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Eco123 Revista da Economia e Ecologia
Saturday 23rd November 2024.
Jeremy Walton is 47 years old and a qualified computer technician. He went to school in Monchique and Portimão and studied in Faro. Jeremy has lived in Monchique for 42 years and has a very special hobby. He gardens and has a thing for trees and plants. Is this because he has developed an understanding of nature?
ECO123 interviewed him while he was working in the botanical garden and wanted to find out what motivates him…
ECO123: Jeremy, you have lived in Monchique for a long time, since you were a child. You haven’t become a hunter, nor do you take part in rallies, although you drive a 4×4. What drives you then? What motivates you to lead a modest life in Monchique, in the mountains of the Algarve?
Jeremy Walton: For as long as I can remember, 47 years now, I have been involved with the biotope that surrounds me, the forest, nature. This includes the elements of earth, water and air. Fire came later. Even as a child, I realised that I wasn’t alone in this biotope. In addition to the people and animals, there’s also the forest and the plants. And I feel at home and at ease in the forest. Living in balance with all the elements motivates me to be present here instead of living in a big city where nature is no longer tangible. We humans are part of it after all.
ECO123: “Subdue the world”, that’s what religions demand of mankind. Is that why there are so many wars on our planet Earth, especially the war against nature? Man’s main interest is in plundering his environment. Keyword: resources. Forest equals wood equals paper equals furniture equals forest fires. Is there still such a thing as respect for creation, i.e. for preserving our natural heritage? The plundering of resources can be applied to all areas: crude oil, gas, coal, but also iron, gold, lithium, granite and marble. The list is much longer and is almost unlimited. Isn’t it incredibly difficult to lead a life that is modest, to have the goal in life of living in harmony with nature?
Jeremy Walton: That is certainly true for the majority of humanity. Modesty is a virtue, but those who live in this world only ever strive for growth – external growth. It’s always about money, about status symbols, such as cars, clothes, a mansion, and, down to the smallest details of daily life, about envy, jealousy and resentment. I try to withdraw from this negative influence and leave more and more room for positive influences. I make music in a group, and I garden, but I am also now building sprinkler systems to stop fire in its tracks. I have also been involved in exposing pig farm pollution, which fortunately is now much less than it was, seeing as the rivers are now running cleaner. Now it is stored in tanks rather than dumped in the valleys.
ECO123: Interesting. You just mentioned growth. Let’s go back to that again. This term runs through our lives like an incurable disease. In business, in science, but also in our private lives. Is enough never enough?
Workshop (10h)
7 & 8 December
Tel: +351 967 195 930 theobald.tiger8550@gmail.com
7 & 8 December
Tel: +351 967 195 930 theobald.tiger8550@gmail.com
Jeremy Walton: Look, I’ve lived in Monchique all my life. We used to be something of a lively mountain village, a community with traditions. Then the paper industry came along and planted the seeds of growth in this community of ours, showing that you could do much more with your land. The question circulated in the crowd that you could make as much as possible with very little labour, so why not plant your land with eucalyptus instead of native trees that hardly produce anything except a few fruits like acorns and every ten years a little cork, then chestnuts and maybe a few mushrooms, potatoes and cherries? Eucalyptus is the miracle tree with which money can be earned quickly; it is felled after eight years, transported by lorry to the paper industry and the next trunk sprouts directly from the roots, which can be cut again and again. You hardly have to get your fingers dirty, and the money grows by itself. That’s the idea that the paper industry has instilled in the minds of the people of Monchique. That’s the narrative: easy living.
ECO123: And eternal forest fires…
Jeremy Walton: But the industry doesn’t care about the people or the community in Monchique. They only look at their own balance sheets and their own profits. It was and is all about making money. The money machine, the eucalyptus monoculture, grew bigger and bigger, and soon there were only niches of native forest left. This approach to nature had dramatic consequences: forest fires became more and more severe, an Australian tree species robbed the soil of water, and the moisture in the soil decreased rapidly. As a result, biodiversity also declined, because no nightingale lives in an Australian eucalyptus forest, no eagle sneezes there; small animals and insects are rare in monocultures and usually die out or change biotope if they can. The drying out of the soil has caused springs to dry up and streams to run dry over the summer. Eucalyptus has also been planted along the banks of streams, which is completely unacceptable. The fish in the streams have died out. Then there are the Australian invasive tree species, such as mimosa and acacia. They are a real plague and are invading the entire district of Monchique. And the town hall does nothing, not even the ICNF.
