Conservationists and civic movements are challenging the government’s plan to accelerate the implementation of renewable energy projects, whose public consultation ends this Wednesday, July 15.
At issue is the Sectoral Program for Zoning for the Accelerated Deployment of Renewable Energies (PSZAER), which, according to the Government, identifies “the areas of the territory most suitable for the installation of renewable energy projects.” About this map, the Minister of Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, said, on June 17, when it was opened to public consultation, that the plan guarantees “simpler rules, greater predictability and stronger participation of local communities, with a balance between energy, environment and territory.”
Basically, the PSZAER identifies the zones in the country where renewable energy projects would have the smallest ecological, landscape and social impacts. It happens that not everyone is convinced, and several voices of opposition have already arisen, including warnings about possible repercussions on species already endangered with extinction.
The Algarve and Alentejo Platform for Sustainability and Biodiversity (PPSBAA) is one of those voices. The entity says that “areas of high ecological value” are included in the roughly 455,000 hectares identified in the plan as suitable areas for renewable installations without major impacts.
In a statement, PPSBAA says that for the Algarve and Alentejo, the proposal identifies “areas that coincide with territories essential for nature conservation and for species endangered or critically endangered,” including the Iberian lynx, the Iberian Imperial Eagle and Bonelli’s eagle.
The PSZAER, the platform contends, “does not guarantee the safeguarding of the Migration Corridor of the Algarvian Hills, used by thousands of birds, in the autumn migration to Africa, nor does it ensure the integrity of ecological corridors that connect the Serra de Monchique and the Serra do Caldeirão and the northeastern Algarve to the Guadiana Valley and Spanish Extremadura.”
The same entity says that the plan includes “fundamental habitats,” such as montados and agroforestry mosaics of holm oak and cork oak, “for several species with critically endangered status,” also warning about the risk of collision mortality and of fragmentation and degradation of habitats. These factors, it details, compromise the survival and conservation of several other endangered species, such as the Black Vulture (abutre-preto), britango, the Black Stork (cegonha-preta), the Great Bustard (abetarda), the sisón, the roliêro, the francelho, the hunter’s falcon (tartaranhão-caçador), the black-bellied cortisol (cortiçol-de-barriga-preta), the Mourisco horseshoe bat (morcego-de-ferradura-mourisco), the small mouse-eared bat (morcego-rato-pequeno), the wildcat (gato-bravo) and the wild rabbit (coelho-bravo).
“The platform stresses that these options undermine decades of public and scientific investment in the recovery of these species, reducing the ecological conditions necessary for the consolidation of their populations in southern Portugal,” notes PPSBAA.
Similarly, the non-governmental organization Rewilding Portugal says it cannot support the PSZAER “as proposed,” arguing that “a just transition cannot be made at the expense of the nature we are still trying to recover.”
The conservationists, in a note, say that the current proposal allows the installation of new solar and wind parks “without environmental impact assessment on a case-by-case basis” in the acceleration zones.
They also point out that it “does not prevent excessive concentration of projects in the same region, does not evaluate the cumulative effects of several plants and the associated high-voltage lines, and does not provide binding protection for the corridors through which species such as the Iberian wolf and the Iberian lynx move, whose recovery we have been working on for years with European funds.”
Thus, Rewilding Portugal calls for “real limits” to the concentration of projects in a single region, for “binding protection” of ecological corridors used by large carnivores, such as the lynx and the wolf, and other affected animals, and for the “mandatory assessment” of the cumulative impacts of plants and the associated electrical lines.
Moreover, it defends the maintenance of protection for wetlands, UNESCO Geoparks and other designated areas, a “real public participation” in the subsequent phases of the process beyond the public consultation, and that priority be given to “decentralized” renewable energy solutions, such as self-consumption and energy communities, and to areas already degraded prior to occupying natural territory.
“The problem is not solar and wind energy, but the way this plan is designed,” states Rewilding Portugal.
