Teresa Vicente is a Spanish professor of legal philosophy and director of the Chair of Human and Environmental Rights at the University of Murcia. Since working as a lawyer between 1987 and 1994, she has focused on issues of social and environmental justice, which she has been instrumental in advancing as a researcher. She is a champion and activist for the rights of nature.

In 2023, she received a medal of honor from the Council of Europe for her volunteer work, and in 2024, Vicente was awarded the prestigious Goldman Prize for Europe for her valuable work. The prize honors remarkable individuals for their fight for nature and the environment.

 

Teresa Vicente is highly regarded, particularly for the groundbreaking success of her campaign to protect the Mar Menor in the Murcia region. Thanks to her efforts, Europe’s largest existing saltwater lagoon was saved from a crisis—irreversible pollution caused by mining, agriculture, livestock farming, and infrastructure development. This had consequences not only for the residents but also for tourism and, above all, for the entire ecosystem. She saw granting the lagoon legal personhood—something unprecedented in Europe—as the only way to sustainably protect this special place. In 2020, Vicente launched her campaign, which was joined by hundreds of thousands of people. The legislative initiative required for this—which allows citizens to propose laws to parliament—needed 500,000 handwritten signatures. The professor submitted these to the Senate in September 2022, which ultimately passed the law. Especially within the context of the grassroots environmental movement, Teresa Vicente’s campaign represents a revolutionary precedent for a paradigm shift in political practice—the understanding of nature as a subject.