Portugal

In Portugal, José Pacheco, aged 63, is a symbol of alternative school education. This short grey-haired man with bright eyes and a moustache looks like the quintessential friendly teacher. But his words are radical: “Today the people of the 21st century are being taught by teachers from the 20th century using methods from the 19th century.” In his view, classes grouped by age, exams and marks have no scientific or legal basis. Above all, he knows that there is a completely different way of doing things. As a young teacher, he started to gradually reform a state school with two …

Recently, a crowd funding campaign attracted my journalistic attention. In it, a school wanted to implement an education project through crowd funding. So, I took €50 from the business till and invested it in the building of a new, year 9 classroom at the Waldorf school in São João dos Montes near Vila Franca da Xira. The project was going to cost €12,500 to implement and in the end this sum was indeed raised. And, as we at ECO123 only tell stories of success, I planned to make a visit to the school in the electric vehicle that belongs to …

Today, public spaces are dictated to by driving. In most of our cities, it is actually no longer possible to cover a distance on foot. Cities are built for cars, not for people. Instead of designing places where people can live together, town planners create through roads, bypasses and arterial roads. Pedestrians in natural spaces are of no importance in the city any more, or in the countryside, for that matter, not even old trees. They are chopped down. Asphalt always has priority. Nature is part of the decor. And because that’s the way it is, urban dwellers have to …

Every forest fire makes our country poorer, much poorer than we can imagine. It sets a whole avalanche of consequences in motion. More CO2 in the atmosphere causes temperatures to rise. Heat waves, torrential rainfall, storms and soil erosion are the consequences of climate change, which is itself aggravated again and again and more and more by forest fires. With every house that burns down, the risks increase, and hence the cost of insurance policies. The variety of flora and fauna declines. Agriculture and forestry are destroyed, bee populations die out. With every forest fire, there is less interest in …

José Júlio Brito’s story began in 2010, on the day when he left his home, in Vila Real de Santo António, with his rucksack on his back, and set off looking for the answers to his inner search. His original intention was to walk without any particular destination and to face up to the limitations that he had placed upon himself, fleeing from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. However, after ten days’ solid walking, he found that his route had taken him to Fátima. Along the way, he earned the nickname of the ‘Algarve Pilgrim’ and every kilometre …

And then one morning, the time had come, Jürgen Kahlisch recalls. On a cool April morning, he left his friends’ flat in Berlin and closed the door behind him. The hiker took a deep breath and shook the night-time frost out of his bones. Now lying ahead of him were six months and 4,000 kilometres from northeast to southwest. Travelling on foot through Western Europe was something he’d wanted to do for a long time, and now, with every step, the plan was increasingly becoming reality. It was April 2007. Through the Harz and the Rhön mountains, past Frankfurt am …

At a time when directives are increasingly calling for the use of environmentally-friendly energies, how many electric vehicles does Eva have? Just one. Our investments in the fleet haven’t – yet – been made in electric vehicles or ones fuelled by natural gas, for two reasons: the possibility of investing in environmental measures announced by the government was limited to public or semi-public transport companies: Carris, STCP, Transportes Coletivos do Barreiro… and the National Association of Heavy Road Passenger Transport Operators (ANTROP), which represents us, promptly published a letter setting out our position… And, when it comes to buses used …

You covered some 3,500 kilometres between Lisbon and Athens. How did you travel? We left Lisbon with a rucksack on our backs. We walked and hitch-hiked. What route did you follow? We caught a ferry from Lisbon to Almada. From there, we started walking in the direction of Évora, and we also hitched lifts. After this came Madrid, and then we changed route and headed for San Sebastian. How many days did it take you altogether to reach Greece? We set off on 9th July and our goal was to reach Athens by 15th August. This was the date we’d …

Could you introduce yourself briefly to our readers? Henning Vogt: I work as an educator in child and youth psychiatry in Lübeck. I learned two professions, firstly as a joiner and then as an educator. While I was doing my second training course, I knew that I would go travelling as a journeyman joiner. I set off on 2nd January, 2006. What is your speciality? Building furniture from real wood with classical associations. When did your time as a journeyman start and how did it go? In Bad Oldesloe, in Northern Germany. That was also the centre of the area …

There are ever more movements appearing linked to sustainable mobility and the pleasure of being amid Nature.
Do politicians also take walks in the forest? I enjoy walking, yes, and I go hiking, above all, in the Serra do Caldeirão, beginning in the area around Alcoutim and passing through Corte Velha, on the Via Algarviana… How many kilometres would you say you walk per year? Lots. I go walking every day. I do about 10 kilometres, either walking or running, as part of my personal training. I don’t do many walks in the forest specifically… I’d say about 100 kilometres a …