Development of energy communities in Spain
Generally, in the development of new economic-business models the first projects are driven by those actors who concentrate a sufficient number of elements that give them a certain advantage over the rest. These advantageous elements are usually grouped into economic capital, technical knowledge and public infrastructures.In territorial terms, this phenomenon gives some areas more possibilities for development than others to the extent that some have easier access to a sufficient combination of these advantageous elements. Social capital is the sum of actual and potential resources, material or immaterial, of a given community, which can be mobilised among the different actors that make it up, whether they are individual or collective, public or private. The development of energy communities will largely depend on the combination of social capital intensity and accessibility to renewable energy resources in each case. Categories of territories according to social capital intensity The result of the characterisation of the territory according to the intensity of social capital offers the possibility of classifying energy communities in a more complex way. Types of energy communities Download report
Rights beyond humans
For centuries, the concept of ‘rights’ has been reserved for people. However, the 21st century is broadening that horizon, and nature is beginning to be recognised as a subject of rights. This change, which may seem symbolic, represents a true legal, ethical and political revolution. It means moving from protecting the environment ‘for utility’ to recognising its intrinsic value and capacity for existence. The starting point is a pioneering case: Law 19/2022, which granted legal personality to the Mar Menor and its basin. This experience has opened up a broader debate: what does it mean to recognise the rights of an ecosystem? What changes in environmental management when the territory ceases to be an object and becomes a subject? The Mar Menor precedent: when nature speaks for itself Law 19/2022, passed by the Congress of Deputies in 2022, made the Mar Menor the first European ecosystem to be recognised as a subject of rights. This historic step was inspired by international models, such as the Whanganui River in New Zealand and the Atrato River in Colombia, where communities and lawyers had argued that ecosystems should have their own legal mechanisms of defence. Under Spanish law, the Mar Menor has four fundamental rights: 1. Right to exist and evolve naturally This implies respecting the ecological laws that sustain its balance. It is not just a question of ‘conserving’ the lagoon, but of allowing it to regenerate and evolve according to its natural dynamics, free from excessive human pressure. 2. Right to protection This means stopping or not authorising activities that pose a risk to its integrity, such as dumping, construction or overexploitation. 3. Right to conservation This requires active measures to preserve species, habitats and protected areas associated with the lagoon and its basin. 4. Right to restoration This requires the repair of damage caused, restoring the ecosystem’s functionality and the natural services it provides to society. To enforce these rights, the law created a system of institutional representation: a Committee of Representatives, a Monitoring Commission and a Scientific Committee. Together, they act as the ‘voice’ of the Mar Menor before the authorities and the courts. With this structure, the lagoon ceases to be a mere natural space managed by sectoral policies and becomes a political and legal entity with its own legitimacy. From protection to coexistence: towards a new legal culture The recognition of rights for entities other than humans marks a radical shift in how we understand the relationship between society and nature. Until now, environmental legislation has focused on regulating the use of resources: how much can be extracted, dumped, occupied or transformed. But in the context of climate crisis and ecological collapse, this model has shown its limitations. Recognising an ecosystem as a subject of rights means overcoming the instrumental view—nature as ‘property’ or ‘resource’—and placing it as part of the community of life, with dignity and a voice of its own. This change has profound consequences: • It introduces new ethical criteria into public decision-making. • It reinforces the ecological responsibility of institutions and companies. • It allows legal action to be taken on behalf of the ecosystem, even when there is no direct impact on people. • It broadens the notion of justice to an ecological and collective level. The concept of ‘more than human entities’ encompasses not only rivers and lakes, but also forests, mountains, soils, wetlands and key species that sustain life in a region. Each of these could, under certain conditions, be recognised as a subject of ecological law, especially those that are essential for climate adaptation. This change is also supported by a deeper understanding of nature itself. Ecosystems are not simply aggregates of biological or geographical elements, but complex systems with emergent properties (such as self-regulation, resilience, or adaptability) that allow them to maintain their balance and sustain life. These properties arise from the interaction between their components and cannot be understood from the sum of their parts. Thus, these new rights not only expand the legal framework, but also reflect an evolution in the scientific and ethical understanding of the planet: recognising nature as a set of interdependent