Sep 30, 2022 12:47 AM
(This post was last modified: Sep 30, 2022 01:08 AM by C C.)
(29 Sep 2022) This lagoon is effectively a person, says Spanish law that’s attempting to save it
https://www.science.org/content/article/...ng-save-it
EXCERPT: . . . Led by a philosophy professor, activists launched a petition to adopt a new and radical legal strategy: granting the 135-square-kilometer lagoon the rights of personhood. Nearly 640,000 Spanish citizens signed it, and on 21 September, Spain’s Senate approved a bill enshrining the Mar Menor lagoon’s new rights.
The new law doesn’t regard the lagoon and its watershed as fully human. But the ecosystem now has a legal right to exist, evolve naturally, and be restored. And like a person, it has legal guardians, including a scientific committee, which will give its defenders a new voice.
“I am very excited,” says Ignacio Bachmann-Fuentes, a senior lecturer in constitutional law at Pablo de Olavide University. “This new law has very innovative and legally powerful elements.”
The lagoon is the first ecosystem in Europe to get such rights, but this approach to conservation has been gaining popularity around the world over the past decade. The Ganges and every river in Bangladesh have been granted personhood, for example; elsewhere, concepts in some Indigenous communities have helped drive the trend. “It’s taken off like wildfire,” says Catherine Iorns Magallanes, an environmental law expert at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW).
The clearest success story, scholars say, is the Whanganui River in New Zealand, which was given legal rights by an act of Parliament in 2017. Like a person, the river and its catchment can sue or be sued, enter contracts, and hold property... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (wikipedia): Indigenous science
Ohio voted to give Lake Erie's entire ecosystem legal rights ... https://youtu.be/WwhcrpJTzGQ
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/WwhcrpJTzGQ
https://www.science.org/content/article/...ng-save-it
EXCERPT: . . . Led by a philosophy professor, activists launched a petition to adopt a new and radical legal strategy: granting the 135-square-kilometer lagoon the rights of personhood. Nearly 640,000 Spanish citizens signed it, and on 21 September, Spain’s Senate approved a bill enshrining the Mar Menor lagoon’s new rights.
The new law doesn’t regard the lagoon and its watershed as fully human. But the ecosystem now has a legal right to exist, evolve naturally, and be restored. And like a person, it has legal guardians, including a scientific committee, which will give its defenders a new voice.
“I am very excited,” says Ignacio Bachmann-Fuentes, a senior lecturer in constitutional law at Pablo de Olavide University. “This new law has very innovative and legally powerful elements.”
The lagoon is the first ecosystem in Europe to get such rights, but this approach to conservation has been gaining popularity around the world over the past decade. The Ganges and every river in Bangladesh have been granted personhood, for example; elsewhere, concepts in some Indigenous communities have helped drive the trend. “It’s taken off like wildfire,” says Catherine Iorns Magallanes, an environmental law expert at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW).
The clearest success story, scholars say, is the Whanganui River in New Zealand, which was given legal rights by an act of Parliament in 2017. Like a person, the river and its catchment can sue or be sued, enter contracts, and hold property... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (wikipedia): Indigenous science
Ohio voted to give Lake Erie's entire ecosystem legal rights ... https://youtu.be/WwhcrpJTzGQ
