Government is studying a system to "remunerate" the interior for the services it provides to the country [with video]

The Government is studying a system to "remunerate" the interior for the services it provides to the country. The revelation was […]

The Government is studying a system to "remunerate" the interior for the services it provides to the country. The revelation was made by Deputy Minister Pedro Siza Vieira, at the long press conference that last Friday he gave to six regional media outlets across the country, including the Sul Informação.

In an interview with this restricted group of media, which took place in his office, in the building of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, in Lisbon, Pedro Siza Vieira explained that the «measure that is being developed involves the study of how the services of the ecosystem, what to pay and how much».

Such a measure, he added, will be tested "next year, in the territory of Pinhal Interior", but the objective is then to extend it to all low-density territories, namely those in the Algarve – the municipalities of Monchique, Aljezur, Vila do Bispo , Castro Marim and Alcoutim, in total, and the parishes of São Marcos da Serra (Silves), Cachopo and Santa Catarina da Fonte do Bispo (Tavira), as well as Alte, Ameixial, Salir and Querença, Tor, Benafim (Loulé).

The press conference with Minister Siza Vieira had as its theme the National Program for Territorial Cohesion, launched a year and a half ago and the first phase of which the Government has already taken stock, and is now preparing to revise it.

This Program includes 164 measures, divided into several axes, designed to try to mitigate the huge differences that divide the country between a populous and rich coast and an unpopulated, abandoned and increasingly poor interior.

As part of the Portugal 2020 reprogramming, the objective is now to “orient resources” of that program towards the “positive discrimination” of low-density territories. In such a way that, with the ongoing review of the Program for Territorial Cohesion, the Government is preparing a set of support, based on European funds, specific for the interior regions.

The National Program for Territorial Cohesion, which encompasses measures that cut across all Ministries, sought to treat the interior of the country and low-density territories in a different way, in relation to the coast and the more densely populated areas. This is because the interior has specific problems, where the recipes for the rest of the country do not work.

Basically, as the minister said, "we cannot have equal revenues for all territories."

This recipe for treating what is different differently is already being applied in practice in some sectors, such as Education and the Judiciary Network, as exemplified by Pedro Siza Vieira.

The issue is that, insisted the deputy minister, a "territory can be little occupied, but it cannot be left unattended", hence the need to "create structures that make it possible to deal with the landscape".

For this reason, he added, the Government is "at the moment, reviewing the ICNF's structure", whose mission is to manage the landscape, but which does not have resources, including human resources, to do so.

Last year's catastrophic fires, in June and October, showed that the low-density territories in the interior urgently need careful intervention. In a country where resources are not abundant and end up being largely diverted to the most populated coastline, Minister Siza Vieira believes that it is necessary to "find resources" to "treat the landscape" and everything that supports, namely human activity.

«The interior gives us many services that have to be paid for», such as the water you drink in cities, food, forest products, energy, carbon absorption, clean air, the beauty of the landscape . And these are goods that have to be paid to those who produce and maintain them, that is, to the people who live in this immense interior. Like? Through measures that make it possible to "remunerate" the interior for the services it provides.

However, the minister admitted, there has never been a PAC for the forest, so measures to remunerate rural territories are difficult to find and implement. This is, he assumed, "one of the most difficult issues for the coming years".

Deputy Minister Pedro Siza Vieira added that "cohesion issues are not just for people living in the interior, they are for the entire country," concluding: "we cannot develop the country at the expense of territorial cohesion."

 

 

See also photo gallery – Photos: Fabiana Saboya | Sul Informação

 

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