Interviews

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 …

Versatility is one of his favourite words, almost as if he believes that, once we have come into the world, we are ready for anything, for whatever the Universe wants to put in-front of us. That is why, from writing for a newspaper, where he spent nine years as a translator, Igor Duarte has moved into the hotel business and spent five years at the reception desk of a hotel. Today he dedicates body and soul to a new challenge: the kitchen of the A Villa restaurant in Salir. In this restaurant run by Mónica Matias, his sister-in-law, it is …

Saturday 4th September 2021 Modern life has caught up with Monchique too, a little while ago already actually. However, the old traditional life remains alive on the Monchique mountains, at an altitude of 500 metres above sea level. The novelties came creeping up the hills and mountains over the past decades, on their way from Portimão and Lisbon, but also with tourism from abroad. According to the tourism authority, the mountain summit of Foía, with an elevation of 902 metres, is the second-most visited spot in the Algarve. The best example for Modern Life is fashion and its sometimes erratic …

Saturday the 28th of August 2021 Not a single woman candidate in sight. Really, is it only men on these election posters? Over half of humanity isn’t standing in this election. This is just not on. I am observing the local elections with the eyes of a journalist, a foreigner from a EU country, not in Afghanistan, no, in Portugal. And what is being offered to me, dear Politics, in Monchique and many other communities across the country, is not the representative choice of female candidates I’d like to see. On top of that we have that guy from our …