Half a hundred people demonstrated yesterday, November 7th, in front of the Municipality of Lagoa against the destruction of Alagoas Brancas, following the beginning of urbanization work in what still remains of this freshwater wetland.
The protesters, "mostly non-partisan", were at the "place where the animals are being buried alive and the freshwater lagoon is being levelled and drained", before heading to Lagoa City Council, where the protest itself, according to Tavira em Transição, one of the associations that organized the initiative.
Also yesterday, the PAN party filed an injunction with waiver of previous pronouncement, that is, with the objective that the measure has immediate suspensive effects.
«Alagoas Brancas is a very important ecosystem, a freshwater wetland, a carbon sink that provides services throughout the ecosystem chain and which is the last one with these characteristics in the Algarve region. Alagoas Brancas is an area of climate change mitigation that plays a fundamental role in water filtration and water and climate regulation», defends the association.
This place, they add, is “a cradle of biodiversity that contains more than 300 species of fauna and flora and is home to 143 species of avifauna that feed and rest there from the great migratory and intercontinental journeys”.
The start of urbanization in the area, approved following a process that received a positive opinion from several entities, comes after several initiatives by civil society, which sought to stop the process, including an injunction in the Administrative Court of Loulé, but also a study, carried out by the Almargem Association, in 2019, which proposed the classification of this area as local protected area.
«Civil society needs to know that protected species are being buried alive and that the freshwater lagoon is being fully drained and leveled at this very moment, civil society needs to know that while COP 27 is taking place, right now, an important and only carbon sink is being razed and that all biodiversity is being compromised by the destruction of this stronghold», reinforces Tavira in Transição.
For the movement, the «Câmara de Lagoa is largely responsible for the non-qualification and protection of the Alagoas Brancas wetland, for having ignored scientific studies and for not having used the planning instruments that were available to it in a fruitful way».
The municipality, he argues, “could have come up with another strategy to allocate the company and the enterprise in question in a different location from the one that makes up Alagoas Brancas. But it did not, and still granted another year of license so that the company could carry out the works, which happened on the last day of licensing, on October 12, 2022».
The protesters wanted, with the protest, to question the Lagoa Chamber «for its responsibilities», although they also pointed the finger at the Algarve Regional Coordination and Development Commission, as well as the Portuguese Environment Agency and other competent entities, which «also must be questioned and challenged to act on their responsibilities and as a matter of urgency».
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