Publication in special issue
9/8 2026
by Marie Widengård
Mar Menor and Vättern as Aquatic Doppelgängers
Lake Vättern in Sweden and Mar Menor in Spain are different waters, yet each has come to be lived and governed in a doubled form: a familiar waterbody and an estranged counterpart. This paper develops the concept of aquatic doppelgängers to track how such splits are produced through civic, legal, and political practices that shape what counts as harm, who can speak, and what futures become plausible. The concept shows how doubling turns crisis into a dispute over what the waterbody is, opening a struggle over how it can be protected, defended, and acted for.
Keywords: Ontological politics, Rights of Nature, Waterbodies, Aquatic doppelgängers, Legal personhood
Read the full paper here
Read the introduction to the special issue here
Table of Contents
Read more about Confluence of European Water Bodies here