Portugal

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that frequently gets described as in the vanguard of the copyleft (1) movement that seeks to build a rich public domain as an alternative to the traditional copyright with its “all rights reserved”. To learn more about the organisation, its objectives and actions in Portugal, ECO123 talked with Teresa Nobre.   ECO123: What exactly is Creative Commons and what is its positioning in Portugal? Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organisation that provides free of charge licenses for the utilisation of works and materials protected by author royalty and other rights as well as …

On the outskirts of Lagos, in Sargaçal, Guillaume Leroux, aged 49, Luso-French – or Franco-Algarve -, has been producing Algarve’s first organic wine since 2012. ECO123 set off to meet him on Monte da Casteleja, the 6.5 hectare estate he inherited from his mother’s side of the family, to find out just what is and how you produce organic wine. Guillaume Leroux (GL) – Aged 18, following the death of my father, I returned to France and began to study agriculture, which had always been my interest. I began with landscaping and parks before moving onto general agriculture and cattle …

How come almost half of humanity spends all its time talking about food, about the best ingredients and wonderful recipes, only to then inflict exactly the opposite on their bodies, in most cases? Food that is too full of fat and calories, and often not at all healthy; most people eat supermarket meat produced though intensive livestock farming, where the origin of all those chops and steaks and sausages is by no means transparent. Many people don’t even want to know. Are our eating and drinking habits falling victim to the thoughtlessness of our era of fast living? Just don’t …

‘Mestre de terra’ * Joaquim Carneiro welcomed ECO123 to the warehouse where he practises his profession at the premises of Docapesca (1) by the river Arade and close to the town of Parchal (municipality of Lagoa). Nearly 84, master Joaquim still works every day, seated among kilometres of fishing nets which he mends with enviable skill and vigour. His discourse is frequently inflamed with the passion of those who still argue for what they believe in and who believe in a better future. Such as when he defends the indispensable practice of the closed season to protect species, or when …

A second-hand store guide (Algarve) Born out of creativity and crisis, second-hand shops have been proliferating throughout the country, buying and selling almost anything you can imagine. Apart from cars, it is the gold business which has the biggest market share, since the Portuguese have always bought this commodity as a security in times of financial difficulty. Clothing, furniture, electrical appliances and similar goods used to be sold largely by charity shops, to which people donated things they didn’t want any more. But that is no longer the case and buying and selling these articles (even on consignment) has become …

It’s not every day that you meet the Minister, if you don’t live in the capital yourself, and even if you do, the Minister himself doesn’t spend every day in the capital. He often travels around the country, sometimes even abroad. Around midday he was expected at a lunch with the businesspeople of the Portuguese and Foreign Chambers of Industry and Commerce. You paid fifty euros for admission, plus VAT, and then were happy to wait for the Minister. Sometimes you wait your whole life for something, often you don’t know why, almost always without an obvious reason. Waiting is …

‘A Rocha’, an organisation that is present in 20 countries (including the UK and the USA) came into being in the Algarve in 1985. It represents the fulfilment of the dream of Peter Harris, an Anglican priest and ornithologist, who decided to include nature conservation as a missionary objective in the church’s social agenda at a time when the environment and its defence were concepts that were little discussed in Portugal. And ‘A Rocha’ continues in the name because its founder and now honorary president speaks of the major contribution made by Portugal to the ‘Latinism’ of the project. ECO123 …

Just a few minutes from Faro is ‘Lura’, an educational farm set up with the motto of ‘learning naturally’, where environmental education is taught together with scientific knowledge. ECO123 talked to its founder and mentor, Sara Vítor. ECO123: What is the ‘Lura’ project? Sara Vítor: It began as a kind of way out for a teacher who didn’t get a teaching post. It’s a way of continuing teaching and working with children, linking this to my own personal evolution but returning to my origins. That’s why I returned to ‘Lura’, which is my family’s ‘burrow’. In this space in the …

Everything began in 2011 with a guerrilla gardening campaign, Luís Bello Moraes (41), founder of Portalegre in Transition, told ECO123 on the patio of the FICAR cultural centre. They sowed thousands of sunflower seeds in all of the public gardens and parks of the city. And just as soon as they began to get growing, the mentors behind the initiatives met up with residents and invited them to plant vegetables in between the plants. In a shopping centre, the Transition group has its “Den” that serves as the surroundings for both tranquillity and relaxation and where they discuss and decide …

Annelieke van der Swijs (48), Sara Carvalho (40) and Sandra Rocha (26) work alongside over 30 other members of the Coimbra Transition group. They deal both with social needs and the ecological and economic problems existing in this city of 145,000 inhabitants and temporary home to over 30,000 students. Everything started in 2009 with the organic garden in the Coimbra Botanical Garden and the “Little Botanical Market” providing spices and aromatic herbs. In 2013, the association was founded to a large extent because the Municipal Council and other local entities were only willing to take the Transition group seriously when …