Will everything stay the same?

The Algarve is not an inclusive region for its inhabitants

The process of transformation, adaptation and extinction of life on Earth, as we know it, has taken place for about 400 million years.

This process of adapting life to the planet and its changes was sometimes slow and sometimes dramatic, allowing the most varied species to adapt to the changing environment or perish.

The environment was transformed and life tried to keep up with it. Our nomadic ancestors began to settle down with agriculture, creating clusters that turned into cities and regions. They settled close to the most fertile soils and water, in strategic locations for trade and defensive postures.

Cities were transformed into metropolises and regions into nations and countries, with more or less rigid and definitive borders.

Industrialization and later globalization led to the abandonment of the primordial relationship between Man and Nature. Human genius made it possible to overcome many of the impossibilities and limits that the natural world imposed.

Millions of human beings and tons of goods could travel daily to and from all corners of the world. They could occupy the most fertile soils, since the supply of food products was assured even if they were produced thousands of kilometers away.

Water could be degraded as technology purified it. Tubing rivers and building over the sea, because the materials and construction techniques were mastered.

In the last fifty years we have witnessed the technological revolution that has graced us with the Internet, nanotechnology, clean energy, the evolution of knowledge and knowledge.

At the same time, wars, humanitarian crises, inequality and exclusion, degradation of ecosystems and the quality of life, desertification and abandonment of rural territories continued and worsened.

This millennium begins with the urgent need to transform the model of society that we created and developed throughout the XNUMXth century.

The society of contradictions: of demographic intensification and galloping aging, of abundance and hunger, of crowds and greater loneliness, of alienated consumption and ecological movements and practices, the rigidity of borders and populations without homelands.

Globalization, in the sense of human dignityless commercial exchanges, monopolies, the existence of parallel worlds such as the "stock market", the "funds", the faceless "offshores", the race for dominance and supremacy, unconscious destruction or intentional nature of the natural world, are proving disastrous for Humanity.

Climate change, in conjunction with the model of mass and globalized consumption, is the most serious consequence of human actions on the planet.

The tourism industry is intrinsically linked to this reality, due to the movements and flows of population it generates and because it is concentrated and largely dependent on the climate factor.

It is the main source of wealth in the Algarve region and the one that contributes by far the most to the national GDP.

But, at this point, it is important to reflect on the model we created. Was it a balanced model that allowed the development of other sectors of society, generated wealth and increased the quality of life of populations in the region?

In some cases yes. However, we cannot ignore that, over the last few decades, tourist activity has also operated in a predatory way.

It was responsible, to a large extent, for the abandonment and occupation of land with high agricultural potential, the irreversible destruction of natural resources, values ​​and spaces, the devaluation of the built heritage, the de-characterization and degradation of cities, towns, villages and rural landscapes.

In addition, it had other side effects. It directed investment towards tourism-related construction, forgetting residents and their right to quality housing and public green spaces, inflated prices leading to the gentrification of urban centers, overloaded infrastructure and equipment with consequences in its degradation and increased expenses of maintenance, directed, directly or indirectly, a good part of the productive activity of the region and its resources towards this “monoculture”.

Despite the undeniable contribution to the national GDP, the Algarve is not an inclusive region for its inhabitants. There is still a lack of infrastructure and basic equipment with regard to mobility, health and quality of life for the population.

Take, for example, the railway and the quality of rolling stock, the (functional) cycling network that does not even connect Faro to its University, the degradation of the district hospital (no attractiveness for placing doctors in the region), the reduced expression of urban green spaces for public use (unlike tourist developments).

Despite the recognized importance of tourism for the region and for the country, it is necessary to rethink, once again, this model and the dependencies it created. The pandemic that has broken out compels this reflection, the ongoing climate change makes it urgent.

After this crisis and the uncertainties about how it will end, changes are urgently needed in society and in each one of us, so as not to continue everything the same.

The notions of the common good and the limits of growth, which have been debated and reflected since the seventies of the last century, must guide individual and collective decisions.

The concept of diversity, common to ecology, sociology and economics, associated with the variety, complexity, richness and sustainability of systems and processes (natural and human) must prevail over uniformity, monotony, simplification and extinction.

The close connection and dependence between economy and ecology forces us not to continue to exceed the limits of growth, to quickly establish mechanisms and tools for resilience, transformation and adaptation. Science must contribute to preventing and anticipating this future.

For this, the Academy must look at the socio-economic, environmental and cultural reality of the region, work more for and with the community, abandon the passive inbreeding of scientific production that overvalues ​​the quantity and statistics of publications, and less the quality, importance or usefulness to society. We need to look again at the environment we live in, anticipate change and act to adapt.

 

Author: Amélia Santos is a Landscape Architect

 

 


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