked with algae from nitrate-filled industrial agricultural runoff; since 2016, there have been three mass fish and crustacean die-offs, and 85% of the lagoon’s seagrass died from extreme eutrophication. Since 2015, the IUCN-listed critically endangered fan mussel population (found only in the Mediterranean) has collapsed from 1.6 million to 800 individuals.

Despite EU regulations governing agricultural runoff, there is little enforcement in the areas surrounding the Mar Menor. The Spanish government estimates that nearly 20,000 acres of farming land have been fertilized without legal permissions. Farmers have built wells and installed desalination plants to convert brackish groundwater into water suitable for irrigating; brine byproduct replete with nitrates has flowed into the Mar Menor for decades.

In an ironic twist, as a result of the lagoon’s pollution, 40% of tourist-based businesses around the lagoon have closed.

A Lawyer for Nature

Teresa Vicente, 61, is a professor of philosophy of law at the University of Murcia, where she also serves as the deputy director of the Center for Cooperation and Development Studies and the director of the Chair of Human Rights and Rights of Nature. She was born and raised in the region of Murcia and is deeply attached to the Mar Menor. Teresa has spent her entire career studying and advocating for the rights of nature and wrote her doctoral thesis on ecological justice. All of her work protecting Mar Menor has been as an unpaid volunteer.

Reversing a Longstanding Decline

Worried by the slow death of the Mar Menor, Teresa was moved to action after a mass fish die-off in 2019. She became convinced that the only way to give the lagoon a chance of survival was to grant it legal personhood and recognize its rights. “Rights of nature” has been proposed and debated for years, but the theory did not gain much traction until recently: Ecosystems in Latin America and New Zealand had been granted such legal rights but none in Europe. Despite being told by experts that it was impossible, Teresa pushed ahead.

In 2019, Teresa participated in a fellowship at Reading University in the UK to study successful cases from around the world leveraging legal rights to protect natural resources. Upon returning to the University of Murcia, she began a study with her students on the possibility of recognizing the lagoon’s legal rights. In May 2020, she launched her campaign with a newspaper article proposing the use of a Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP), a provision that lets citizens propose a law directly to Parliament. At a public meeting in July 2020, Teresa elaborated on the idea of legal rights for nature. Soon, she wrote the first draft of a bill and, together with seven colleagues, went to Parliament to submit the ILP to grant legal rights to the Mar Menor. The policy regulating the ILP process carried a strict requirement: She had to collect 500,000 handwritten signatures, despite COVID-19 lockdowns.

Teresa worked with hundreds of thousands of volunteers from all over Spain, who joined the social movement to defend the rights of the Mar Menor in the face of its impending ecological catastrophe. She participated in demonstrations and public gatherings, lobbied local, regional, and national government representatives, and gave media interviews. In August 2021, Teresa and 70,000 people joined hands around the Mar Menor to give it a symbolic hug. 

By November 2021, Teresa and her supporters had collected 639,826 signatures and, in April 2022, the lower house of Parliament approved the ILP. In September 2022, the senate passed it into law.

In a first for Europe, Teresa’s activism resulted in the designation of legal rights for the lagoon, in September 2022. The law grants the Mar Menor and its basin the right to conservation of its species and habitats, protection against harmful activities, and remediation of environmental damage. It also sets up three new legislative bodies— comprised of government representatives, scientists, and local citizens—to oversee enforcement.  

By empowering citizens to act on the environment’s behalf, Teresa’s unique legal strategy set an important precedent for democratizing environmental protection and expanding the role of civil society in support of environmental campaigns. The Mar Menor is now Europe’s first ecosystem to enjoy such legal rights and gives momentum to the rights of nature movement.