Now that almost a decade has passed since the Querença Project, nothing better to celebrate this date than an initiative with the characteristics of the Algarvensis Geopark project, so I strongly hope that it quickly becomes a desired geography project and a true destination community located in the heart of the Algarve and the barrocal mountain range.
Moreover, the presence of Cooperativa QRER is an excellent link between the two projects and guarantees this almost umbilical relationship. Many congratulations to all promoters and good fortune.
As is known, in this space of opinion of the Sul Informação, I have written a lot about the multiple dynamics in rural space. We now have another excellent pretext. Between the name Dieta Mediterrânica, the Via Algarviana and the Geoparque Algarvensis, we have here an open field of many possibilities for the development of the barrocal mountain range in the Algarve (BSA).
The Algarvensis Geopark website reads “The aspiring Geopark Algarvensis Loulé-Silves-Albufeira to UNESCO World Geopark is a territorial area with well-defined boundaries, which has a geological heritage of great importance at national and international level, combines a strategy from geoconservation and a set of environmental education and awareness policies, to the promotion of sustainable socioeconomic development based on geotourism activities, involving local communities, contributing to the enhancement and promotion of local products.
Officialized in 2019 as an aspiring UNESCO World Geopark at the UNESCO National Commission, it is an observer member of the Portuguese Geoparks Forum, having immediately started a work to raise awareness among local populations about the Geopark concept throughout its territory. to prepare the dossier for the formalization of the respective application to the UNESCO World Geoparks network”.
On the same site, it can also be read that “the geopark aims to contribute to greater social and territorial cohesion in the municipalities of Loulé, Silves and Albufeira, through a policy to enhance the territory, based on the concept of the UNESCO Geopark. Its mission is to promote the protection, enhancement and dynamization of the natural and cultural heritage, highlighting the geological heritage, through the creation of scientific and educational knowledge, in order to provide the socio-economic and sustainable development of the territory, the settlement of people and the promotion of your quality of life”.
The general objectives of the Geopark are:
• Contribute to increasing the sense of pride and belonging to the territory of its inhabitants and strengthen the territory's identity;
• Encourage the creation of a number of local and innovative initiatives that stimulate the local economy;
• Develop new sources of income that are generated through tourist animation activities based on geological resources;
• Promote the enhancement and safeguarding of cultural, environmental and geological heritage;
• Contribute to the dissemination and implementation of the SDGs – Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (UN)”.
In a note from the Municipality of Silves, it can also be read that “the Algarvensis Geopark, through the stories recorded in its rocks and landscapes, tells several chapters of the history of Planet Earth, allowing a time travel of 350 million years . Innumerable natural and cultural episodes and phenomena are evident with testimonies in this territory”.
“In the municipality of Silves, in the São Bartolomeu de Messines-Amorosa-Vale Fuzeiros range, there is the greatest expression of the well-known Grés de Silves which records the razing of an old mountain range and the subsequent birth of the Atlantic Ocean, with its relative drift from Europe, Africa and America”.
In addition, in the Rocha da Pena protected area, in Loulé, there is a geosite of international relevance that motivates the creation of the Algarvensis Geopark – the fossiliferous deposit of Metoposaurus algarvensis – which helps to understand the environmental conditions and fauna existing at the time of origin from Silves sandstone, 230 million years ago. Continuing the Earth's long history recorded in this territory, in Albufeira, on the Escarpão Plateau and in the area where the Ribeira de Quarteira was installed, limestone rocks with fossils of organisms that testify to the tropical sea from the time of the dinosaurs that existed there in Jurassic period, 164 to 145 million years ago.
And the Silves executive adds; “A UNESCO World Geopark is not just a geological park, but a project for the sustainable development of a territory, which promotes a feeling of pride in its material and immaterial heritage in its inhabitants and strengthens their identification and connection with the territory. In a geopark, all the natural and cultural heritage is part of a strategy based on knowledge, education, training, sustainable economic development, conservation and the well-being of residents, so everyone is invited to learn about this project and to be ambassadors of the Algarvensis Geopark”.
The integrated development of the Algarve mountain range
In an opinion article dated September 13, 2018, in the Sul Informação, about the project of a foundation of the Mediterranean diet for the barrocal mountain range in the Algarve, I wrote:
“The Barrocal Serra Algarvio (BSA) is a sub-region as privileged as it is underprivileged, which deserves, for this very reason, particular attention, as it is, in a way, the backbone of the entire Algarve region. The municipality of Loulé, the union of the parishes of Querença, Tôr and Benafim and the Manuel Viegas Guerreiro Foundation, due to their centrality and representativeness, are a good starting point for this structuring project which, I am convinced, will bring many young entrepreneurs to the barrocal mountain range. Algarve. Furthermore, the work of existing foundations, such as the Serralves Foundation and the Gulbenkian Foundation, can help us immensely in this task. The reasons for this revolutionary project are very varied.
Firstly, because of the splendor of nature and the exuberance of the BSA landscape, which reveal to us true gardens of paradise.
Secondly, because climate change is a permanent risk that undermines BSA's valuable agro-forestry-pastoral mosaic.
