The Minister of Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, announced this Friday (March 13), in Leiria, that private parties will receive vouchers for cleaning the forest destroyed by bad weather, anticipating that the amount could vary between one thousand and 1,500 euros per hectare.
“We already have the legislation ready, we need to create a PRR project [Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência] for each of these municipalities, one for Leiria, one for Pombal, one for Marinha Grande and also other affected areas, which gives them some funding to, in a very simple way, like a ‘voucher’, clean up these territories now”said Maria da Graça Carvalho.
In a meeting at the Leiria City Council with the municipal executive, where the Secretary of State for Energy, the president of the Portuguese Environment Agency and the coordinator of the Recovery Mission Structure for the Central Region of the Country were also present, the governor acknowledged that it is “very urgent” to clean the forest before the fire season. This work is being developed with the Minister of Agriculture, the Institute for Nature and Forest Conservation (ICNF) and the Mission Structure.
As for the value of the vouchers, it is still being finalized, but will have an “order of magnitude of 1,000, 1,500 euros per hectare” with a “very simple” form with “proof that you are responsible for that land and have the ‘voucher’ and clean the land”.
“For each of these municipalities there will be a project, Leiria will have a project, Pombal a project, Marinha Grande a project, there must be a management unit. Our desire – and what seems to us to be the best option – would be for the municipality itself to be the managing authority that can have the help of the parish councils and, then, the vouchers are for the private individuals who clean”he added.
According to Maria da Graça Carvalho, “very soon” the rules will be published, and in cases “in which it is not possible to understand who owns the land, there is legislation that allows the ICNF to come in and clean it up”.
“This will be one of the most important projects for this region, because the forest was, perhaps, the biggest wound”he declared, recognizing that there are “many houses without roofs” and “factories that suffered a lot, but the forest will take many years to restore and it is so important for this area” that “it is worth making a great effort” and “a simplification of the rules” to redirect part of the PRR towards this area and the forest.
Asked whether there is capacity for city halls to respond to this task, Maria da Graça Carvalho highlighted that “this responsibility comes with a financial envelope”, with “the possibility of either delegating to councils or subcontracting”.
“The forest is difficult to know. There are many owners who don’t know the extremes of their pine forests and, often, the president of the council even knows better. And therefore, a forest program has to be managed by someone very close to the forest”he defended, insisting that the guardianship option involves being someone who “knows, who knows who is who”, he added.
When asked whether there is capacity for more of this work, the mayor of Leiria, Gonçalo Lopes, admitted that, “perhaps, alongside the recovery of the business fabric, people’s individual assets and road infrastructure works”, this task “is capable of being one that has a very demanding, very short-term dimension”.
“I accept this availability so that we can make our contribution to identifying the best strategies. (…) We are always available to work as a team and receive responsibilities, but also working with those who have scale experience and the scale is currently at ICNF”he noted.
For Gonçalo Lopes, this is how “the management of processes like this should be”, with dialogue and not “playing games at city halls”.
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