Ecology

Saturday 25th November 2023. Implementing the goals stipulated in the Paris climate treaty of 2015, (COP 21), limiting global warming to significantly below two degree Celsius, if possible even to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial normal temperature, can only be achieved if humanity replaces fossil fuels by green, clean and sustainable technologies, for instance in electricity generation, mobility, food production, and so forth. However, climate neutrality cannot be achieved through technology and market dynamics. Involving citizens and local communities (cooperatives) in communal regions are decisive in shaping this transition in a democratic and fair way, and in order to …

Saturday 21st October 2023. Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Yellow Machines  first came close to me on a Tuesday, 29 August. They came so close that they did get me a bit wet with the sheer quantity of water they offloaded from the sky, over 3,000 litres after all, weighing three tons.  Their intended target was of course not me, but the last remains of a forest fire up on the summit of the Picota Mountain in Monchique, in southern Portugal. Yet it did prick my curiosity. The pilots had spotted the remains of a fire from the sky, …

Saturday 7th October 2023. The world is heading for a turning point – slowly, in slow-motion nearly. Every year things are becoming a bit hotter, every year there is a little less rain. Then there’s rain once more, all of a sudden, all at once and in huge quantities. Fertile soil, so important for agriculture, is flushed away. What remains is debris, stones, rocks, waste. In between the rare periods of rain, the industrial forests made up of eucalyptus and other species are burning, igniting in the process native forests, houses, cars, and so on, with some of the forest …

Saturday 30th September 2023. In the year 2020, every Portuguese citizen produced on average some 40 kg of plastic packaging waste. Across the EU, this places Portugal at the top of this particular ranking. If you look at an infographics published by Statista, only Ireland produces more waste per inhabitant (62 kg), followed by Hungary (47 kg), Germany (40 kg) and Estonia (40 kg), at a par with Portugal. According to the Eurostat data, Greece, Cyprus and Croatia produce the least plastic waste. On a global scale, dealing with waste is one of the most important environmental issues – and …

Saturday 9th September 2023. Sunday, 3 September. So I’m driving my electric car from São Brás de Alportel to Monchique, located in southern Portugal. At 10.54pm I become a witness, by chance and inadvertently, to a kind of spectacle that can really only take place under cover of darkness. I have to stop my car behind the refuse truck of the Camara Municipal de Loulé, as they are in the process of emptying a recycling container at the side of the road … Hang on though – … … what are they doing? The scene is playing out in front …

Saturday the 12th of August 2023. Gallows’ humour in our own backyard? ECO123 and the new Botanical Garden at Caldas de Monchique: it’s not that easy to be close to a forest fire and write a story about possible solutions to climate change. Where should this story begin, and where can it end? Baiona, Alentejo. A barbecue triggers this gigantic conflagration. So this time it’s a wood-fired grill. The list of stories surrounding the reasons behind forest fires is long. If no-one has deliberately started the fire, it was not caused by intent but by gross negligence; in any case …

Saturday the 5th of August 2023. And now for something completely different. Last March, biologist Sónia Soares fulfilled a long-held dream in her own garden. Taking a plot of 100 m² (5 x 20m) she planted a new young diverse forest consisting of 19 different species of trees and plants. How did she go about it, why did she do it, and what kind of methods did she employ, and not least what did this all cost, were questions ECO123 asked her during a visit to Algoz. Planting small forests the size of a tennis court in cities and towns …