Colourful stones, rocks and bolders clutter up and down the shore. Green moss from the sea weed paints the stones. Pigeons and sea gulls drink together along the river. The tide is out and the waves glisten underneath the sun light. Boats glide along the shore, leaving a rush of gushing water behind.
Mountains are in the distance, red and grey apartment buildings, along with green hills all merge creating an idyllic landscape that people can breathe in like the surrounding fresh air. Why is time not on our side, why don’t we spend a few seconds to stop, sit and think – not about what we don’t have but appreciating what we do have?
Sometimes we should remember our inner child, living without a care in the world; the only concern is to have fun. The smell of the sea, the heat of the sun, a cool blowing breeze allows me to become one. Welcome to Portugal such a beautiful land.
Recent headlines have screamed all about the financial crisis that has embroiled the nation but we should take a closer look at how Portugal is improving its climate, you may be presently surprised as I was.
First off, I must point out that I won a blogging competition called Think, which was managed by the European Journalism Centre. They funded 25 media types to visit Portugal to attend water related projects, more can be found here.
Portugal has an interesting climate, including lengthy dry seasons; high temperatures; high annual evapo-transpiration; high annual solar radiation; strong inter-annual precipitation variability. The main observed water related issues include: temperature rise; higher evapo-transpiration rates; reduction in flow, recharges and storage levels; higher precipitation variability; higher concentration of precipitation; reduction of spring; mean sea level rise.
In simple words, the availability and quality of water is going down whilst the vulnerability and potential risk is rising. An example can be taken from the rise of flash floods throughout the country. Likewise, the increased frequency of forest fires and the reduction of water are equal situations that Portugal has to face. When looking at water issues to consider are availability; quality; and consumption.
The task for the scientists on the trip was to allow us winners (bloggers and photographers) to start connecting climate change to everyday life i.e people need to eat food. So after learning about the theory we visited many different projects who worked in areas relating to the climate of the country.
The problem of water availability in Portugal was solved over the last 40 years with investment from the European Union. There has been a significant reduction in the countries ecological footprint encompassing carbon; grazing; forest; fishing; crop-land; and built-up land.
One of the problems I had when researching for the trip was that it seems like we have far too much information but no-one is really translating and communicating that information to citizens and key decision makers. We have already had Copenhagen, Cancun and all of the other measures to address the issue of climate change but it all seems very complicated.
What is the real price of renewable? Are we just paying for the government investment? Can we really afford to support green investment in the moment of financial crisis? Some people still believe that climate change is not happening; the arguments need to be presented as a process rather than a simple case of winning and losing.
For me the solution to our energy situation is to convince the public and society to go back to 20 years in terms of consumption. I don’t think we are really ready to do that yet and the will won’t happen until it is too late. Countries change very slowly.