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This saltwater lagoon is legally a person. Here’s why that could help it survive
By Nell Lewis, CNN
4 minute read
Published 4:32 AM EDT, Mon April 29, 2024
Mar Menor, Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon, is located in the region of Murcia, southeast Spain.Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images
Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon has faced environmental collapse. Now it’s a legal person
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Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.CNN —
Mar Menor, Europe’s biggest saltwater lagoon, sits on the coast of southeastern Spain. A strip of sand separates the 52-square-mile area from the Mediterranean, creating warm shallow waters and enticing beaches popular with tourists.
But in recent years these crystalline waters have turned murky with algal blooms, mounds of dead fish have washed up on its shores, and the once fresh and salty scent has been replaced by a foul stench of decay.
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House prices in the area have fallen, tourist revenue dropped and local people were left furious. But one of them had a new idea to protect the lagoon: what if it was given the same legal rights as a person? What if it had a right to exist and protection against the damage being done to it?
Teresa Vicente, a professor of philosophy of law at the local University of Murcia, first asked these questions in 2019. Three years later, following an intense campaign, Mar Menor became the first ecosystem in Europe to be designated legal personhood rights.
Today, Vicente was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize – an annual award given to six grassroots environmental leaders, each working in a different continent. Her legal strategy, which empowers citizens to act on behalf of nature, was commended for setting “an important precedent for democratizing environmental protection and expanding the role of civil society in support of environmental campaigns.”
A strip of sand, known as La Manga, separates the lagoon from the Mediterranean Sea. Today, the strip is dense with buildings. Jose Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images
Ecological disaster
Vicente, 61, was born and raised in the region of Murcia and her memories of the lagoon go all the way back to her childhood. She remembers playing there in shorts and t-shirts, parties on the beach during her teenage years, and the transparent water. “For me, the lagoon was everything,” she tells CNN.
But a few decades ago, things started changing. There was a development boom (today, the sandbank separating the lagoon from the ocean is filled with high-rise apartment buildings), an increase in plastic pollution, and a huge rise in intensive agriculture. In 1979, a new canal opened bringing irrigation to the region and helping to transform it into a farming powerhouse. Today, Murcia accounts for 20% of Spain’s fruit and vegetable exports, exporting more than 2.5 million tons a year, from lettuce and broccoli to lemons and artichokes.
Teresa Vicente, 61, has been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her successful campaign to grant Mar Menor legal personhood rights. Goldman Environmental Prize
Combined with waters warmed by climate change, this became a recipe for ecological disaster. Run-offs from nitrate-filled fertilizers entered the lagoon, causing extreme eutrophication – the accumulation of algae that depletes the water of oxygen. Since 2016, there have been three mass fish and crustacean die-offs, mussel populations have collapsed, and 85% of the lagoon’s seagrass died.
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It was after the 2019 die-off, when an estimated three tons of dead fish washed up onto the shores, that Vicente was compelled into action. She had been on a three-month fellowship at the University of Reading’s Centre of Justice and Climate in the UK at the time, but her students in Murcia called her up and told her what was happening. “I immediately went back, because I wanted to start implementing the theory into law,” she says.
Right to exist
Granting “rights of nature” is a concept that has long been debated but has only gained momentum in recent years. In the last decade, ecosystems such as the Atrato River in Colombia and New Zealand’s Whanganui River have been granted legal personhood.
In 2021, a thick algal bloom resulted in five tons of sea creatures washing up on beaches around the lagoon, including this crab. Jose Miguel Fernandez/AFP/Getty Images
It was these examples that inspired Vicente to do the same for Mar Menor. She notes that, on paper, the lagoon was already protected by several international conventions: such as being classified as a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance and a Special Protection Area for Wild Birds. But none seemed to be protecting the lagoon from the severe pollution. “We knew that we needed to do something more than all these protections, something that goes beyond that,” she says.
She started to raise awareness of the campaign, writing an article for a local paper, and despite initial opposition she managed to win support from the riverbank communities who were enraged by the pollution on their doorstep. By 2021, Vicente had collected more than 600,000 signatures, more than she needed to propose the bill. Public demonstrations, meetings with government representatives and media interviews followed, until in September 2022, Spain’s senate passed it into law.
Less than two years after the legislation, Mar Menor has not miraculously recovered. The process will take time, but now the lagoon has the right to conservation, protection and remediation of environmental damage. Vicente explains that three new legislative bodies, composed of government representatives, scientists, and local citizens, have been appointed to oversee enforcement, and while the lagoon may not be able to speak for itself, any citizen is now able to file a lawsuit on behalf of Mar Menor.
Vicente is confident that the new model for justice will help to “cut the poison” that is entering the lagoon, referring to the nitrates from intensive agriculture, and defend it from further harm. Then she hopes that nature-based solutions can start to restore the area.
“Right now, Mar Menor is in intensive care,” she says. “Maybe it won’t go back to the same as it was when I was younger, but at least it will have a life of dignity.”