beings, endowed with responsiveness and intrinsic value. Climate adaptation with rights The inclusion of formal recognition of the rights of more-than-human entities in climate change adaptation policies could ensure a more just, durable and biophysically coherent adaptation. For example, granting rights to strategic ecosystems—such as wetlands, rivers or forests—would make it possible to: • Establish automatic legal defence mechanisms against threats. • Ensure ecological priority in planning processes. • Encourage co-management between institutions and local communities. • Promote an integrated territorial vision that transcends administrative divisions. In this way, climate change adaptation would cease to be merely a technical policy and become a matter of ecological justice. A growing global trend The recognition of rights to nature is not an isolated anomaly. In recent years, this trend has spread throughout the world: • Ecuador was the first country to enshrine the ‘rights of nature’ (Pachamama) in its Constitution (2008). • Bolivia passed the Mother Earth Law (2010), recognising its intrinsic value. • In Colombia, the Constitutional Court declared the Atrato River a subject of rights. • In New Zealand, the Whanganui River and Mount Taranaki have legal personality and designated guardians. • In India, the Ganges and Yamuna rivers were given similar status (although with subsequent legal disputes). Towards a more than human democracy Ultimately, exploring and recognising new rights for more than human entities is a way of democratising our relationship with ecosystems, which cease to be mere settings for human life and become actors with their own agency and vulnerability. Recognising the complexity of ecosystems implies accepting their responsiveness and their role in the planet’s balance. From this perspective, more than human democracy is understood as a form of co-responsibility with everything that makes life possible. Furthermore, incorporating this vision into climate and adaptation policies is a necessary step to ensure the integration of resilience and sustainability into
Towards recognition of the right to a healthy environment
We are living in times of profound transformation. While the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly palpable in our daily lives – from more intense heat waves to extreme weather events – a silent transformation is taking place in the field of law that seeks to answer the fundamental question of whether we have a right to a healthy environment. The affirmative answer to this question has set in motion an international legal and political movement that is redefining the obligations of states and the rights of citizens. The climate emergency as a human rights issue Traditionally, climate change has been conceptualised as an environmental, energy or economic problem. However, this perspective is falling short. The climate crisis is, above all, a human rights crisis, and social perception of it is gradually moving towards this interpretation. This is because a stable environment and climate are the foundation on which all other rights are based. Without them, the right to health is compromised by diseases spread by heat or pollution; the right to housing is threatened by forced evictions after flooding; the right to life is at risk from the violence of extreme weather events; the right to food, besieged by droughts that destroy crops; and the right to equality, in critical condition because it is the most vulnerable – the impoverished, the elderly, indigenous peoples – who suffer disproportionately from the effects of an unstable climate. The scientific community has long pointed out that ecosystem degradation, deforestation and biodiversity loss have direct consequences on human health by altering the ecological balances that sustain us. It is not just a matter of avoiding the damage that befalls us, but of understanding that we are part of the same living system. This understanding challenges the traditional anthropocentric paradigm, which has historically placed humanity above the rest of nature. This comprehensive view, supported by the One Health approach promoted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the scientific community, reminds us that human health, animal health and ecosystem health are closely interrelated, and reinforces the need for policies that recognise the continuity between human health, ecosystem health and the right to a healthy environment. Research and science have worked over the last few decades to prove this connection between climate change and the violation of rights through its impacts. The next step in protecting these rights lies in the legal sphere, which must translate this challenge into enforceable rights and specific obligations. It is at this point that Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) marks a turning point. The ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: a new legal paradigm In May 2025, at the request of Chile and Colombia, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled on the obligations of States in the context of the Climate Emergency. Its opinion is not a mere recommendation; it is a detailed and binding legal roadmap for the countries that are part of the inter-American system. The Court breaks down the obligations of States into four fundamental pillars: 1. General obligations in the context of the climate emergency The Court makes it clear that States have a duty to prevent the catastrophic effects of climate change. This is no longer a political choice, but a legal obligation. Governments must take all necessary measures – legislative, administrative, judicial – to ensure that activities under their jurisdiction do not cause significant transboundary harm. Inaction, or insufficient action, may constitute a violation of human rights. 