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Organisations and individuals who endorse the Declaration on the Rights of the Mediterranean Bio-region

Saponaria jagelii- IUCN Red List critically endangered

Grant Wilson, Esq., is the Executive Director of Earth Law Center. He is an expert on the Rights of Nature, ecocentric law, and international environmental law and a member of the World Commission on Environmental Law and the UN Harmony with Nature Initiative:

”Recognizing the rights of the Mediterranean bioregion is essential to securing a future in which it can truly flourish. Its rights must be acknowledged, and legal representation ensured. Humans are part of this bioregion too, and our well-being is inseparable from the health of the larger system.“

Marie Toussaint, Member of the European Parliament, 2019–present and Vice-Chair of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance.  She is a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals, amongst other.

Marie is leading the EU’s environmental crime directive for the Greens in the Parliament and supports protection of the environment through criminal law, including ecocide being made a crime in the EU.

“Recognizing the rights of nature has proven to be an efficient tool to better protect the ecosystems, but this is also crucial in itself: we belong to the living. As the Mediterranean bioregion is getting more and more impacted by climate change and pollutions, as the sea is also in too many ways a cemetery, it is absolutely essential that its rights are being recognized. I salute the work that has been done in this direction, fully endorse the Declaration and commit to promote it.”

Boško Radonic, NVO Galop
“We at NVO Galop, an organization dedicated to establishing and protecting animal rights in Montenegro and the Balkans, fully endorse the Declaration of the Rights of the Mediterranean Bioregion, recognizing all beings and species
within it as a vital part of one whole, playing their role in the ecosystem in which everyone depends on everyone else, and thus realizing that anyone’s rights are everyone’s rights, and no one is free until everyone is free. And when everyone is free, the bioregion thrives and nourishes all life within it.”
Dr. Victor DAVID Research Fellow at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (French National Research Institute for Sustainbable Development (IRD)
“Despite fifty years of legal protection through international and

regional treaties and national legislations, the Mediterranean Sea presents today, according to robust scientific evidence, signs of deterioration, affecting the whole bioregion with its human and other than human inhabitants. The Mediterranean is described as being the world’s most polluted sea, some of its fish species are victim of overexploiting, climate change causes severe marine heatwaves fatal to its biodiversity. Fragmented legal rules of 21 coastal States, uncoordinated management of its resources, sea-grabbing but more than all this, lack of respect for it as a living being, are incompatible with the holistic nature of the bioregion and its protection.

The Declaration of the Rights of the Mediterranean Bioregion is a welcome and needed first step towards the recognition of the new NLE status and I fully support it.“

Antoinette Vermilye, Gallifrey Foundation
“We live in a connected world – not just humans, but everthing. We must learn to watch the waves, feel the seasons and learn from our living cohabitants on this planet. Respecting the rights of the region will 

give pause before we mindlessly plunder resources that are vital for our survival and co-existence. We need each other. Protect. Protect. Protect.“