Environmental ‘champions’ accuse authorities of conspiring to work against will of people
Bewilderment is the order of the day today as environmentalists up and down the country have just realised there is a nationwide public consultation exercise – with just two days left to run – on “identifying constraints to renewable energies projects” and trying to suggest ways around them.
The problem with this, for all those who are trying to protect the environment, is that constraints are seen as necessary. Otherwise all kinds of projects might be sanctioned, such as the massive solar park in the Sotavento that environmental group Probaal managed, after a very hard fight, to head off.
There is equally the case of a new wind farm project in the Sotavento that locals fought against and won 12 years ago, but which appears to be ‘back on the cards’, in a slightly different format, and using tactics that are not going down well locally.
Further afield, there are a large photovoltaic projects being fought by local populations on social and environmental grounds – not to mention the enormous antipathy in the north and centre to projects for lithium mining.
Writing over Facebook, environmental engineer Cláudia Sil suggests one of the many things wrong with the licensing of renewables is a lack of transparency.
“The DGEG (general directorate of energy and geology) never informs us of licence applications. Even on request, the DGEG illegally refuses to inform us when and by whom licensing processes are submitted – and all we know is which companies have won lots in auctions and their respective power and municipality.
“Not knowing the application does not allow us to know its exact location, whether deadlines have been met or compliance with other requirements”.
Environmental Impact Assessments are equally procedures that “accept everything”; APA the Portuguese environment agency an entity that should defend populations, but instead seems to work against them, she says “using scarce resources trying to validate attempts to gut REN (ecological classification), RAN (agricultural protection), ecological corridors and Protected Areas…”
In short, this unannounced countrywide public consultation on trying to find ways to remove constraints on renewable energies projects has caused a lot of frustration – and sent many people straight to the Participa Pública page to enter their feelings.
Cláudia Sil’s post has ‘woken people up’ to a worrying situation. As one campaigner told us:
“These are authorities that talk about transparency but operate in the opposite manner.
“Why is the consultation period so short? One month. It is a countrywide call for participation on a massive subject! When there were consultations on water management, they were for really long periods.
“Once again, the first complaint about public consultation should be the inadequacies of the consultation itself”, said our source.
