Interviews

Dr Suzanne Simard is a professor of forest ecology teaching at the University of British Columbia in Canada whose work focuses on how trees communicate with other trees. The passionate educator and TedTalk speaker was given an exclusive platform in the film “Intelligent Trees” to tell the most interesting eco story of the year. Dr Simard used radioactive carbon to measure the flow and sharing of carbon between individual trees and species. She discovered that birch and Douglas fir share carbon. Birch trees receive extra carbon from Douglas firs when the birch trees lose their leaves, and birch trees supply …

We invited teacher and artist Ana Nunes (67 years old) for a conversation. She tells us: I’m from Monchique. I didn’t live here for many years, but I still have memories of what I learned from my family. ECO123 asks her about her memories of when the forest was managed in a sustainable way, before it was turned solely into a eucalyptus plantation.   The forest isn’t a sausage factory, is it? Um, um (She agrees). We need the forest to protect and save humanity, although people have always seen it as a source of income. Income, investment, profit. This …

INTERVIEW with Paula Policarpo, the president of Zero Desperdício (www.zerodesperdicio.pt), The Zero Waste project won first prize at the European Enterprise Promotion Awards (EEPA) 2020, in the category ‘Support to ecological market development and resources efficiency’. How do you see Portugal in the context of food waste in Europe? It’s estimated that every year about a million tons of food are thrown away. That is equivalent to wasting 50,000 meals a day, enough to cover the needs of the 360,000 Portuguese finding themselves in a situation of food poverty. I think that the biggest problem in Portugal is the lack of …

Manuel Malva was born in Coimbra in 1995, and, from an early age, he was encouraged to appreciate even the tiniest details of the natural world. At the age of seven, he began to photograph Nature, particularly birds, teaching himself to look them up afterwards in European bird guides, in order to identify the species he had photographed. Over time, his interest spread to other groups of fauna and flora, leading him to embark on an in-depth study of the ecology, behaviour and distribution of the wide range of species biodiversity in Portugal. His fascination with the dynamics of Nature …

Over the last thirty years, I have often been asked where I come from and where I was born. Does this matter? And, if so, why? What can you deduce from knowing that someone was born in Metz, Monchique or Minden? Isn’t it enough just to be European? What if the woman in the queue behind me asks me once again and I reply that I’m from Monchique? Will that be of any help to her? In what way? Does it explain anything about the person inside me? When she smiles and shakes her head, I look at her and …

How will it end? It’s the old motto: “trust is good, but control is better”. We are sitting in a small circus tent in Monchique, eagerly awaiting the performers. It’s dark and cosy. There are more than 500 people filling the tent tonight. There is still a quarter of an hour to go. In my mind, I’m thinking of a film about the acrobat Philippe Petit. He’s the man who, one day in August 1974, when I was a young man, I saw dancing whilst balancing on a high wire reaching more than 60 metres between the Twin Towers of …

It’s not yet too late to avoid the worst consequences of accelerating climate change – a position that can be justified by the mainstream scientific evidence available to us today. But governments and civil society must do something effective to lower our carbon footprint in the next ten years. So argues the leading UK environmentalist Jonathon Porritt in his new book Hope in Hell, due to be released this summer. Jonathon Porritt served as chair of the Ecology Party (now the UK Green Party) from 1979 to 1980 and from 1982 to 1984. He is a former director of Friends …

The latest trend in monoculture – apart from the super-intensive cultivation of olives and avocados – can be found under plastic on the southwest coast of the Alentejo. Seemingly endless rows of raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and strawberries stretch out in polytunnels in the Natural Park of the Southwest Alentejo and Vicentine Coast. In late 2019, the Portuguese government decided to expand agriculture in the park, a measure that has raised questions about law enforcement, natural values and who is actually monitoring the use of water in the area. “It’s turning into another Almería,” says Maurício, from Aljezur, concerned about the …

Municipalities and local representatives can be pioneers and drivers of deep decarbonisation and profound social transformation. This is the firm belief of BEACON, or “Bridging European and Local Climate Action”. The European project seeks to promote climate action, co-operation and learning amongst municipal representatives and the dissemination of good practices – in order to implement the Paris Agreement and the targets for 2030. Financed by Germany (the European country with the highest emissions and the sixth highest worldwide), in Portugal the project involves five municipalities and is coordinated by the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes – cE3c (Faculty …

When our behaviour and knowledge don’t match one another, this is known as Cognitive Dissonance. The term refers to a situation in which we have conflicting feelings, thoughts and behaviours, creating an uncomfortable inner tension. It only disappears when one or other of the components changes and harmony is restored. The Norwegian psychologist Dr Per Espen Stoknes writes that many people behave in the same way as smokers do, when it comes to climate change: I smoke. I also know smoking leads to cancer.* Action and knowledge are at odds with each other and generate the type of discomfort known …