Protests today scheduled for 12 locations across Portugal
With the week’s wildfire nightmare finally tackled, the moment has come for citizens to make their voices heard about the continuing issues of land abandonment and eucalyptus monocultures – both of them subjects governments have ‘pledged to eradicate’ but never have.
Under the slogan: “The country is burning, we must wake up”, protests were scheduled to take place today in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, Braga, Castanheira de Pêra, Pedrógão Grande, Odemira, Vila Nova de Poiares, Sertã, Torres Novas, Gouveia, Arganil and Melres (Gondomar).
Activists from Climáximo – the movement that earlier this week daubed the headquarters of pulping giant The Navigator Company with red paint – sought to draw attention to the “urgency to create a forest with a future”, instead of the kind of forest this country has now.
In a statement, the group refers to fires that kill firefighters, destroy homes and essential infrastructures being directly linked to forestry abandonment, ‘eucalyptisation, invasive species and cuts to protection and surveillance services.
“On top of this, the increasingly hot and erratic climate promotes the acceleration of the desert. Cellulose companies and governments have no alternative plan to this and so, seven years after 2017, the country is once again devastated by catastrophic fires. Today we are worse off than we were in 2017 and there are culprits for this situation: far beyond the criminal arsonists, the pulp mills and the governments that have refused to change anything. This cannot happen again”.
Climãximo is calling for the planning of “a truly resilient forest and woodlands that can withstand the hotter future, stop the desert and promote the rehabilitation of the country’s interior”.
Meantime, SIC Notícias is reporting today that tourists who had planned holidays in the north and centre are ‘cancelling’ them, after hearing of the extent of the fires, which according to Europe’s Copernics system burnt over 135,000 hectares of forest in less than a week.
Source: LUSA/ Climáximo
