Este domingo à tarde, activistas juntaram-se em Lisboa para uma acção supresa em defesa do estuário do Tejo, contra o projecto do novo aeroporto de Lisboa previsto para o Montijo.
Enquanto a cimeira do clima na Polónia continua com as negociações em que até relatórios científicos estão a ser negados pelos governos, dois veleiros fundearam em frente ao Terreiro do Paço e desembarcaram no Cais das Colunas, em pleno centro turístico, numa acção entitulada “Içar as velas pelo estuário do Tejo! Não ao novo aeroporto no Montijo”.
Com as palavras de ordem “Montijo com aeroporto, estuário morto”, “Justiça climática já!” e “Para deixar os combustíveis fósseis no chão, aumento da aviação não”, activistas tocaram percussões e distribuiram panfletos sobre o projecto de aeroporto do Montijo e sobre os impactos do sector da aviação.
Os activistas sublinham que a verdadeira riqueza de Lisboa é o maior estuário da Europa ocidental, um paraíso de biodiversidade bem mais antigo do que a cidade, a qualidade de vida que podem ter as suas populações, actuais e futuras, e contestam os voos de low cost e turismo em massa.
Os veleiros vieram da Bretanha, França, onde a população conseguiu travar a construção do mega aeroporto de Notre-Dame-des-Landes pela Vinci: a mesma multinacional que comprou os aeroportos portugueses.
Os activistas solidarizam-se com a população da região do Montijo, que verá a sua qualidade de vida comprometida, e com as pessoas que por todo o mundo, através da rede Stay Grounded resistem ao aumento da aviação – e constroem formas de transporte, de sociedade e de economia mais justos e ecológicos.
#StayGrounded
The pamphlet in English, distributed during the action
New Lisbon airport? – Everything you should know
The Portuguese government and the multinational corporation Vinci want to build a new airport in Montijo, in a current military base. They also want to expand the current Portela airport. And they leave open the possibility of building in the future a third airport from scratch.
The airport in Montijo is meant to open already in 2022 and to cost 400 million euros. The minister of environment says no strategic environment assessment is needed. The prime minister says there’s a “national consensus”.
Global temperatures are rising. In order to avoid climate chaos, we must reduce greenhouse gases in 80% in the next ten years.
There’s no means of transport as polluting as a plane. A flight causes 30 times more carbondioxide emissions than the same trip on a high speed train. Portela and Montijo airports working together would double the number of air traffic per hour – from 38 to 72 movements.
An airport in Montijo endangers the health and quality of life of over 100 thousand people as sound and air pollution increases the risk of depression and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
Tagus estuary is one of the most important in Europe and the largest humid area in the country. It is a biodiversity paradise, with hundreds of thousands of migrant birds. Since the creation of Natura 2000, no airport was built on a European estuary, and two were dismantled. Specialists have also warned for the constant danger of bird strike.
The new airport would open up Lisbon doors to one million tourists more every year. In Barcelona and Prague, which suffer the consequences of mass tourism, the pressure of tourism is of 5 tourists to each 1 inhabitant. In Lisbon it is already 9 to 1. Families, young and old people are kicked out of their houses, their neighborhoods, their city. Evermore Lisbon residents oppose this tourism monoculture.
Vinci, France-based multinational, is the largest construction corporation in the world. In 2012 it took advantage of Portugal’s crisis to take over the public company ANA Airports. Portugal at the time had a memorandum dictated by Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF), and this was the airports “deal of the year” according to World Finance magazine.
In the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France, activists managed to stop the construction of a massive airport by Vinci and the government, and occupied the territory to try out alternatives.
Is it up to a multinational, politicians’ cabinets and the tourism industry or is it up to every single one of us to decide what to do with our rivers, our cities, our climate and our planet?
