The initiative to reverse the decline of the Mar Menor has been recognised by the United Nations.
Yesterday (Wednesday) the project was named as one of three World Restoration Flagships for this year at the Oceans Conference in Nice.
These garlands are awarded for tackling pollution, unsustainable exploitation and invasive species.
Murcia’s Mar Menor is Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon and, says the UN, its biodiversity has successfully adapted to conditions of extreme temperatures, high salinity and low levels of nutrients.
However, nitrate discharges from intensive agriculture in the area as well as other polluting land and marine activities, led to the lagoon’s rapid degradation, including the emergence of damaging algal blooms.
It was back in 2016 that the water in the Mar Menor turned into a ‘green soup’, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of fish which washed up on the beaches of San Javier.
The alarm bells were sounded and local pressure groups staged protests calling for action to save the Mar Menor from an environmental catastrophe.
More fish death episodes followed in 2019 and 2021, but the water quality in the lagoon has been improving since then as efforts to halt the flow of nitrates and pollution into the lagoon have borne fruit.
“A positive turn came when over half a million citizens mobilized in response to episodes of ‘green soup’ and fish kills and supported a Popular Legislative Initiative to make the Mar Menor a legal entity with rights,” states a UN press release.
They added: “The Spanish government launched an ambitious intervention through the Framework of Priority Actions to Recover the Mar Menor (MAPMM), aimed at restoring the natural dynamics and solving the problem from the source.”
This is being done by creating wetlands, supporting sustainable agriculture, constructing a wide green belt around the lagoon, cleaning up abandoned and polluted mining sites, improving flood risk management, increasing its biodiversity, and sustaining social participation.
The MAPMM is receiving 675 million euros in government funding.
The UN notes that the Mar Menor lagoon is ‘essential to the region’s identity, local tourism and small-scale fishing’, with unique flora and fauna, including water birds.
Minister for the ecological transition in Spain, Sara Aagesen Muñoz, said they have shown a ‘firm commitment to restoring this exceptional ecosystem and its values, with no possibility of turning back’.
“That is why we are deploying a wide range of actions, combining technical and social innovation in nature restoration,” she said.
“We knew that our credibility as a society and the future of new generations were at stake; we could not let them down.”
The total area targeted for restoration amounts to 8,770 hectares, which is 7% of the entire basin flowing into the Mar Menor.
The green belt is estimated to absorb more than 82,256 tonnes CO₂ by 2040 – the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from almost 14,000 people in Spain, says the UN.
World Restoration Flagships are chosen as the best examples of ecosystem restoration by experts from the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’s network.
Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, said: “These World Restoration Flagships show how biodiversity protection, climate action, and economic development are deeply interconnected.
“To deliver our restoration goals, our ambition must be as big as the ocean we must protect.”
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