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Saturday 14th January 2023. Today’s big news was this: humanity has crossed the threshold of eight billion. So what do the good teachers of Portugal do? What will we remember them for? That’s right, they’re on strike. Once again. This time the issue is their career paths within the state school system. They are striking because they are altruistically thinking of their missed prospects of promotion. Very funny. Just visualise this. Those poor poor teachers. Fair enough, they are not exactly in a good place. Entry-level salaries are meagre, not even reaching 1,000 euros. And this after spending four to …

“This is a book about our future.” These are the first words of “Earth4All”, published by the Club of Rome. Its subheading declares it to be a Survival Guide for our planet. Here are some quotes: “We all know that we have to put a stop to the extreme poverty affecting billions of people. We know that we have to resolve the galloping inequality. We know that we need an energy revolution. We know that our industrial diet is damaging our health and that the way we produce our food is destroying nature, triggering a sixth mass extinction of animal …

Per Espen Stoknes was born in Alesund, Norway, in 1967. He is a psychologist with a PhD in economics and chairs the Centre for Green Growth at the Norwegian Business School. He also spearheads the Business School’s Master of Management programme “Green Growth” and consults widely. A serial entrepreneur and co-founder of the clean-tech company GasPlas, he has also written several books and has been invited to participate in several TED talks. In Earth for All, at the Club of Rome, he belonged to the modelling team and the coordinating team who wrote the book. You can also find his …

Lesley Martin is 76 years old and is still teaching and practising permaculture. Her father was in the RAF, so she moved around a lot as a child, finding it difficult to describe where she comes from: “I was born in Wales, but my attachment to Wales is slight. I studied Architecture at university, but I really wanted to be a farmer…” After four years, she realised she absolutely did not want to be an architect and quit. This greatly upset her father, yet, some years later, he gave her the money to set up her own farm in Cornwall. …

Paulo Alves is 52 years old and was elected Mayor of Monchique on 26 September 2021. Before that, he worked as a bank manager at Caixa Agrícola, Banco Espírito Santo and Novo Banco. ECO123 interviewed the new Socialist mayor and his deputy, Humberto Sério, at a business lunch invitation. Transparency note: lunch was paid for by the Council.   Do you remember the forest fire in Monchique in August 2018? Paulo Alves: Yes, I remember it perfectly.   It was more than four years ago. The trial at Portimão Court was cancelled before it even started. The investigating magistrate didn’t …

Last Saturday, 30 July, ECO123 publicly presented its sprinkler system for the prevention of forest fires. There’s a long story behind this whole process. California has already been constantly devastated by fires, but now they’re also happening with alarming regularity in France, Australia, Italy, Germany, and, of course, Portugal and Spain. Over the last few weeks, there have been some extremely serious forest fires in Europe. Have we already entered the Torrid Age of climate change? ECO123 online has long been concerned about the theme of forest fires and our website offers practical tips about the steps we can all …

Saturday, the 17th of December 2022 Now, the other day I was reading in ECO123 that the town of Monchique was threatened with extinction. And the same magazine carried an online job advert. What can I say? I’ll blame coincidence for the fact that I left Leipzig, unable to resist my curiosity, and started on my way to Monchique, nestling in the mountains of the same name. I wanted that job. And here is my story.   Travelling is supposed to be fun; it should be safe, as fast as possible and cheap too of course. Now for years we …

Saturday 3rd December 2022. So these days Monchique is hosting a walking festival. In the run-up to the event, a lavish publicity campaign was already announcing, in several languages “hikes along the waterways, workshops, shows and talks”. This all sounds like relaxation, harmony, tourism in touch with nature. By the looks of it, a major event with plenty of foreign visitors might be in store. I’m one of those foreign visitors. I’ve been coming here for years, and have friends here that I like to visit. If it wasn’t for them I would probably choose different destinations – because I …

Saturday 19th November 2022. “We can say that we have achieved a great deal, but we have had to adapt” to many new challenges, said the Mayor of São Brás de Alportel, Vítor Guerreiro, at the press conference held at the Hotel Rural/Restaurante Rocha da Gralheira on Thursday 10 November. Elected to serve from 2021 to 2025, the municipal executive told the 30 journalists present about the main achievements and challenges that the Council had encountered during its first year of office. It was a year marked by the global crisis caused by the war between Russia and Ukraine, the …

Saturday the 15th of October 2022. Today I would like to tell you about a book that is well worth reading, published in both Portuguese and English. This is in fact a publication that remains very topical today. The two authors offer up the 200 most important plants forming part of the natural world of Portugal‘s southwestern coast, so readers can get to know them, and have left this work for all eternity. Comprising 256 pages, this book forms an indispensable part of a sustainable life. It‘s like the salt in the soup and self-published, in the way everything that’s …