Professor Teresa Vicente and the mayor of Los Alcázares, Mario Pérez, defended the rights of the wetland, “which limits those who cause damage”
The UN headquarters in New York gave voice to the lagoon this Friday through the professor of Philosophy of Law at the University of Murcia, Teresa Vicente, and the mayor of Los Alcázares, Mario Pérez Cervera. The echo of the citizen mobilization that achieved almost 650,000 signatures to recognize the legal personality of the lagoon through a national law, currently pending in the Spanish Parliament, has reached this far.
The aggressions inflicted on the Mar Menor had already been included in the tenth report of the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, on ‘Harmony with nature’ in July 2020, but this time the largest existing international organization has invited the promoters of the initiative to recognize the legal rights of the damaged ecosystem.
Six hours apart from the United States, -15 hours in New York and 21 hours in Murcia- the Murcian representatives of the lagoon, accompanied by the environmental lawyer Eduardo Salazar, joined the panel on Ecological Economics to protect biodiversity in harmony with nature’, moderated by the professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina, Pamela Martin.
“The international, European and regional protection figures that have joined in the last 25 years to conserve the Mar Menor have served to verify its ecological values, but not for effective conservation or to prevent its serious deterioration,” said the mayor of Alcazar in the hall of the Organization of Nations. His speech focused on the succession of events that brought the Popular Legislative Initiative to the Los Alcázares City Council, where it was approved by an absolute majority, but was rejected shortly after in the Regional Assembly, which led to the massive collection of signatures to process it in Congress.
The Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, introduced the Murcian speakers and assured that “the Mar Menor is an emblematic ecosystem and is now in danger, although we are working on its restoration, using nature-based solutions” .
Professor Vicente explained how “after the episodes of the ‘green soup’ of 2016 and the great mortality of fish in 2019 and 2021, the public has felt part and not owner of the lagoon.” “Citizens are empowered with the new ecological awareness,” she stated before representatives of the United States, Nigeria, Panama and Brazil. “This ecological disaster made us realize that we are one with the Mar Menor,” she said. The initiative, a pioneer in Europe, has aroused the interest of other countries, which have become interested in the procedure for declaring other ecosystems legal subjects defended by citizens. For the UMU professor, “this new paradigm of the Rights of Nature opens a legal stage of universal scope, based on Ecological Justice and the jurisprudence of the earth,” she argued.
Vicente specified the legal effects that the legal personality of the ecosystem will have. “It will be a limit to the exercise of other rights that may cause deterioration, such as the right to property, freedom of enterprise and economic development.” He advocated “a new ecological economy that guarantees life.”
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