With regard to the recent publication of the new legal regime applicable to afforestation and reforestation, I am tempted to go back to talking about popular/children's tales, and again using Lobo, the epithet of bad, the which I will explain later.
But, if before I focused on Lobo's propensity to consume pigs, even though they are knowledgeable in the field of Engineering, now I focus on his more forestry vein, and on fixing this lupine with young girls dressed in red.
By bad temper, fetish or simply in an extremely clumsy and brutish way of trying to meet girls, the Wolf tends to chase Little Red Riding Hood, as well as other people close to the girl.
And all this takes place in the proverbial forest. It is more or less known how events unfolded, and how everything ends up in a painful end for Lobo. What is the role of the forest in this plot? Scenery, simple scenery.
But imagine that the forest is given to Lobo's will. And that the Wolf can design and manipulate it as he pleases, creating an elaborate labyrinth whose only end is the capture of Little Red Riding Hood, followed by who knows what other tricks. It wouldn't be a very fair fight, would it? And it's easy to know who, in this context, is going to go wrong...
And what does the aforementioned legal diploma have to do with all this?
Keep the forest in the background, change the Wolf for fast-growing forest species (of which the eucalyptus is the prodigal son) and change the Little Red Riding Hood for the public interest, and you've got it all.
This is because, taking into account our cadastral reality, Decree-Law No. 96/2013 gave a free hand to afforestation and reforestation with any forest species, regardless of its characteristics or location, except within Protected Areas, where it exists. still some control, but there also of doubtful effectiveness, considering the history.
The letter of the law therefore assumes the wrong and nonsensical premise that forest species are all the same. Not only are they not, the differences are dramatic. Whether in terms of productivity, conservation or the potential for generating social and economic models more oriented towards perpetuity and equity, native species are much more advantageous in the long term, as opposed to fast-growing species.
And it is in this horizon that a country must be thought of.
Not only that, but it is important to remember that the unruly expansion of fast-growing species in Portugal, in the search for the immediate, without respecting the fundamental structures of the landscape or its edaphic-climatic characteristics, contributed significantly to part of the problems of disorganization of the national territory at the forest level, with fires (due to the characteristics of the combustible material and the associated exploitation model, without discontinuities) being its most visible and perhaps dramatic face.
By this I mean that these species are responsible for the fires in Portugal? Neither near nor far. This evil is deeper, and stems from the abandonment of our rural landscapes, a fragmented register and the lack of culture and territorial management, among other factors. But its contribution to the problem is undeniable.
Note that having a cellulose row in Portugal is great. It contributes to the diversification of economic activities and associated companies, undeniably generating wealth. What cannot happen is that it becomes the alpha and omega of the Portuguese forest, in a monoculture that stifles everything else. It has, therefore, to be integrated into a functional mosaic.
Also because, to break the current cycle of abandonment of the rural world, a model of proximity and involvement is needed, in which people live on land and land, and not one in which landowners where they can plant trees, in a way remotely, they lease or sell them to the best offer, which usually comes from the powerful pulp lobby.
It is necessary that the private interests, of owners and economic agents, are framed in a necessary idea of the future for the Portuguese forest.
It can be said that delivering the country to cellulose is as good an idea as any other. Well it can. But that's what we have our little head on our shoulders for...
It is true that the forestry sector, given its complexity and age in Portugal, has a complex legislative framework, often indecipherable, redundant and even contradictory. But from there to the simplification to the limit of imputability, there is an unsustainable distance.
What is needed is flexible, adaptable (and adapted), rigorous and, above all, effective integrated management – why not recover and improve the Forest Code? Well, whether a reflection or not of the capacity of our managers and decision makers, in Portugal, when a sector gains complexity, the best solution they can present to us is… disarray!
At the same time, it is (sadly) curious that, when an activity is assumed to be strategic – as activities linked to the primary sector have been recognized – the respective legislative framework evolves into a western-style slut (but without a sheriff), where everything is allowed, as long as through adequate “interpretation” or weak management and planning figures, as is the case.
In a way that is anything but innocent, simplification is confused with ease.
We always oscillate between two extremes. In one of them, we have the extreme, incoherent and inconsequential bureaucracy, which, charging different fees and fees along the way, only serves to perpetuate the small powers and suffocate any and all initiatives, killing them at birth. At the other extreme, absolute negligence, in which context the delicate footing of some private interests, since we are in a storybook, always serves in the regulatory glass slipper, almost as if it had been custom designed.
The Wolf is not, therefore, intrinsically bad. It has the potential for evil if not properly framed. Everything depends, then, on the greater or lesser control that is exercised over the evolution of this potential.
So, the question is whether we trust Lobo that much, to let the forest in his hand...
Author Gonçalo Gomes is a landscape architect, president of the Algarve Regional Section of the Portuguese Association of Landscape Architects (APAP)
(and writes according to the old Spelling Agreement)
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