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The Navigator Company – a subsidiary of SEMAPA PLC

Saturday 9th March 2024. Using the forest as a resource for doing business – with eucalyptus monocultures – is something that always works in favour of the Navigator Company. Even after a forest fire, woodland owners can still send the scorched trunks of their eucalyptus trees to the cellulose factory. The wood is lighter in that case: the Navigator Company takes the wood, pays a lower price and can still use it to produce paper. No problem at all. “Raising funds” has always been important for the Navigator Company: their cash flow has to be carefully managed. So, ten years …

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Dirty money? That’ll be from Brussels and Luxembourg.

Saturday 2nd March 2024. Can you smell the money? My first forest fire arrived without any declaration of war, yet we are now engaged in a battle that has been going on for a lot longer than the war in Ukraine. It’s a climate war, which started on 11 September 2003 with a fire that blazed its way through Monchique to Silves and then came back, via Aljezur, right into the heart of the Odemira municipality, destroying over 40,000 hectares of forest before finally being extinguished only a week later. 400 km² multiplied by 20,000 tons of CO2 per km²! …

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Interview with CEO from Pepper Motion

Saturday, 23rd December 2023. Many of us view driving – so comfortable, isn’t it? – as a liberation from arduous walking. As for me, I’ve been fighting for years against the noise levels of the Algarve Autodrome, where at this time of day test drives are once more taking place in preparation of some car race or other. It’s the combustion engine that transforms petrol into smelly exhaust fumes, deafening to boot when the southwesterly blows from the Atlantic, bringing with it the never-ending noise. These days, quiet, clean and environmentally-friendly alternatives are available in motoring. There just needs to …

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Scraping around this bend together – or not?

Saturday 16th december 2023. Many of us view driving – so comfortable, isn’t it? – as a liberation from arduous walking. As for me, I’ve been fighting for years against the noise levels of the Algarve Autodrome, where at this time of day  test drives are once more taking place in preparation of some car race or other. It’s the combustion engine that transforms petrol into smelly exhaust fumes, deafening to boot when the south-westerly blows across from the Atlantic, by bringing with it the never-ending noise. These days, quiet, clean and environmentally-friendly alternatives are available in motoring. There just …

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Small is beautiful – Part 2

Saturday 2nd December 2023. Picking up the story from last week… Implementing the goals stipulated in the Paris climate treaty of 2015, (COP 21), limiting global warming to significantly below two degree Celsius, if possible even to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial normal temperature, can only be achieved if humanity replaces fossil fuels by green, clean and sustainable technologies: for instance in the production of electricity, mobility, in food production, and so forth. However, climate neutrality cannot be achieved through technology and market dynamics. Involving citizens and local communities (cooperatives) in communal regions are decisive in shaping this transition …

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IS SMALL BEAUTIFUL?

Saturday 25th November 2023. Implementing the goals stipulated in the Paris climate treaty of 2015, (COP 21), limiting global warming to significantly below two degree Celsius, if possible even to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial normal temperature, can only be achieved if humanity replaces fossil fuels by green, clean and sustainable technologies, for instance in electricity generation, mobility, food production, and so forth. However, climate neutrality cannot be achieved through technology and market dynamics. Involving citizens and local communities (cooperatives) in communal regions are decisive in shaping this transition in a democratic and fair way, and in order to …

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Continuation: Those Magnificent Men in Their Yellow Flying Machines.

Saturday 28th October 2023. When it is winter in Europe, they fly to Chile: it is summer there and they spend their time extinguishing forest fires in South America. “Chile is tough,” says Carlos Arroyo Munõz. “There are many arsonists there. There is far greater political discontent in South America than in Europe. The effects of climate change and El Niño are more pronounced,” he says. Sleeping at night In Alvor, there are always three pilots and two Airtracker Fireboss AT 802 aircraft with a capacity of 3.8 tons of liquid. Somebody might get sick. They work for 22 to …

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Those Magnificent Men in Their Yellow Flying Machines.

Saturday 21st October 2023. Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Yellow Machines  first came close to me on a Tuesday, 29 August. They came so close that they did get me a bit wet with the sheer quantity of water they offloaded from the sky, over 3,000 litres after all, weighing three tons.  Their intended target was of course not me, but the last remains of a forest fire up on the summit of the Picota Mountain in Monchique, in southern Portugal. Yet it did prick my curiosity. The pilots had spotted the remains of a fire from the sky, …

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What’s the value of Nature?

From time immemorial, Nature has been providing us with our essentials, including fruit, cereals, fish, meat and wood. Clean air and clean water are other free gifts of Nature. Economists group all these aspects together under the concept of natural capital. Put simply, natural capital is defined as the stock of natural goods and services, such as soil, forest or the sea, which provide fresh air, for example, or drinking water. Yet it is, in fact, problematical to attempt to place a value on the services of nature. If humans want to use the natural resources in a gentle and …

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Have a nice weekend

What is wrong and what is right? If only this were always so clear. A decision had to be taken. It’s always easy to be wise after the event. On the morning of 3 August 2018, a group of men assembled at the Lisbon HQ to discuss the day’s business, weighing up the pros and cons. Should they switch off the overland power lines in southern Alentejo and the Algarve, or should they allow them to carry on as normal? This was the kind of day when anything could happen: an ideal day for a misadventure, an ideal day for …

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