Interviews

Saturday 13th April 2024.   Prologue: We had been vaccinated, twice in fact. When we all came down with Covid-19 at the same time, I had the growing sensation that something had gone very wrong. Either it was the vaccine from the small hospital in Monchique that gave me the shot, or we’d caught it at the EB23 Manuel de Nascimento school in Monchique, where the BRIDGE club met. The auditorium had probably not been disinfected and there we were, trapped: two dozen decision-makers from various associations, companies and institutions, as well as politicians. That was in mid-May 2022 and …

Saturday, 23rd December 2023. Many of us view driving – so comfortable, isn’t it? – as a liberation from arduous walking. As for me, I’ve been fighting for years against the noise levels of the Algarve Autodrome, where at this time of day test drives are once more taking place in preparation of some car race or other. It’s the combustion engine that transforms petrol into smelly exhaust fumes, deafening to boot when the southwesterly blows from the Atlantic, bringing with it the never-ending noise. These days, quiet, clean and environmentally-friendly alternatives are available in motoring. There just needs to …

Saturday 9th December 2023. On Saturday, 25 November 2023, the Coopérnico Cooperative held its Electoral Assembly to vote in the executive organs for the coming 4 years, followed straight afterwards by an Extraordinary General Assembly, to discuss and approve the planned activities and budget for 2024. That day was also particularly significant as the cooperative was celebrating 10 years of life. After the electoral act, when the participants went to the auditorium, there was a particularly emotional moment with the send-off of Nuno Brito Jorge, President of the board since the beginning. Living in Barcelona for the past three years, …

Planting trees is the most effective measure against the overheating of the Earth. Maybe in a few years‘ time humanity will come to the realisation that part of our salvation lies in rebelling, i.e planting trees as if our lives depended on it and reanimating landscapes wherever possible… This is the way 48-year old Jochen Schilk puts it in his book Re-Greening the World “50 infectious stories about planting trees”. Rarely have I been sent a book in such an unconventional way. One Friday morning as I opened my letterbox down by the road there it was, wrapped in brown …

Born in Porto on 10 May 1951, José Francisco de Almeida Pacheco is a teacher, anthropologist and pedagogue. ECO123 had a chat with this resourceful educationalist, who has brought greater democracy to educational management, and asked him what value nature has in education in Portugal. Do you think that nowadays, when UN ambassador Jane Goodall is saying that human beings, the most intelligent creatures on Earth, are destroying their planet, it still makes sense to educate children? This was a question I asked 55 years ago, in 1968, when I was living in a country that was under a dictatorial …

What is wrong and what is right? If only this were always so clear. A decision had to be taken. It’s always easy to be wise after the event. On the morning of 3 August 2018, a group of men assembled at the Lisbon HQ to discuss the day’s business, weighing up the pros and cons. Should they switch off the overland power lines in southern Alentejo and the Algarve, or should they allow them to carry on as normal? This was the kind of day when anything could happen: an ideal day for a misadventure, an ideal day for …

Per Espen Stoknes was born in Alesund, Norway, in 1967. He is a psychologist with a PhD in economics and chairs the Centre for Green Growth at the Norwegian Business School. He also spearheads the Business School’s Master of Management programme “Green Growth” and consults widely. A serial entrepreneur and co-founder of the clean-tech company GasPlas, he has also written several books and has been invited to participate in several TED talks. In Earth for All, at the Club of Rome, he belonged to the modelling team and the coordinating team who wrote the book. You can also find his …

Lesley Martin is 76 years old and is still teaching and practising permaculture. Her father was in the RAF, so she moved around a lot as a child, finding it difficult to describe where she comes from: “I was born in Wales, but my attachment to Wales is slight. I studied Architecture at university, but I really wanted to be a farmer…” After four years, she realised she absolutely did not want to be an architect and quit. This greatly upset her father, yet, some years later, he gave her the money to set up her own farm in Cornwall. …

Paulo Alves is 52 years old and was elected Mayor of Monchique on 26 September 2021. Before that, he worked as a bank manager at Caixa Agrícola, Banco Espírito Santo and Novo Banco. ECO123 interviewed the new Socialist mayor and his deputy, Humberto Sério, at a business lunch invitation. Transparency note: lunch was paid for by the Council.   Do you remember the forest fire in Monchique in August 2018? Paulo Alves: Yes, I remember it perfectly.   It was more than four years ago. The trial at Portimão Court was cancelled before it even started. The investigating magistrate didn’t …

It’s a small house with two bedrooms in a quiet valley. Casa da Avó, which was once a ruin, comes together with a small permaculture area, the sheep Debbie, two chickens, and a sense of a “green” mission undertaken  by Margarida Almeida and João Spencer, a couple who found their “paradise” here in 1996.   Margarida (and João) used to live in Lisbon. How did you find this place, in Salir, here in the midst of nature? João was born in Mozambique, I was born in Brazil. My father was a traveling salesman, who was in partnership with an Italian …