The Mar Menor, one step away from becoming the first natural area with legal personality

• Environment Own rights to remove the Mar Menor from the UCI

• Protest Murcians take to the streets to claim a living Mar Menor

The Congress of Deputies has approved the processing of the law promoted by a Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP) that asked, with the support of 640,000 signatures collected throughout the country, to grant legal personality to the Mar Menor.

With 274 votes in favor, 53 against and 6 abstentions, Tuesday, April 5, 2022 marks the

.

The legal personality for the coastal lagoon of the Region of Murcia is almost a reality.

Already admitted in Congress, it will now return to the Ecological Transition Commission for consideration.

For its implementation,

the standard that materializes it to our legal framework and to the European one still has to be developed.

The participation of expert jurists in the rights of nature, national and international legislation is expected.

If there are no delays,

in the plenary session of Congress.

The rights of the Mar Menor are based on a Popular Law Initiative (ILP) promoted by Teresa Vicente, professor of philosophy of law at the University of Murcia and director of the Chair of Human Rights and Rights of Nature of this institution.

It was joined by countless associations and civic platforms (such as SOS Mar Menor or the Pact for the Mar Menor, to name the most committed) that helped collect the 500,000 handwritten signatures required by law, despite the confinement or perimeters imposed during the pandemic.

, within the stipulated time and without the need for an extension.

With yesterday's vote,

.

"It's a huge joy," Teresa Vicente told ELMUNDO.

"We never thought it was impossible, as they used to say. We went with the illusion of being the voice of the Mar Menor, because the Mar Menor has a lot of life, we have done it a lot of damage, but it has the right to live."

Mar Menor will thus follow in the footsteps of the Colombian Amazon, a subject of law since 2018. Previously, the New Zealand Te Urewera National Park had achieved it (hand in hand with the Maori in 2014);

the Colombian Atrato River (now guarded by its riverside peoples since 2016);

New Zealand's Whanganui River (also defended by Maori, since 2017);

and six other Colombian rivers.

As a failed example, Lake Erie stands out, one of the Great Lakes shared by the United States and Canada and that, although its legal personality was approved in principle, it was revoked in 2019 due to a lack of competence.

In India, the attempt to grant its own rights to the Ganges River, highly polluted by remains of human cremations, sewage or discharges from factories, did not go ahead.

Although the

, none of them has saved it from its three deaths: the so-called "green soup" of 2016, the massive fish mortality of 2019 and the continued mortality for several weeks of crustaceans and fingerlings in 2021, when more than 15 tons of decomposed flora and fauna were removed from its shores.

The current situation of the great salt lake is critical.

Its poor condition is somewhat chronic, as evidenced by the tons of algae that pile up on its beaches every day.

El Menor is under constant pressure from

.

Experts and naturalists predict a new ecological disaster very soon, when the abundant rains that have fallen in the area in recent weeks cease, the good weather arrives and temperatures rise.

Teresa Vicente defends the need for this law of own rights because all shields "have failed."

Although the Mar Menor is a space of the Natura 2000 Network;

a Place of Community Importance (LIC);

a Special Protection Area for Birds (ZEPA);

and a Specially Protected Area of ​​Interest for the Mediterranean (ZEPIM);

This has not prevented its endless management problems,

, the excessive urban growth installed around it, plus the lethal nutrients and pollutants that have come from agriculture, livestock or mining for decades.

If this new concept of living space rights is successful,

:

.

As pioneers, our neighbors will now be able to set their sights on Spain and develop similar laws.

In France, the essayist Camille de Toledo is already trying it for the Loire River.

Meanwhile, the European Union is working, slowly but incessantly, on a Charter of Fundamental Rights of Nature to which the riverside towns of the Region of Murcia will give a boost.

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