Climate Change, Development & Aid, Environment, Europe, Headlines

ENVIRONMENT DAY-PORTUGAL: One-Way Trip to Disaster

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Jun 5 2006 (IPS) - Portugal is facing catastrophe as it heads down a path marked by rising emissions of greenhouse gases, wasteful use of water, unbridled construction activity and coastal erosion, environmentalists warn.

While each successive government has promised to take “urgent measures,” studies show that little progress has been made in curbing the ongoing environmental damage.

In a recent report, Quercus, a local environmental group, called for a more rational “ecological footprint” – a measure of how much land and water is needed to produce the resources consumed and to dispose of the waste generated, in order to support a given lifestyle.

“In Portugal, the ecological footprint is 5.2 hectares per person per year, and it is growing. But the available global capacity is only 1.8 hectares, which means that if everyone in the world lived like the Portuguese, nearly three planets would be needed,” Quercus said in the study, which was released last month.

These figures illustrate the high level of destruction of natural resources and the large amount of waste produced in Portugal.

Green party (PEV) Deputy Isabel de Castro told IPS that “although Portugal has some of the most advanced (environmental) laws in the world, and the constitution itself, in an innovative manner, consecrates the environment as a fundamental right, there is a huge gap between the legislation and reality.”

Not only have public policies in defence of the environment been abandoned, but “the growing irresponsibility of the state, the dismantling of oversight and monitoring mechanisms, the lack of political will, and a climate of impunity favour attacks on the environment and environmental degradation,” de Castro maintained.

The legislator stressed that even though the question of the environment is “a challenge for humanity that interferes with daily life and compromises the future, in Portugal, a country of great ignorance, it is an issue that is ignored by the political agenda and the media.”

De Castro did acknowledge, however, that there are reporters who make an effort “to awaken anesthetised consciences.”

According to the lawmaker, it is necessary “to sound the alarm in the face of the constant threat to our valuable irrecoverable natural, environmental and cultural patrimony and to our landscape, which are dying because of the complicity by omission of successive governments, which has opened the door to their destruction in the name of fast and easy profits.”

Among the most pressing environmental problems faced by Portugal are the loss of biodiversity and the impoverishment of the soil. More than half of the national territory of 92,000 sq km is threatened by desertification, and one-third by severe erosion.

In addition, the forest fires that swept Portugal from 2003 to 2005 destroyed 80 percent of the country’s forests, which were replaced by fast-growth exotic species like eucalyptus, that deplete the soil and water resources, exacerbating erosion.

De Castro said that to the threat of desertification must be added “attacks on the landscape, a lack of zoning and land use regulation, and chaotic urban growth, with the ‘cement transformation’ of the coast under the pretext of ‘public interest’.”

She described that transformation as “a feverish process of erosion of around 80 percent of our coastline, caused by unauthorised construction, building on dangerous areas like cliffs and hillsides, the destruction of sand dunes, and the illegal extraction of sand.”

With respect to the country’s rivers, she noted that “more than half are seriously polluted, including the Tajo estuary, one of the world’s 10 largest wetland systems.”

There are also serious problems with the disposal of garbage, the constant increase of which “is a symptom of the absence of a strategy to modify environmentally harmful patterns of behaviour and consumption habits,” said de Castro.

These necessary modifications would constitute “a revolution that has been postponed, and that would require allies and innovative ideas on how to reach people,” she said. “This same revolution is also needed in terms of water use and to bring about a new culture that would put an end to wasteful habits.”

De Castro further complained about the situation in the energy sector, pointing out that “the enormous growth in polluting emissions has driven up the country’s fuel bill, hurt human health, and led to incompliance with the Kyoto (climate change) commitments.”

According to the European Union report presented at the December 2005 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal, Portugal’s greenhouse gas emissions – which contribute to climate change, global warming and the greenhouse effect – will have increased by 42 percent between 2008 and 2012, making the country the most heavily polluting member of the bloc.

The negative projections for Portugal contrast with the projections for the EU, which according to the same report will have reduced total emissions by 9.3 percent by 2010, surpassing the overall goal of an eight percent cut by 2012.

That target was assumed by the industrialised nations that signed the Kyoto Protocol, which went into effect in February 2005.

De Castro said Portugal was unlikely to meet the target, because “it is a country that depends 90 percent on energy from abroad, but wastes more than 30 percent of its energy, while failing to encourage efficiency and savings, continuing to increase energy use, and putting very little effort into exploring and developing renewable sources. Furthermore, it is incapable of adopting innovative measures that would make it possible to modify lifestyles and production and consumption patterns.”