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Saturday 16th March 2024. The people’s sovereign voice has spoken. That’s the way it is in a democracy: the Socialist Party took a bit of a beating and emerged with a couple of black eyes. But the AD alliance of conservative parties didn’t win anything either. The democratic parties lost in these elections. Those who haven’t realised this yet will certainly find out soon enough. Sometimes a disease takes a while to spread; sometimes the patient dies slowly and agonisingly. Once it’s over, everyone says, “if only he had lived honestly, admitted the truth and refused the money; if the …

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 23rd September 2023. For the first time, an international research team has quantified all nine planetary stress limits, which, taken together, define humanity’s safe margin of manoeuvre. In doing so, the scientists are providing a detailed overview of the dwindling resilience of our planet. Global warming, biosphere, deforestation, pollutants such as plastics, nitrogen cycles and freshwater: six out of the nine planetary limits have already been exceeded as we speak. At the same time, the pressure exerted by global processes is mounting. This is shown by a new study published in the journal Science Advances by scientists working with …

Saturday 16th September 2023. Imagine your home bank starting to erect a new building made of glass, becoming transparent.* As in: from today onwards it will publish all available figures, giving detailed information on what it does with your money, the capital of its customers? To start with, it will tell you how it is different from all other banks. It will no longer invest the collected capital of its customers in companies sustaining climate change, the heat and drought of summer: GALP, REPSOL, The Navigator Company… imagine: no more funds for BP, Exxon, ELF totalenergies and so on and so …

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 2nd September 2023. If you are able to provide the police (GNR) in Monchique or the CID (PJ) in Portimão with relevant information on the forest fires that occurred on Tuesday, 15 August in Chilrão (near Marmelete) and on Monday, 28 August at Picota (near Alferce), information leading to the identification, arrest and incarceration of the arsonists, ECO123 magazine will pay you a 1,000 euro reward. This is only the beginning – we do hope that Monchique City Hall will join us and increase the reward, so the arsonists may be caught. In times of climate change any native …

Getting to know Portugal also means getting to know its culture and its climate, its people and its regional history. Situated in the mountain range of the same name, Monchique lies in the far southwestern corner of Portugal. Caldas de Monchique marks the starting point and the finishing point of our guided Monchique Mountain Hike. On the first day guests make their own way by train to Portimão and on by bus to Caldas de Monchique (VAMUS, Line 94) to get to know the village and the accommodation (Orientation Day). The hiking guide, having lived and worked here for donkey’s …

Saturday the 4th of March 2023. The other day I received a strange phone call relating to the theatre review we published last week. „This is not what we agreed!“ – the caller shouted into the phone and into my ear. First off I increased the distance of the phone to my ear and replied that nothing had been agreed as to the review, as I don’t enter into any agreements when I write something. Freedom of thought reigns supreme, both for the theatre as for the press. Or am I wrong? 25 April forever! If you ask me, I …

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 …