Short Stories

Saturday 13th April 2024.   Prologue: We had been vaccinated, twice in fact. When we all came down with Covid-19 at the same time, I had the growing sensation that something had gone very wrong. Either it was the vaccine from the small hospital in Monchique that gave me the shot, or we’d caught it at the EB23 Manuel de Nascimento school in Monchique, where the BRIDGE club met. The auditorium had probably not been disinfected and there we were, trapped: two dozen decision-makers from various associations, companies and institutions, as well as politicians. That was in mid-May 2022 and …

Saturday, 6th April  2024. Water is not only the basis of life for animals and plants, but is also expected to become a contested resource in parts of the world in the coming decades. Climate change, wars, conflicts and other crises are exacerbating the already unequal access to water. According to UN figures, global water stress, i.e. the proportion of water withdrawn for use in industry, agriculture or private households in relation to available water, was manageable at 18.2 per cent in 2020. In 2022, however, 2.4 billion people were living in areas that are exposed to extreme water stress …

Saturday, the 30th of March 2024. Electric mobility: in the first two months of the year, more than 797,500 charges were made on the Mobi.E network in Portugal. So far this year, this amounts to an increase of 65 per cent in comparison with last year. More than 398,000 top-ups were recorded in February, representing a 73 per cent increase on the same month in 2023. Energy consumption totalled more than 7,890,000 kWh, an increase of 93% compared to the same period last year. The charging network continues to grow, along with the number of electric vehicles in use in …

Saturday 23rd March 2024. Market gardening – the worldwide trend of small-scale farming based on the use of organic and regenerative farming techniques has arrived in the Algarve. More and more farms are offering their produce at farmers’ markets from Lagos to Tavira; some even deliver a weekly vegetable box to your doorstep. If you haven’t come across the term “market gardening” yet, in a nutshell, it’s all about small-scale intensive farms and smallholdings that grow a diversity of vegetable and fruit crops and sell their produce directly to consumers through local farmers’ markets and on-farm stalls, or local grocery …

Saturday 16th March 2024. The people’s sovereign voice has spoken. That’s the way it is in a democracy: the Socialist Party took a bit of a beating and emerged with a couple of black eyes. But the AD alliance of conservative parties didn’t win anything either. The democratic parties lost in these elections. Those who haven’t realised this yet will certainly find out soon enough. Sometimes a disease takes a while to spread; sometimes the patient dies slowly and agonisingly. Once it’s over, everyone says, “if only he had lived honestly, admitted the truth and refused the money; if the …

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 …

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! …

Saturday, 24th february 2024. In the light of current events, we’d like to postpone our story about the Navigator Company until next week and take the opportunity to ask what happens when a need is greater than the services on offer? What happens when an association looking after a town’s abandoned and sick animals, dogs and cats, providing them with food, shelter and medical attention, runs out of money, as the task is proving simply too big and the need far greater than can be remedied with the funds that the association has available? This situation leaves only two possibilities: …

Saturday, 17th february 2024. The European Investment Bank (ElB) is the European Union’s long-term lending institution, owned by its 27 Member States. It finances sound investments that contribute to EU policy objectives. EIB’s projects strengthen competitiveness, drive innovation, promote sustainable development, enhance social and territorial cohesion, and support a fair and swift transition to climate neutrality. ECO123 took a closer look at the bank’s activities. The EIB Group, which also includes the European Investment Fund (EIF), underwrote a total of €88 billion in new financing for over 900 projects in 2023. These commitments are expected to mobilise around €320 billion in investment, …

Saturday 10th February 2024. Portugal has 308 municipalities. One of these is Torres Vedras. Located 54 km north-west of Lisbon, it covers an area of 407 km². The medium-sized city, which is home to 83,072 people (2021 census) and spreads across 13 parishes, is governed by the Socialist Party and its mayor Laura Maria Jesus Rodrigues. Last week, on 31 January, the municipality’s Climate Action Plan was presented to the public at a well-attended event in the auditorium of the Environmental Education Centre. The city’s inhabitants now have the opportunity to comment on it publicly from 2 to 15 February. …