Coimbra hosts National Citizenship Meeting for the Defense of Rivers and Water

O National Citizenship Meeting for the Defense of Rivers and Water will take place at the Casa da Cultura in Coimbra, on the 18th of May, where 70 organizations from six national and local civic movements will come together, from the north to the south of the country – which include NGOs, ONGA’s, associations and municipalities -, as well as individual citizens, with representation in the country’s main river basins (AMORA, Mondego Vivo, MovRioDouro , MUNDA, PAS and proTEJO).

The organizations invited Maria da Graça Carvalho, Minister of Environment and Energy, to open this meeting, in which civic movements will reflect on measures and forms of mobilizing citizenship to achieve the implementation of the 15 demands for rivers and water, which were already presented in March to all political parties running for legislative elections.

These organizations consider that “reasoned warnings were ignored thoughtlessly, deliberately and unconsciously, especially from the 1970s onwards.” “And so we have reached the situation that places us on the threshold of survival in the face of the rapidity of climate change and, in particular, in the face of the degradation of the quantity and quality of surface and underground waters and their respective ecosystems”, the civic movements also warn in the document of demands which asks political decision-makers to act primarily on the causes as a way of combating the effects.

Civic movements thus intend to introduce these issues into the political agenda and construct a discourse with strategic thinking that represents a viable project of responsible collective and individual action with a sense of intergenerational justice.