Activist who fought for legal rights for Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon wins ‘Green Nobel’
LOS ANGELES — Growing up, Teresa Vicente spent long days in Spain’s Mar Menor, swimming in transparent waters, holding seahorses and partying under the moonlit sky. There, she remembered, time stood still.
But over the decades, chronic pollution from mining, development and agricultural runoff has turned the once crystal clear waters of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon into a graveyard. A massive fish kill in 2019 prompted the professor of legal philosophy at the University of Murcia to take action.
Over the next few years, Vicente, now 61, led a grassroots campaign to save the region’s ecological gem from destruction. Her efforts led to a new law passed in 2022 that gives the lagoon the legal right to be preserved, protected and repaired from damage.
Vicente is one of seven winners this year of the Goldman Environmental Prize, known as the “Green Nobel Prize,” which honors grassroots activists and leaders from around the world for achievements in protecting the natural world. The recipients were selected from approximately 100 nominees.
“(This award) means an international recognition that we are facing a new phase in humanity,” Vicente said in Spanish. It is a phase where “people understand that they are part of nature. And this recognition means that it is not a local or national conquest, but rather a European and international one.”
“They call Mar Menor the lagoon of magic,” she added, “and all of us on this trip saw a lot of magic.”
The other winners are:
– Marcel Gomes, executive secretary of the media nonprofit Repórter Brasil, which organized a campaign drawing links between beef from the world’s largest meatpacking company, JBS, and illegal deforestation in Brazil, putting pressure on retailers around the world to stop selling the meat.
– Indigenous activist Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, who helped stop the development of a coal mine in the Australian state of Queensland that would have destroyed nearly 20,000 acres of nature reserve, spewing nearly 1.6 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere . its lifespan, endangering the rights and culture of indigenous peoples.
– Alok Shukla, who led a community movement that saved nearly half a million acres (200,000 hectares) of forest from 21 proposed coal mines in Chhattisgarh, a state in central India.
– Andrea Vidaurre, who helped convince California’s air quality agency to adopt two transportation rules that limit emissions from trains and trucks. The rules include the country’s first emissions limit for trains.
– Nonhle Mbuthuma and Sinegugu Zukulu, indigenous activists who prevented seismic testing for coal and gas in a coastal area off South Africa’s Eastern Cape.
Michael Sutton, executive director of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, called the winners “an incredible group of individuals working, sometimes in secret, against overwhelming odds to gain the upper hand over governments and industry.”
Vicente was born and raised in the southeastern Spanish city of Murcia, home of the Mar Menor. When she heard about the 2019 fish kill, she studied at the University of Reading in England how other countries had successfully granted legal rights to natural resources to protect them.
To save the lagoon, in 2020 Vicente helped write the first draft of a bill granting legal protection to the Mar Menor and submitted it to the Spanish Parliament, allowing citizens to propose laws directly. But the process required her to collect 500,000 signatures during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
By November 2021, Vicente, with the help of thousands of volunteers across Spain, had collected almost 640,000 signatures – and the law was passed in 2022.
She never doubted that she would succeed. “People had understood that they were part of that ecosystem and were excited about the idea of being able to defend their rights,” she said. “When people forget their political differences, their religious differences, their economic differences, and surrender to a new idea of justice, that is certainly a success.”
The Goldman Environmental Prize was founded in 1989 by philanthropists Richard and Rhoda H. Goldman to recognize everyday people who work in their communities to protect and improve their environment.
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AP video journalist Haven Daley contributed to this report from San Francisco.
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