2. Obligations arising from substantive rights The Court explicitly links the climate emergency to established rights, such as the right to life and personal integrity. A healthy environment is an essential condition for the enjoyment of these rights. In practice, this could mean that an individual or community could sue the state if, for example, air pollution from a nearby thermal power plant is seriously affecting their health, arguing that the state’s failure to adequately regulate that source of emissions violates their right to personal integrity. 3. Procedural obligations: transparency and participation States must not only act, but they must do so in a specific manner. This includes: a. Access to information: ensuring that citizens have access to clear, timely and understandable information on climate impacts and policies to address them. b. Public participation: allowing people to participate meaningfully in environmental decision-making, such as the approval of a project with a high carbon footprint. c. Access to justice: ensuring that accessible judicial or administrative mechanisms are in place to challenge actions or omissions that affect the environment. 4. The principle of equality and non-discrimination The Court is unequivocal in its assertion that the climate crisis is a crisis of inequality. State obligations must be applied with a perspective of equity, prioritising the protection of vulnerable groups that are disproportionately affected. Climate policies must be designed to protect them specifically, preventing the burden of climate change from falling on those who have contributed least to causing it. Towards a new social contract The exploration of including these rights implies a profound change in the relationship between citizens, the State and the environment. For citizens: it would mean having a legal tool that would allow individuals and groups to take legal action against their governments to demand that they meet their climate targets, halt polluting projects, or implement plans to adapt to climate change and its effects. For society as a whole: it represents an opportunity to forge a new social contract that places sustainability and intergenerational justice at its core. For states: it would mean much stricter accountability at different levels of government. From climate agreements at international summits to local government resolutions, all would become legally enforceable commitments. Urban planning, energy policy and water management, for example, would inevitably have to pass through the filter of human rights. P. Cotarelo and O. Mayoral
University Observatory of transitions
According to the Law Regulating Universities (LOSU), both public and private universities must guarantee the public service of university education, as well as develop their functions and take as their reference points, among others, the fight against climate change and the values derived from the Sustainable Development Goals. In the current context of multiple crises, the university needs an Observatory to monitor the university’s performance in the design, development, implementation and transfer of eco-social transition plans to achieve sustainability. One of the tools to be developed by this Observatory is a system of objective indicators focused on obtaining a rating of the university’s performance in applying eco-social transition criteria. An exponential trajectory of efforts between 2024 and 2030 has a lower slope at the beginning of the process, which can facilitate the structural changes that the university must undertake to meet eco-social criteria. Over time, the slope increases, so that changes and improvements, made possible by those efforts, must be accelerated more rapidly in the years closer to 2030. The exponential trajectory of efforts translates into the size of the intervals for rating university performance in the application of eco-social criteria. Download
The tortuous path of destouristification
In recent months, neighbourhood movements in different parts of Spain have brought to public debate the need to structurally rethink the tourism sector in their areas. They warn that in these places (and perhaps in others as well) the carrying capacity has been exceeded due to the constant growth of tourist activity and its consequences. These include environmental degradation and increased pollution, frequent and in some cases dangerous crowding, deterioration of public services such as transport, increased cost of living, displacement of local people, difficulties for working people to live relatively close to their daily place of work, housing speculation, and loss of local cultural identity. Although perhaps new to the general public, different groups and social agents have been warning about this problem for years thanks to data collected in other locations where the process of touristification has advanced before. Due to this data and the reflections, analyses and publications from the social sciences, some political leaders have tried to provide solutions from the public policy sphere to avoid the most serious effects of the tourist monoculture and, in some cases, to try to reverse it, with mixed outcomes. First of all, it must be recognised that the incentives for policy-makers are not particularly favourable for carrying out this task. For, despite the institutional mandate to represent the interests of their