Is Portugal more sustainable? “It takes a strategy”, says Zero | Environment
Two recently released reports, which assess countries in terms of sustainability, have good and bad news for Portugal. In those who only look at the European space, the country is better off, but what encompasses the world reality puts it in certain positions. Zero evaluated the documents and has no doubts: “We need a strategy” for the future. Priorities for the association, after analyzing the data, are defined. “They should be the promotion of responsible consumption with less waste, the quality of life and well-being in cities, and also as areas of climate, preservation and recovery of ecosystems”, reads the statement to which the PUBLIC had access .
An increase in completion after reviewing the reports of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and do Institute per European Environmental Politics, concerning European countries, and the calculation and ranking at world level of the Sustainable Development Index (IDS), which measures the ecological efficiency of human development, recognizing that it must be achieved within the limits of the planet. Portugal comes out the best in the first analysis, referring to 2021.
There, refers Zero, Portugal is in 20th place, out of a set of 34 promotion countries, in a list that is led by Finland (1st), Sweden (2nd) and Denmark (3rd). It’s not a position we can boast about, but it still represents a two-place rise from the 2020 assessment.
The report analyzes the status and progression of each country. in each of the 17 goals for sustainable development by the United Nations in 2015, in its Agenda for 2030, and looking at each of them, there is also good and bad news.
The good news is that there is no trend towards decreasing quality in any of the indicators, and in several of them, Portugal is not on the right path to achieving the goals defined by the UN. This is what happens in the fields of zero poverty, gender equality, access to clean water and sanitation, in industry, innovation and infrastructure, and in reducing equality.
But despite this good sign, the truth is that the country has not yet achieved any of the 17 defined goals, and even if the fields with a positive trend are consolidated, there are still challenges to be overcome, the report concludes.
good access to health
For the remaining objectives, there are some with slight improvements (such as good access to health care or quality education, among others) and others in which the country, according to the evaluation criteria, has stagnated. And in this field, three objectives in which the report considers that there are still “huge challenges” to be overcome. These are climate action, marine life and terrestrial life.
Also stagnant, but with somewhat lesser challenges, for the report’s authors, is the goal of responsible production and consumption. And it is here, exactly, that the country ends up being penalized the most in the IDS, the other document analyzed by Zero.
Portugal appears in that list in 71st position, after analyzing 166 countries. The data refer to 2019 and show a decrease of three positions in relation to the document from the previous year, in which the country appeared in 68th place. “Portugal is particularly penalized by its position with regard to the material footprint per person, representing the natural resources used, as well as the transfers of carbon dioxide that contribute to climate change”, considers Zero.
With these starting points, the environmental association believes that Portugal can relatively easily overcome the most negative points pointed out by the two assessments, since, as a reference, “it has a set of legislative and policy tools in force, or in preparation, to face the most challenges”. The point is that the country still “does not have a clear strategy” on how it plans to achieve the goals for sustainable development, he says. And without a strategy, concludes Zero, “Portugal still does not have an integrated and covered approach” in this matter.
The council linked by the association is for the Government to design this strategy, and it even leaves a comment: “It doesn’t need to be an extensive and complex document, but a coordination of objectives and goals.”