In the face of the global climate crisis, the decline of biodiversity, anthropogenic pollution, and increasingly destructive industrial projects, the recognition of rights for Nature is one of the necessary levers to engage states and communities of actors, both private and public, towards ecological transition. For about fifty years, local, national, or international initiatives have gradually advanced this right.
Interview with Bernard Mossé, scientific director of the NEEDE Mediterranean association, with Victor David, lawyer, research officer at the Institute for Research and Development (IRD), and member of the Mediterranean Institute of Biodiversity and Ecology (IMBE).
#4 Towards Legal Protection of the Mediterranean Sea
Bernard Mossé : How did you come to propose the Mediterranean as a legal natural entity ?
Victor David : My journey started from my work in New Caledonia, in the Oceanian context, and from the evolution of rights for Nature worldwide.
If we think about this right for rivers and lakes or terrestrial and marine animals, why not for maritime spaces that ultimately have the same protection needs while we continue to consider them as resources? We talk about green economy, blue economy, without really giving importance to the entity itself. So, why not the Mediterranean ? I already had this in mind when in 2022, at the second United Nations Conference on the Oceans, I reported on my work on the Pacific Ocean : what I was able to do and what I was unable to do with the resources at my disposal.
For the Pacific Ocean, it was indeed very complicated. Working with all the coastal countries is extremely complex since there are territories and huge geopolitical stakes : the Indo-Pacific zone, Chinese ambitions, the presence of the West and France… Current governments operate in terms of economy, exploitation, selling fishing licenses to the Chinese... Some dream of becoming the Emirates of the Pacific thanks to the resources of the seabed. Pacific Island States, considered "Small" (the Small Island Developing States) due to their small land area, now rightly consider themselves to be large oceanic states because they possess exclusive maritime zones, sometimes thousands of kilometers long. For example, Tuvalu : these are tiny islands with extremely important maritime spaces.
A number of lessons have been learned nonetheless. Based on this, I launched the idea of a voluntary commitment at the United Nations Conference on the Oceans (UNOC) to work on the Mediterranean as a legal natural entity.
We indeed needed to find a notion that allows these elements of nature to no longer be objects of law, without however granting them the status of persons.
Thus, we need to define a new, intermediate category, more malleable and adapted to each entity. We can include only rights, or rights and duties…
And so we have great flexibility with this notion of legal natural entity. Why not try to apply it to the Mediterranean Sea ?
Bernard Mossé : What are the specific difficulties for the Mediterranean ?
VD : The main challenge is that we have 21 very heterogeneous legal regimes regarding its protection and that the Mediterranean Sea is degrading rapidly. Scientific studies are quite unanimous, both due to anthropogenic activities and climate change, which also has anthropogenic origins.
BM : What is your strategy in the face of this urgency and legal complexity ?
VD : I start from the idea that we must first create the notion of legal natural entity. A coastal state, for example France, must decide for its territorial waters that the Mediterranean Sea becomes such an entity, in the sense of French law. And that this state conveys the idea to others…
BM : This is the strategy of the oil spot.
VD : Exactly. Obviously, it’s better if two states commit to it… and three is even better, and so on…
BM : So, where are you now?
VD : I am at the very beginning of the journey… I am trying to convince first the French lawyers. Even though I have associated Italian and Spanish researchers with this working group. Spain is interesting because it is ahead : the Spanish Parliament recognized a lagoon, the Mar Menor, as a legal person two years ago now. We are not in a context of indigenous peoples, as in Oceania or South America; we are in a country of the European Union, with a tradition of Roman law.
This lagoon is located in the Murcia region and was in very poor condition. It was actually a dead lagoon: one day, they found thousands and thousands of dead fish on the shores. That’s when the population reacted.
BM : A disaster caused by industrial pollution ?
VD : From agricultural water pollution discharged into the lagoon and from uncontrolled urbanization. It is actually a lagoon where water no longer circulated.
There is a large sandbank surrounding the lagoon. Real estate developers found nothing better than to concrete on both sides, with the administration's permits... The lagoon became a cesspool, all waste was dumped there: sewage systems, pesticide runoff, everything. And there, there was a citizen reaction and a whole procedure was launched because Spanish law allows it through popular legislative initiative. If you gather 500,000 signatures, the Madrid Parliament is obliged to examine the proposed law (in France, it takes 4 million). The movement was led by a professor of legal philosophy, precisely, with I believe 640,000 signatures that eventually reached Madrid. The Spanish Parliament voted a law recognizing the Mar Menor as a legal person.
This shows that it is indeed feasible in a country of the European Union. So if we gather a certain number of states on this issue, we can gradually achieve legal protection for the Mediterranean.
I also had official contacts on the South shore, notably with Tunisia, and its Minister of the Environment, originally a law professor. But with the elections, the president decided to change the government. She resumed her position. But she is now convinced and remains active.
BM : Have you managed to advance the idea in France ?
VD : As I already said, what happened in New Caledonia showed that it was possible to incorporate the notion of natural entity into French law, provided that the sharing of competencies between local authorities is respected. It is a matter of raising awareness that a regime change is needed and it is applicable to the Mediterranean : we cannot consider it as a legal person but as a natural entity, it can have rights and cease to be a maritime space belonging to 21 states. The specificity of a legal natural entity is precisely that it belongs to no one, escaping private or public ownership. Therefore, subsequently, it obviously has the right to exist, to have its reproductive cycles, etc.
Whenever I have the opportunity, I bring this debate to the table, as I did in a conference in Lorient on December 5th.
Entry through local authorities is also important. I have contacts with the City of Marseille and the Sud Region, which seem interested. Work in progress… !