Mar Menor
The Mar Menor is a 135 km2 coastal lagoon in the southeastern region of Murcia in Spain. It is the largest saltwater lagoon in Europe, separated from the Mediterranean Sea by a strip of land . The Mar Menor is in a severe state of eutrophication due to the nutrients it receives, mainly from intensive agriculture in the surrounding area. Other impacts also contribute to its deterioration: excessive construction on its shores, mineral inputs washed in by rainfall, a large number of marinas that act as barriers to marine currents and filling in artificial beaches. In 2016 the waters of the Mar Menor turned dark green due to a phytoplankton bloom. In 2019 and 2021, tons of fish were found dead on the shores of the Mar Menor due to anoxia. These episodes led tens of thousands of people to demonstrate in the streets of Cartagena and Murcia, calling on the regional and central governments to take measures at source to prevent the lagoon from collapsing. Although some actions have been initiated to stop the problem, since spring 2022, there has been a huge development of filamentous algae, which is a cause for concern.
Legal personality for the Mar Menor
The petition for Legal Personality for the Mar Menor (Iniciativa de Legislación Popular, ILP) was initiated by law professors Teresa Vicente and Eduardo Salazar and supported by a number of action groups and voluntary organisations in Spain. The Banderas Negras organised demonstrations and collected signatures. Now that the law to grant the Mar Menor legal personality has been enacted, they formed the association AMARME. The Pacto por el Mar Menor is a platform for various professionals to inform the public about the ecology of the Mar Menor and put pressure on the government with legal complaints.
Ecologists in Action of the Region of Murcia have been fighting tirelessly for decades for the conservation and recovery of the regional territory in general and of its valuable threatened ecosystems in particular. For years, the NGO has been working hard to counteract the administrative negligence in environmental matters and the fallacies surrounding the pathetic management of water – and other natural resources – in the Region. Ecologistas en Acción carries out its work within the framework of Social Ecologism, broadening the focus to social problems that are associated with environmental problems, since both have the same origin: the unsustainable and predatory model of globalised development.
