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  In the night of Sunday, 5 August 2018, a swath of fire crawled over the Picota peak, from the north to the south of the Algarve, up the entire mountain and back again, destroying our beautiful mixed forest and gardens in Esgravatadouro near Caldas de Monchique on the southern side. Friends helped us fight the fire with buckets and hoses. Some of the fires would keep flaring up, but we didn’t give in nor did we accept to be evacuated. When the police did evacuate us we returned half an hour later to continue fighting the fire. No fire …

Saturday the 15th of January 2022. It happened in 2016 and in 2018, then again in 2020 and once more now in 2022: every other year Faro hosts a meeting of the International Community of the Friends of Solar Cooking and Baking, by the name of CONSOLFOOD. This time the meeting is taking place between Monday 24 January and Wednesday, 26 January, and this time under the conditions of a global pandemic the event is held online at www.consolfood.org. Many people in developing countries still burn wood, charcoal or even rubbish on open fireplaces for cooking. The reason they do …

  Are trees able to communicate with one another? Working independently from each other, the Canadian forest ecologist Suzanne Simard and the German forester warden Peter Wohlleben have discovered that trees are highly individual beings that have feelings, understand friendship, possess a mutual language and look after each other. This documentary examines the different ways in which trees communicate with one another, combining scientific research with the observations of a practising forest warden. The film also looks at how this knowledge may influence our relationship with the forest. Just below the forest floor lies the ‘Internet of the Forest’ , …

Saturday, July 11th, 2020 The place at the top is called Bemparece (“Good-looking”) and the name does justice to the beautiful view that you can have from there. We climbed up to the plateau where Ana Mira (67) and Carlos Abafa (75) used to pick chanterelles in wet winters. We are surrounded by cork-oaks, most of which have been burned. The blue sky appears amid the treetops and, in front of us, we can see the mountains. Just a few years ago, everything was different. There were lots of chestnut-trees and cork-oaks here, more than a hundred years old, whose …

There are regions and economic areas that are sustainable and others that are not. And all it took was for a virus to hitch a lift on the back of tourism, travelling around the world and spreading disease and death, to prove the absurdity that reigns in the hospitality industry. In other words, it is the virus that has shown us that there are limits to tourism in our lives. Is this coronavirus the beginning of the end for a generation accustomed to travelling without limits and the beginning of the end for the tourism sector? For more than 250 …

A change of course? Certainly. From this edition onwards, ECO123 will have a piece dedicated to transport. Three well-known politicians also sought to set their own course on Wednesday 13 May. In this final phase of the first wave of Covid-19, they went to visit the Autoeuropa factory in Palmela. But we haven’t forgotten about the fraudulent software that was installed in millions of Volkswagen diesel cars. It led to a wave of lawsuits being brought worldwide against the German automobile industry. We will cover the development of this story with reports on our website. And we understand that it …

What does this mean? ECO123 is keeping a close watch on the ecology and the economy with all sorts of stories behind the stories. For example, tomorrow, Saturday. 2020. We will all remember this year for a long time to come. The safety measures designed to protect our health against the Covid-19 pandemic are gradually being eased. After three months, what we are left with is the wreckage of an old economic system. Most planes will remain grounded for the time being. The car and aviation industries and their suppliers are promoting shorter working hours. Workers are set to be …

Sunday, 12th Abril 2020 By Uwe Heitkamp Since the publication of the Club of Rome’s first reports (The Limits of Growth, Meadows et al., 1972), there have been many heated debates about the limits of growth. And rightly so, as our civilisation is reliant upon energy being available. Having energy available requires, in turn, even more energy, which means that suppliers must produce more energy than is initially needed. This excess energy, defined in terms of production capacity, has been decreasing over the last few decades (since 1999) for fossil fuel energy sources, while it has been increasing for renewable …