When in the summer of 2016 the Mar Menor, in the region of Murcia, became a kind of “green soup” due to the massive proliferation of derived algae, to a large extent, of the arrival in the salted lagoon, citizenship, environmental groups, the scientific community and also the political institutions realized that a point of no return was being reached. The massive appearance of tons of fish dead due to the lack of oxygen in the water in 2019 and 2021 was the critical point that forced everyone to get going. The legal measures, the investments of the State and the regional administration and the citizen mobilization begin to bear fruit and the Mar Menor tends to stability, an effort that the UN wanted to recognize this year in the framework of its World Restoraration Flagships program, which identifies and supports outstanding projects of large -scale ecological restoration.
The announcement was made this Wednesday during the United Nations Conference on the oceans held in the French city of Nice, in which the Mar Menor has highlighted as a relevant case for its ecological, social and cultural value, and also by the “citizen, institutional and judicial unprecedented mobilization to reverse its environmental degradation.”
The social pressure has probably been the most decisive element in that list: the professor of philosophy of law of the University of Murcia Teresa Vicente embarked in 2019 in the impulse of a popular legislative initiative (ILP) that managed to gather more than 640,000 signatures to provide legal personality to the Mar Menor. The initiative became law in September 2022 with the support of all the political groups of the Congress of Deputies, except Vox, which challenged it before the Constitutional Court. This point by point by the content of the norm, which has made the first Ecosystem of Europe and one of the, as if it were a person. The norm culminated its development only a few weeks ago, when the three tutors were chosen that will ensure compliance with their rights. Teresa Vicente was recognized with the Goldman Award, considered the Nobel Prize for the Environment, for this work.
The Government of the Region of Murcia also took note of citizen pressure and approved Law 3/2020, of July 27, on the recovery and protection of Mar Menor, which was modified in 2023 and has led to restrictions on the agricultural and livestock activity of the Campo de Cartagena in order to stop the arrival of contaminants to its waters.
The law has been in Vox’s point since its entry into force and end it. On June 5, the president of the Autonomous Community, Fernando López Miras, announced that he had reached an agreement with those of Abascal to approve regional budgets for this 2025, which includes the commitment to modify the standard before October. The Covenant started on Tuesday the criticisms of the Minister for Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, who participates in the UN Summit in Nice, and which considered “great irresponsibility” to modify the law.
“We cannot go back, we have to preserve our ecosystems,” warned the minister. The Ministry approved in 2022 the framework of priority actions to recover the Mar Menor (MAPMM), which has increased its funds to exceed 675 million euros in investments that include actions in origin, throughout the aspect and solutions based on nature as artificial wetlands and green belts to filter nutrients. There are currently actions executed or in execution worth 400 million euros, which are added to the 110 million committed by the Murcian government.
Both administrations, state and regional, have come, and have created various joints of the coordination of the actions. All this has led to a gradual recovery of this damaged ecosystem that, although it continues in a situation of fragility, has not repeated the episodes of “green soup” and mortality of fish of a five years ago.
