On May 21st, an unprecedented trial was about to take place: the Mar Menor Lagoon, in Murcia, was expected to defend itself before a court of law [1]. Not a company, not the landowners, nor the public administration, but the lagoon itself, which since 2022 has been recognized as a legal subject with the right to legal protection. How did we get here?

For many years, Mar Menor has suffered from several environmental crises: agricultural runoff, massive fish die-offs, eutrophication, and algal blooms. Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon had become a living image of ecological collapse. The situation was unsustainable, and several environmental organizations, both local and national, began to organize. They needed to gather signatures in order to push the central government to draft a law for the effective protection of the Mar Menor basin once and for all. After a nationwide campaign and collecting more than 600,000 signatures, the Spanish government approved Law 19/2022, that granted legal personhood to the Mar Menor and its basin [2].

This law marks a turning point in European environmental legislation, officially recognizing the Mar Menor as a legal person with the right to defend itself in court, as we mentioned earlier.

However, granting Nature this kind of legal recognition is not as innovative as it may loo. Ecuador became the first country to introduce the Rights of Nature into its constitution back in 2008 [3]. It recognizes that Nature possesses rights because of its intrinsic value, and that ecosystems should not be protected solely for their usefulness to humans. A similar case is that of the Whanganui River, recognized by New Zealand as a legal person since 2017 [4].

If we stop for a moment to think about it, it becomes obvious why countries such as Ecuador or New Zealand became pioneers in these initiatives. Traditional worldviews connected to native cultures – whether the Indigenous peoples of Ecuador or the Māori communities that have inhabited the Whanganui region – perceive what we would call “geographical features” in a very different way from the perspective dominant in Europe or the Global North. The concept of Pachamama (Mother Earth) is relatively well known, but Sumak Kawsay – “Good Living” in Quechua – may be less familiar. It refers to the pursuit of communal harmony above individual interests, understanding community not only as human society, but also as the ecosystem it inhabits, without placing humans above other living beings, forests, rivers, or mountains. A similar idea exists in the Māori concept of Whakapapa, the network connecting the spiritual and physical worlds, implying that everything is interconnected and nothing exists in isolation.

These worldviews have translated, as we mentioned earlier, into legal guarantees recognizing Nature in Ecuador, or the Whanganui River in New Zealand, as entities with rights of their own. As a Māori proverb says: “I am the river, and the river is me”.

In modern societies, if these worldviews are to be respected, they must somehow be incorporated into legislation. The “trick” of turning Nature into a legal person seems likely to become increasingly common, and we will likely consider it positive whenever it results in stronger ecosystem protection.

Modern society tends to value the planet in utilitarian terms: forests for timber, rivers for drinking water, and land as property. They are not entities in themselves, as in other worldviews, but rather objects to possess and exploit. Do ecosystems only deserve legal protection if we consider them “persons”? The Mar Menor had to obtain a tax identification number in order to gain the right to defend itself in court. Corporations were already considered legal people. Why does it seem easier for economic entities to have rights than for living ecosystems?

Even if they do not speak through words, ecosystems have long been communicating their deterioration to us. They do so through murky waters, disappearing species, biodiversity loss, increasingly uncontrollable wildfires, or more frequent floods. The problem is not that the Earth cannot speak, but that for a very long time we have only recognized human voices as legitimate. We have had to translate Nature into human language — legal language, in this case — in order for it to be heard.