population, and despite the social protests that have taken place in their different forms, significant factors that encourage the opposite seem to have more weight. As a result, we see that the general tendency is to remain the same as before, i.e. to do nothing to alter the tourism mechanism. Arguably, the biggest incentive for nothing to change is that change in general, and this one in particular, is very time-consuming and complex. This is due to inertia, technical difficulties and established power relations. Among the technical difficulties, one that, despite its importance, is often overlooked is the impossibility of replacing the tourist monoculture with another activity (or activities) while maintaining the main indicators in similar terms. Like any other predatory activity, tourism extracts ‘assets’ (beaches and other natural spaces, monuments, climate, architecture, educated and cared-for population, public infrastructures, etc.). ) for free and processes them, generating an economic return (which in many cases does not return to the area, not even to its capitalist class) and generally negative externalities (such as those listed at the beginning of the text: environmental deterioration and increased pollution, overcrowding, worsening of public services, increased cost of living, displacement of the local population, difficulties for working people to live near their daily place of work, housing speculation, loss of local cultural identity). Moreover, when the monoculture of such an activity has been consolidated, too many bridges have been dynamited for it to be considered as just another activity in a range of economic activities to be developed. The tourism process advances towards the socio-economic monoculture phase and, once there, continues to advance in its depredation of the environment and society on which it is based. Indicators that tend to point unequivocally to the fact that the tourist monoculture has become established include the following: the census population is decreasing; disposable family income in the area is increasing due to the expulsion of the less well-off classes because of the generalised rise in prices and of housing in particular; the surface area dedicated to tourism and the hotel industry is increasing in relation to other economic activities, such as industry and education; the saturation of this type of activity is advancing, colonising more and more areas of the city; the proliferation of dwellings for tourist use is spreading exponentially in the absence of effective control mechanisms; shops commonly aimed at the local population, such as food shops, are turning their offer towards tourists, with the disappearance of fresh produce shops such as fishmongers, butchers and greengrocers. In addition, phenomena that are incomprehensible to the naked eye are beginning to be detected, such as the closure of shops (the closing of shutters) in the most overcrowded areas or their surroundings because they are used as warehouses for other premises (mainly restaurants) whose activity cannot develop as desired due to the high demand to which they are subjected and their need for product rotation. This also leads to an increased feeling of insecurity and/or risk in these areas. Under these conditions, an economic return of the same characteristics without incurring serious externalities is not possible. In other words, replacing this monoculture activity with another could only be done by assuming the same (or greater) amount of negative externalities. Negative externalities could be found in two broad groups: those that are outside the law, or those that would put the very survival of the business at serious risk in the short term (such as those of an environmental or social nature that would considerably disrupt the flow of capital). In fact, a large part of the expansion of this monoculture comes from the perception that it is more profitable than other activities and that it is legitimate to facilitate its development. The mechanisms that facilitate its development over other socio-economic options also form part of the very institutional structure (public and private) of the tourist monoculture, which increases the perception of its high profitability and the lack of need for other activities unrelated to it. Therefore, the more the process of deepening the monoculture advances, the more the impossibility of substituting it with another sustainable activity in economic, environmental and social terms grows. On the one hand, the collective and institutional imaginary is moving further and further away from this possibility. On the other hand, in material terms, the growing inclusion of elements that threaten the environment and social rights and conditions, inherent to monoculture tourism, makes it impossible for there to be another activity that, while complying with socio-environmental rules, could generate similar monetary returns. Such an option is ruled out for political action. It is also a tremendously perverse incentive for policy makers
Challenges of inclusive digitisation
Digital technologies and data are, for better or worse, transformative. People, businesses, and governments live, interact, work, and produce differently than they did in the past, and these changes may be accelerating rapidly due to digitalisation. It is vital to ensure that the immense promises of digital technologies and data are directed exclusively towards growth and social well-being, while limiting and minimising their negative impacts. Download report
Positive Impact Trade
Small businesses have positive externalities such as: Download report