An El Niño-less summer is coming. Here’s what that could mean for the US
By Mary Gilbert, CNN Meteorologist
4 minute read
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/29/weather/la-nina-summer-forecast-us-el-nino-climate/index.html
Updated 8:25 AM EDT, Mon April 29, 2024
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What exactly is El Niño?
01:56 – Source: CNNCNN —
It may be spring, but it’s not too soon to look ahead to summer weather, especially when El Niño – a player in last year’s especially brutal summer – is rapidly weakening and will all but vanish by the time the season kicks into gear.
El Niño’s disappearing act doesn’t mean relief from the heat. Not when the world is heating up due to human-driven climate change. In fact, forecasters think it could mean the opposite.
What this summer’s weather could look like
El Niño is a natural climate pattern marked by warmer than average ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific. When the water gets cooler than average, it’s a La Niña. Either phase can have an effect on weather around the globe.
By June, forecasters expect those ocean temperatures to hover close to normal, marking a so-called neutral phase, before La Niña builds in early summer, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
But the strength of El Niño or La Niña’s influence on US weather isn’t uniform and varies greatly based on the strength of the phenomena and the season itself.
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The influence of El Niño or La Niña on US weather isn’t as clear-cut in the summer as it is in the winter, especially during a transition between the two phases, said Michelle L’Heureux, a climate scientist with the Climate Prediction Center.
Temperature differences between the tropics and North America are more extreme in the winter, L’Heureux explained. This allows the jet stream to become quite strong and influential, reliably sending storms into certain parts of the US.
In the summer, the difference in temperature between the two regions isn’t as significant and the obvious influence on US weather wanes.
But we can look back at what happened during similar summers to get a glimpse of what could come this summer.
In short: It’s not cool.
The summer of 2016 was one of the hottest on record for the Lower 48. La Niña conditions were in place by midsummer and followed a very strong El Niño winter.
Summer 2020 followed a similar script: La Niña conditions formed midsummer after a weak El Niño winter but still produced one of the hottest summers on record and the most active hurricane season on record.
Then there’s the fact that these climate phenomena are playing out in a warming world, raising the ceiling on the extreme heat potential.
“This obviously isn’t our grandmother’s transition out of El Niño – we’re in a much warmer world so the impacts will be different,” L’Heureux, said. “We’re seeing the consequences of climate change.”
Current summer temperature outlooks for the US are certainly bringing the heat.
CNN Weather
Above-average temperatures are forecast over nearly every square mile of the Lower 48. Only portions of the Dakotas, Minnesota and Montana have an equal chance of encountering near normal, above- or below-normal temperatures.
A huge portion of the West is likely to have warmer conditions than normal. This forecast tracks with decades of climate trends, according to L’Heureux.
Summers have warmed more in the West than in any other region of the US since the early 1990s, according to data from NOAA. Phoenix is a prime example. The city’s average July temperature last year was an unheard-of 102.7 degrees, making it the hottest month on record for any US city. It was also the deadliest year on record for heat in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located.
Forecasts also show a worrying precipitation trend for parts of the West.
CNN Weather
Large sections of the West and the central US are likely to be drier than normal. This dryness, combined with above-normal heat, which only amplifies the dryness, could be a recipe for new or worsening drought.
Wetter than normal conditions are in the forecast from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast. Stormy weather could be a consistent companion for much of the East – but whether it comes from typical rain and thunderstorms or tropical activity won’t be known for months.
A brutal summer also predicted in the water
Heat isn’t the only threat to look out for.
The strengthening La Niña conditions, coupled with ocean temperatures which have been at record highs for over a year, could supercharge the Atlantic hurricane season.
A warming world generates more fuel for more tropical activity and stronger storms. La Niña tends to produce favorable atmospheric conditions to allow storms to form and hold together in the Atlantic.
Early this month, forecasters at Colorado State University released their most active initial forecast ever.
“We anticipate a well above-average probability for major hurricanes making landfall along the continental United States coastline and in the Caribbean,” the group said in a news release.
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Man fatally shot while waterfowl hunting in Iowa
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Man fatally shot while waterfowl hunting in Iowa
Story by Linda Cook
• 5mo • 1 min read
Man fatally shot while waterfowl hunting in Iowa© Provided by WHO-TV Des Moines
GUTHRIE COUNTY, Iowa — The Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is investigating a fatal hunting incident in Guthrie County, according to a news release.
Seth Egelhoff, 26, of Chesterfield, Illinois, was killed Saturday while waterfowl hunting at the Bays Branch Wildlife Area in Guthrie County, the release says. 
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The Guthrie County Sheriff’s Department received an emergency call around 1 p.m. about a hunter suffering a gunshot wound to the face at Bays Branch Wildlife Area. Egelhoff was transported by Panora EMS. Lifesaving measures were given en route to Life Flight but were unsuccessful, and he was pronounced deceased shortly after leaving the scene.
The incident remains under investigation by the Iowa DNR Law Enforcement Bureau.
The Guthrie County Sheriff’s Department, Panora EMS, and Iowa State Patrol assisted in the investigation.
The wildlife area is open for public use.
Exposing the Big Game 