Portugal

When I was still a child, at the age of eight, I learnt in geography that there were still under three billion people living on the planet. The amount of life concealed by this number meant nothing to me. Now I’m 50 years older and, in that time, the world’s population is supposed to have almost trebled. Is that right? …

In remote regions, schools are shrinking, many are being closed. The pupils are being concentrated in centralised schools, have to travel long distances and become estranged from their families. For young families with children, life in the countryside is becoming even more unattractive. They are moving away, and the schools are shrinking even further. What is to be done? This …

Let’s begin with a brief history. In 2003, Portugal was hit by one of its greatest ever heat waves. The country’s central region – in the area between Lisbon, Leiria and Coimbra – was the worst affected by forest fires. With temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius, a relative humidity of less than 30% and winds of more than 30 kilometres …

Terra Crua is a different kind of company that works on the basis of an innovative model of ecological design. Terra Crua brings together engineering and architecture, landscaping and ecology and the principles of permaculture. A new concept of design that combines principles and strategies that go beyond sustainability and includes innovation, economic viability and social and environmental responsibility in …

How far can we still travel using our own bodies and on our own feet? Monchique Mountain Marathon 2017 is an offer to take you on several different guided walks and hikes. Between Christmas and the New Year, you can discover the Algarve uplands on twelve paths, some longer some shorter. Being out and about on foot opens up a …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …