“It is still more of a hobby than a life style”. These are the words
José Carlos Fuentes Sanchez, coordinator of the climate change action for
“Amigos de la Tierra” (Friends of Earth - FOE) NPO, in Madrid, uses to describe the current social
tendency in Spanish society towards climate change issues.
“The tendency is very negative, since here in Spain, issues,
like the fact that the social gap between rich and poor is getting bigger
everyday, move the debate on climate change to a secondary level of
discussion”, he states.
FOE is a worldwide organization that works like a federation,
dividing into regional and then national and local groups that focus on
promoting a more respectful society towards the environment. It now has more than
one million members spread in seventy seven countries.
José Sanchez works as a coordinator for the climate change cabinet
of the central Spanish bureau. Among complaints of lack of means to take
further action, he defines his work as a mixture of patience, hope and
determination in what he describes as an apparent “hopeless fight against the
big corporations and economic interests”.
Profile of an
environmentalist
José Sanchez has no more of a natural connection to environmental
issues as anyone else. He grew up in the centre of Madrid and despite some occasional tours to
his family’s rural house or some youth holiday camps he took part in, it wasn’t
until he got into college that environmental issues started to take a central part
in his life.
“I’ve studied economics and, being interested in what was a more
critical view, i.e. related with ecological and sustainability issues, I was
surprised to find out that inside the university there was nothing related to
the topic. The classical view was still absolutely dominant, and I believe that
that was what awoke my interest to this matters”, he admits.
Local challenges “People are not more worried or informed today than they were twenty
years ago” and “climate change is still not a main issue for the general
population”, he claims. According to José Sanchez, this is one of the biggest challenges
faced by eco-activists. “People still resist the idea that individually they
can have an important role to the preservation of the environment”.
“Studies show that in here, the group of people that seems most
worried and even informed about climate change is composed of mid-class
individuals, between 35 and 50, settled in life and with kids. The same studies
show that this is also the group less-likely to take action to preserve the
environment”. This is the paradigm that environmental protection is facing.
According to him, “the enormous increase of the use of individual
motored means of transportation in the last few years”, “the dependency in eighty
per cent of Spanish energy consumption on energy produced from fossil fuels”
and “the massive growth of the Spanish construction market”, are causing the
deterioration of the air’s quality and giving rise to increasingly warm summers
and cold winters.
Political apathy
Although the society’s reaction seems to be dim, the main issue
still is the lack of political action on environmental subjects.
“We try to change what is the political apathy towards ecological
issues but, we still have a much subdued effectiveness on that level, since the
balance of forces falls far too much to the side of economic interests. In Madrid, the
environmental laws are extremely obscure and much dominated by the economical
agenda”.
FOE is trying to promote economical advantages for investments on
alternative means of energy acquisition and more efficient ways of production but,
“at the political level, especially during times of crisis, the tendency is
regressive in what comes to the promotion of more eco-efficient ways of
living”.
The desperation evidenced in the words of José Sanchez mirrors a
frightful future for earth’s environment as we know it.
Jao Marques finished his bachelors in Communication Sciences with a
specialization in journalism back in 2007, in the Universidade Nova de Lisboa with a
one-year-Erasmus-passage trough Belgium.
Studied photojournalism and fashion photography in Madrid and worked as an internee in the
Portuguese national news agency for a period of 3 months.My interests reside mainly between
international politics, indie British rock music, fashion, cinema and
photography.
