Portugal

Here is some more good news! Over the next ten years, ECO123’s employees, friends, sponsors, subscribers and customers will plant more than 1,000 different young trees in the new botanical garden of Caldas de Monchique. To plant a tree, it’s not enough just to make a hole and put a plant in it. A biotope is a complex system that lives by giving and receiving, waiting and growing, while also resting in order to gain new strength and the ability to interact. This story will cover everything that is needed to make a tree feel good on the planet Earth. …

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 …

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 …

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 …