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A walk through the granite massif of the Serra d’Arga wants to show “live”, on Sunday, the impact of the eventual exploration of lithium in that area shared by Viana do Castelo, Caminha, Ponte de Lima and Vila Nova de Cerveira.
“The objective is to alert the population. Explain what is at stake, and nothing better than seeing living areas and biodiversity that may be affected. We think that better than a clarification session between four walls, it is a clarification session that is carried out by walking on the ground ”, the spokesman for the SOS Serra d’Arga movement, which organized the action, told the Lusa agency today.
According to Carlos Seixas, the walk, with a length of about six kilometers, begins and ends in Chã Grande, in Senhora do Minho.
The meeting point of the participants is scheduled for Sunday, at 8:30 a.m., at Chã Grande in Senhora do Minho, arriving at 11:30 a.m., in the same place the destination of the participants who choose to do the mountain bike route.
According to the spokesman for the SOS Serra d’Arga movement, the interested parties “must register in an ‘online’ form that was created for this purpose and that contains all the rules determined by the General Directorate of Health.”
“People will have to wear protective masks, and participants will be divided into groups, who will walk at intervals between them to ensure adequate social distance,” he specified.
The SOS Serra d’Arga movement has been promoting, since August, several awareness-raising actions, involving Galician associations “in defense of a common heritage, the Miño River, which may be at stake if the mining project proposed by the Portuguese Government is implement advances ”.
In a statement sent to Lusa today, the movement explained that the walk scheduled for Sunday aims to be “a moment of celebration and tribute to the natural, cultural, historical and landscape heritage of our sacred mountain”, with the “purpose of sharing and living collectively, the immensity of the landscape and help to form a clear awareness of what is threatened by a mining development project that the Government intends to implement ”.
Serra d’Arga has an area of 10,000 hectares in the municipalities of Caminha, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Viana do Castelo and Ponte de Lima, of which 4,280 are classified as Place of Community Importance.
These municipalities have already launched the project “From Serra d’Arga to Foz do Âncora”, led by the Alto Minho Intermunicipal Community (CIM), which aims to classify the Serra d’Arga as a Protected Area of Landscape of Interest Municipal.
The SOS movement of Serra d’Arga welcomes the initiative, but “does not rest”.
“We are very satisfied with the process already started by the municipalities for the creation of the protected area. It is more of an instrument of protection, but we are not rested. The draft decree-law, recently published by the Government, does not even guarantee that these areas will be protected from mining and, therefore, we cannot be at peace. It is one more step until we have assured the definitive suspension of this process, which aims to mine the nine sites in the north of Portugal ”, said Carlos Seixas.
In July 2019, the Government decided to “excuse” the Natura 2000 Serra d’Arga website from the set of areas that will be included in the lithium prospecting tender, but the SOS Serra d’Arga movement ensures that the intention to exploit remains mining in that mountain range.
According to the State Budget, the Government wants to create in 2020 a cluster ‘of the lithium and battery industry and will launch a public tender for the allocation of exploration rights for lithium and associated minerals in nine areas of the country.
The areas of Serra d’Arga, Barro / Alvão, Seixo / Vieira, Almendra, Barca Dalva / Canhão, Argemela, Guarda, Segura and Maçoeira should be covered.
Earlier this month, the European Commission defended the exploitation of lithium in northern Portugal, within the framework of the new European Union (EU) strategy to reduce external dependence on essential raw materials, but called for dialogue with the local communities.
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