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If we conserve nature…

When I was still a child, at the age of eight, I learnt in geography that there were still under three billion people living on the planet. The amount of life concealed by this number meant nothing to me. Now I’m 50 years older and, in that time, the world’s population is supposed to have almost trebled. Is that right? Do you understand what I have written there, and am myself trying to understand? There are now seven and a half billion people living on our beautiful blue planet EARTH. And the number isn’t falling. I have another look at …

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One foot in front of the other

One foot in front of the other

For 17 years, David Littlewood has been walking the back roads of the Algarve. Sometimes alone and other times with the Algarve Wednesday Walkers (AWW). ECO123 met him in São Brás de Alportel under a smoky sky and asked him whether it is a meditative process that motivates him to walk. His reply was grounded in the nature of the man, “No, it is just one foot in front of the other, and if I am with a group, there is a lot of chatter.” He explained, when he started walking in the Algarve, there was only one main guide …

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The Herbal Path

The Herbal Path
walks and encounters

Sensory herb walks add a focus to walking in the Algarve this autumn. Two field trips have been arranged to enhance awareness of flowers and herbs on clifftop paths but also in the cooler springwater-fed Mountains of Monchique. Maureen Robertson and her partner, José Melo, are offering locals and visitors the opportunity to slow down, look, touch and breathe in native plants and herbs as part of a process of conscious walking. Maureen Robertson is a Goethe-inspired Medical Herbalist, co-founder of The Scottish School of Herbal Medicine, and José Melo is a Shamanic Practitioner. They have created a course and …

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Breaking down taboos and barriers

Breaking down taboos and barriers

You covered some 3,500 kilometres between Lisbon and Athens. How did you travel? We left Lisbon with a rucksack on our backs. We walked and hitch-hiked. What route did you follow? We caught a ferry from Lisbon to Almada. From there, we started walking in the direction of Évora, and we also hitched lifts. After this came Madrid, and then we changed route and headed for San Sebastian. How many days did it take you altogether to reach Greece? We set off on 9th July and our goal was to reach Athens by 15th August. This was the date we’d …

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Funny with heart and soul

What drives a clown? Where does this energy come from? The driving force to leave everything behind and to say you don’t want to pursue your profession any more generates huge strength. It is the possibility to seek out and experience an absolute feeling of happiness. The path that I followed led me to a place where 20 people come together who write music, do choreography, who look for places that are abstract, who use a eucalyptus forest as a message and a stage. The impetus is different to 20 years ago. But the energy is the same. That you …

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rota vicentina

My Way
Rota Vicentina: 14 + one day)

Via Algarviana – Rota Vicentina – Rota do Pescador   Day 1 – Aljezur – Odeceixe (18 km) On this first day of April, the sky is as I know it in April: unsettled. For the last two weeks, I’ve been walking the 250 kilometres along the Via Algarviana, with little more than a sense of the Atlantic in the near distance. Now I can raise my nose into the wind, smelling salt and all sorts of colourful things by the wayside. The lines on the paper of my map indicate a further 350 kilometres, which I welcome with a …

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vegan summer menu

Less is More

Packaging-free vegan summer menu for yoghurt lovers. In this vegan summer menu, I have paid attention as far as possible to the use of ingredients that can be purchased without disposable packaging. The aim is to pass on ideas about ways to avoid rubbish in the long term. The main ingredient is plant-based, home-made yoghurt, which is a common thread running through my menu planning. It all starts with the production of one’s own plant milk. We could buy milk of course, but in a household that consumes milk daily too much unnecessary plastic or too many Tetrapak cartons accumulate. …

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A Nossa Terra demands government action over Monchique mining threat

Press release Environmental NGO A Nossa Terra demands government action once and for all over the threat of mining to Picota hillside, in Monchique. The threat which “somehow came to a standstill” six years ago, is once again menacing populations, and a local economy based on sustainable rural tourism.On the 23th of February 2017, a request by mining company Felmica was published in government newspaper Diário de República, reference: Aviso n.º 2052/2017, DR n.º 39, 2.ª Série de 23 de fevreiro. This was a repeat of the request Felmica made in 2011 for an area of 161.2 hectares. This time, …

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Nazaré Cabral

Rethinking the whole social security system

As a lecturer and researcher at the Centro de Investigação de Direito Económico, Financeiro e Fiscal (Research Centre on Economic, Financial and Fiscal Law) of the Faculty of Law in Lisbon, Nazaré Cabral has worked for two decades in areas such as Social Security, Public Finance and Economic and Monetary Union. She has written a large number of works in these areas since 200 and a member of the Scientific Committee of the 17th BIEN Congress. She regards the UBI as an “appealing measure”, but is hesitant about its implementation, saying that it is necessary to weigh up the “implications …

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Photos - Uwe Heitkamp

Another Festival

People who want to focus the general public’s attention on a special idea or product organise a festival. That is typical of our part of the world. A beer, wine, orange and medronho brandy festival, bird watching, ham, sausage, and confectionery festival. One festival follows on the heels of another throughout the year. They could also be called fairs or jamborees. What is certain is that the 5th Ameixial Walking Festival will be taking place this year from Friday 28 April to Monday 1 May in the southern municipality of Loulé. And in fact it’s good publicity for a different …

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