ECO123: There have been widespread fires occurring regularly in Monchique since 1991: in 2003, 2004, 2016, 2018, and again in 2023. What lessons have you learned from this?
Jeremy Walton: If you have to expect forest fires at any time during the summer months – and the summers are getting longer and longer due to the climate crisis, they now last from May to October every year, with temperatures continuing to rise – then you are always on the run, at least mentally.
I have lived through several wildfires here and I firmly believe all able-bodied country-dwellers should be tackling this problem in cooperation with the firemen, instead of being pulled away from their homes by the police. The people’s power to act in protection of their livelihood and the local wildlife has unfortunately been suppressed since the arrival of the Protecção Civil… I hope for the creation one day of a certificate of fire-readiness that would allow us to stay in our own homes and defend them if necessary.
Many young people who come from families in Monchique have left the mountain village, left the country and emigrated. I just looked it up on Wikipedia and it says that ‘emigration is the act of leaving a country or a place of residence with the intention of settling elsewhere, of leaving a country permanently’. That says it all. Emigration is a sensitive issue worldwide, not just in Portugal.
ECO123: What future does a mountain village like Monchique have?
Jeremy Walton: It’s hard to say. There are local elections again next year. A new mayor and a new town council will be elected. Elect the right politicians and don’t let them get away with making cheap promises. If we put to one side the concept of external growth and switch to internal growth, then it would be advisable to create interesting jobs for young people in the village. Doing away with the eucalyptus and getting back to a mixed forest would be a foundation: but that can’t be everything. An interesting job would be one that inspires and motivates people and, at the same time, makes them satisfied or happy. Stimulating the local economy and getting local agriculture going again would be very important. Homegrown foodstuffs, such as those sold at the market on Sundays, should be honoured much more. But we also need to produce our own energy in Monchique, Marmelete and Alferce in energy communities. The money, if we’re talking about money, must stay in the village. What is stopping us from setting up an energy co-operative and installing solar panels here and there where the eucalyptus has been cleared and feeding this clean energy into the grid so that Monchique can live from it? Anyone could buy a share in the co-operative and obtain their solar power from their own clean power plant. It’s not only sustainable; it’s also cheaper. There are so many ideas that could be realised. One idea was to make WetNet.
ECO123: What’s that?
Jeremy Walton: WetNet is an innovative idea that was born in the middle of the last forest fire. It’s a sustainable sprinkler system that allows a forest owner to put out a forest fire, or better still, nip a fire in the bud. Because WetNet makes the forest wet. WetNet can be installed on a small scale with three sprinklers, or on a large scale with two dozen sprinklers or more. Any layman can organise this for their home. In winter, you collect the rainwater via the gutters of your house in one or more cisterns. That’s the first step. Incidentally, the government or the EU should subsidise the construction of cisterns. Because if you have water, you survive – and it also makes life easier during the climate crisis. The second step is to lay a pipe from the cistern to a pump house, where there is a panel with taps that can be opened and closed again – and, of course, a water pump with a water filter. Here in Esgravatadouro, near Caldas de Monchique, we have installed eight powerful sprinklers and laid several hundred metres of flexible water pipes in the forest floor to protect them from a possible fire. And our sprinklers spray fountains of water up to 30 metres into the forest. If you’re interested, I give a workshop on the first weekend of every month. Next weekend, I’ll be demonstrating the system in action and explaining to all participants how to install WetNet safely and simply. It’s very easy and the financing works via crowdfunding. We will meet on Saturday, at 10am, in front of the Botanical Garden in Esgravatadouro. Registrations are welcome.
ECO123: Thank you very much for the interview.
