Successful screening ‘Savanna and the Mountain’

We are truly grateful to everyone who joined us for the screening of Savanna and the Mountain, at BAK Basecamp.

Through the film and the conversation with Aida Fernandes (Chairperson of the Covas do Barroso Communal Lands Council and member of the United in Defense of Covas do Barroso anti-mining association), we better understood the scale of socio-environmental violence unfolding in Covas do Barroso over eight years as communities continue to resist a lithium mining project that threatens their livelihoods, agricultural heritage, water systems, ecosystems, and communal lands. Diana Vela Almeida‘s discussion of European policies around lithium extraction situated this struggle within a broader landscape of extraction across Europe and Latin America, revealing the mechanisms of green extractivism that obscure these costs.

Covas do Barroso is Portugal’s only Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, recognised by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The mine would obliterate this designation, along with centuries-old farming and pastoral practices, and ecosystems home to critically endangered species including the Iberian wolf and freshwater pearl mussel. The proposed open-pit mine requires 600,000 cubic metres of water annually in a region already water-stressed by climate change. Seventy-one per cent of the mining concession consists of common lands (baldios) constitutionally protected and governed collectively by the community. Yet the company has pursued land-grabbing tactics, private security intimidation, and unfounded criminal charges against local leaders.

A small community faces a major corporation, backed by the Portuguese state and European Union, despite initial rejection of the project by Portugal’s own Environmental Agency on grounds of “very significant and irreversible negative impacts.”

Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso (UDCB) is a volunteer-run, nonprofit association at the forefront of this resistance. The work of defending Barroso requires financial resources.

How can we contribute? 

We are sharing the fundraising link (as the QR was not fully working after the screening) and hope you will consider contributing: https://whydonate.com/fundraising/barroso-resists 

Read below for further information.