Thirdly, because the BSA brings together the main jewels in the crown of the Algarve economy, with regard to traditional agriculture and the Mediterranean diet: from products from the cork oak forest to the traditional dryland orchard, from honey to arbutus and aromatic herbs from citrus fruits to traditional vegetable gardens and fruit growing on the edge of the mountains.
Fourthly, because after the Mediterranean Diet appellation conferred by UNESCO, it is imperative to maintain a biodiversity and conservation nucleus at the BSA, if we want, a functional ecology nucleus in close articulation with landscape architecture and landscape arts.
Fifthly, because the BSA is an excellent host ecosystem to promote an intelligent environment, that is, the smartification of this territory.
Sixthly, because there is already a valuable built heritage linked to water resources, at the precise moment when water is the rarest and most precious asset.
In seventh place, because the beauty of the BSA is so extraordinary that it can welcome infrastructure and educational, therapeutic and recreational equipment of international quality and reach.
In eighth place, because the presence of the Querença international literary festival held by the Manuel Viegas Guerreiro Foundation (FLIQ) and the image of naturalistic romanticism it projects remind us of the symbolism of the Algarve's literary landscapes, a very valuable immaterial asset in the times that they run.
Finally, to crown this series of reasons, and perhaps the most decisive, the cultural and scientific universes of two illustrious Querentines, Professors Manuel Viegas Guerreiro and Manuel Gomes Guerreiro, which alone are enough justification to carry out this structuring project of national scope in this region of the Algarve”.
I am, therefore, fully convinced that, not only do we pay tribute to Prof. Manuel Viegas Guerreiro and the ecological perspective of man very dear to Prof. Manuel Gomes Guerreiro, as well as making the Algarvensis Geopark the icing on the cake of BSA's structuring projects, this time to highlight its valuable and unique geological heritage.
A Collaborative Laboratory (LabCo) for the Barrocal Serra Algarvio
Coming here, I want to believe that the structural projects linked to the Via Algarviana, the Mediterranean Diet, the Algarvensis Geopark, the cultural heritage associated with water resources, the agroforestry economy and nature tourism in the Natura 2000 network sites, to the sociocultural action of the FMVG , justify, by themselves, the creation of a Collaborative Laboratory of the Barrocal Serra Algarvio (BSA's LabCo) which, thus, would be the main agent of this immense network-territory.
Its main objectives would be as follows:
– Promote a BSA social network that connects this region to the world,
– Promote a welcoming structure to receive new projects and entrepreneurs,
– Promote the digitization of the BSA with regard to geographic information systems and other digital systems,
– Promote a small network of coworking spaces at BSA,
– Promote a crowd sourcing and crowd funding platform to collect ideas, projects and funding funds (a microcredit network for small projects),
– Promote BSA's digital marketing, in particular, BSA's basket of primes,
– Promote a technological platform for the arts and communication and content production in these areas,
– Promote an active aging program and design outpatient home services for BSA seniors,
– Promote a network of residencies for volunteers, artists, researchers and students who carry out research-action projects.
– Promote the EN 124 as a BSE scenic road.
On the other hand, the Smart Village methodology could introduce numerous benefits in the areas of energy and public lighting, water and sanitation, mobility and transport, to name just the most common, but also in healthcare and itinerant services, in care informal and voluntary, in nature, environment and civil protection services, in the organization of the local accommodation bank, in short, in the network of agro-silvo-pastoral services
Final Notes
It would be an open window for the world to have an institution in the Algarve that would bring together in the same action program the sociocultural anthropology of Manuel Viegas Guerreiro, the ecological perspective of man by Manuel Gomes Guerreiro, the landscape arts of Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles and now also , the valuable geological heritage of this sub-region.
We know that territorial distinctive signs are the brand image of a territory. One of these signs is its distinctive landscape that integrates various elements of its natural and cultural heritage.
Now, in a time of total tourism, it is not only the gentrification of towns and cities that should concern us, it is also the excessive gamification and, above all, the criterion and the way we dispose and use scarce resources such as water, soil and the vegetation, in the end, the global landscape that welcomes us.
For this very reason, we must not simplify. We are all, in our own way, caretakers of the landscape. But let us not delude ourselves. There is a specific literacy of the landscape, which needs to be properly addressed, otherwise our perception of the landscape is a crime against our homeland and a bad service to the country.
This would be, therefore, the main mission of the BSA LabCo, that is, to address, in a very comprehensive sense, the landscape literacy, in a broad sense, of the populations.
Finally, I leave everyone with a suggestion. Let's visit the magical hills of the BSA and its so special imagery, celebrate its distinctive landscape, the presence of water mines, the sublimation of the place, the splendor of light and the geometry of the geological forms, let us be inspired by simplicity and in the harmony of the natural order of things and we will have arrived at the gardens of paradise, that is, the deepest and most genuine of the Algarve's Mediterranean. If so, more than an occasional tourist, we will be a true pilgrim of the spirit of the time.
The Algarvensis Geopark is that true pilgrim of the spirit of the times, a unique ambassador of the BSA, to promote the external relations of the Algarve region and its valuable natural and cultural heritage. A gigantic task, no doubt, but the only one that will certainly be worth it.
Author António Covas is a Retired Full Professor at the University of Algarve
Comments