PAN advocates measures to adapt territory to climate change

“Twe're investigators telling us what's going on, we have experts explaining what we have to change. So, the problem is that politics often continues to strive and behave as if the future has not arrived, when the future is happening, here and now”, he said.

The leader of the Animal People-Nature (PAN), also a Member of the Assembly of the Republic, spoke at the end of the debate “Climatic Route”, organized by the party, which took place in Funchal and joined academics, politicians and civil society.

This was the first meeting of the Climate Route, which will pass through several districts, being already foreseen Porto, Lisbon, Setúbal, Coimbra and Leiria.

“ We need not only to respond to the housing crisis, to the National Health Service crisis, to the crisis we have had in matters of transparency, but also to the climate crisis, which has not disappeared as a background,” said Inês de Sousa Real, stressing that the PAN will move forward with proposals to this end already in the state budget for the coming year.

The spokesperson for the Animals-Nature said it was essential to develop a “climate risk map” in the country, taking into account the occurrence of increasingly frequent and intense extreme phenomena.

“We cannot build again in full beds, we cannot build in primary dune, we cannot build golf courses that consume absolutely unsustainable resources, when we need this water for human consumption or for irrigation of food production,” he said.

According to Inês de Sousa Real, “policy must find reality”, sustaining that the AD Government, led by Social Democrat Luís Montenegro, will have to move forward with political options in the context of adaptation of the territory and prevention of climate emergency.

“It is essential to transform the plans into concrete answers, which unfortunately has not happened,” he said.

The PAN spokesperson considered that there are also political responsibilities to be taken out in the environment sector, such as at the level of the Internal Administration, Health or Education.

“If the climate has changed, policies have to change,” he said.