fábulas sustentáveis

F from Finish! Fim - End - Ände...but also Fish and hopefully it is going to be just Fine. The PhD viva is this Friday, 5th of December 2014!* I have 15 minutes to present the result of 4 years of work, 145 pages, 4 manuscripts, help from many people, life in two countries, 3 institutions, everything in one PhD thesis.** Thank you - Obrigada - Tack so mycket - everybody that directly or indirectly helped in this project. The abstract: Seafood production from the sea is on its limit because of overfishing and environmental impacts, but consumer demand is increasing worldwide. Portugal is one of the countries with the highest seafood consumption per capita in the World. The aim of this thesis was to study the seafood consumption in Portugal to find its potential to sustainability. Four studies were developed independently, based on different methodologies including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and an internet-based survey. The Portuguese seafood consumption was analysed throu...

Each time there is an end, this end is on my mind. I wonder how many deaths will happen in my life. It will always be more and more until my own death. Time does not stop and in some way, death is important to make life more precious and rich. Every life that I shared is now part of my life.

And one day a Fabula becomes reality: Giving the users a lead role in making decisions and developing plans for managing marine resources builds self-esteem and buy-in, making it far more likely that they will comply with the rules and abide by the sanctions imposed for non-compliance.

A handmade book from José Alfaro on Vimeo . It is so beautiful just to see how a book can be made by hands. As food and clothes, when we buy something made by someone instead of a machine, makes it an unique thing. We can try to have less but with more meaning. More here .

Sandgrains Trailer NoSub from Matchbox Media Collective on Vimeo . The trailer with subtitles is  here . It is the same old story...there is less fish in the sea because some big boats, from other countries, are fishing and making business with resources that are the basic food and income for the local population. Who eats that fish? And if it happens the opposite...How many agreements exist that EU countries let other countries to explore their resources? The problem is not only the agreement on itself, but the unfairness between different levels of logistics and resources to track the activity and to manage the fish stocks. If you want to see it, you go here next Monday!

This quantitative consumer study of 18,000 consumers in a total of 18 countries (14 in 2008, 17 in 2009 through 2012) asked about such behavior as energy use and conservation, transportation choices, food sources, the relative use of green products versus conventional products, attitudes toward the environment and sustainability, and knowledge of environmental issues.   Overall, we find that although environmental concerns have widely increased since 2012 and that climate change is presenting an increasingly felt threat to consumers, the pace and scale of uptake of sustainable consumption have remained too little over the past six years.  Top-scoring consumers of the 2014 Greendex study are in the developing economies of India and China, in descending order, followed by consumers in South Korea, Brazil, and Argentina. Indian and Chinese consumers also scored highest in 2012. American consumers’ behavior still ranks as the least sustainable of all countries surveyed sinc...

Just two generations ago, preparing meals was as much a part of life as eating. Now we’ve given up what is perhaps our best excuse to get together and spend time with the people we love—mealtime—and someone else stands at the stove. We’re either watching cooks on TV like we would a spectator sport or grabbing grub, bagged, and eating it alone and on the go. ... Because not cooking is a big mistake—and it’s one that’s costing us money, good times, control, serenity and, yes, vastly better health. I really agree that it is good to cook. When I cook, I learn how to buy food, where it comes from, and how to prepare it. Each time I eat, I understand all the work that is behind my meal and the cost of the food produced to feed me. In the same way, the last book of Michael Pollan, Cooked , talks about the importance of cooking for healthy and more sustainable food habits: The effects of not cooking are similarly far reaching.  Relying upon corporations to process our food me...