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.