From survivors' testimonies to a reporter's account, from the analysis of a zootechnical and environmental engineer to the story of someone who led their village to a reconversion in the name of biodiversity, the documentary illustrates the environmental and social risks of monoculture, but also a solution for shifting political and economic paradigms from the bottom up.
On June 17, 2017, a fire started in Escalos Fundeiros, in the municipality of Pedrógão Grande, spreading to seven municipalities in the Pinhal Interior Norte region of Portugal.
The consequences of the fire were devastating: 65 dead, 254 injured, and 53.000 hectares of forest up in smoke (equal to the combined area of the municipal territories of Milan, Genoa, and Naples).
The very high temperatures (around 40°), the low relative humidity, the prolonged drought and the wind constitute, together with the monocultures of eucalyptus and pine, the ideal conditions for the spread of a totally uncontrolled fire.
The story of Green desert It opens with the testimonies of the survivors who escaped the flames, and then continues with an in-depth analysis by the zootechnical and environmental engineer João Camargo.
Spread under the dictator Salazar's Estado Novo and proliferated after the Carnation Revolution, eucalyptus monoculture is not only a threat to flora and fauna, but, in its intensive cultivation, it compromises local economies and the social fabric.
In an interview that blends history and current events, forest botany and sociology, climatology and economics, Camargo warns of the environmental and social risks of a forestry policy geared toward monoculture.
Shifting paradigms and restoring biodiversity is possible. In the final part of the documentary, Pedro Pedrosa tells us how the residents of the village of Ferraria de São João were able to transform the tragic events of June 2017 into an opportunity to rethink their land, their relationship with nature, and the dynamics of coexistence.
director's note
For several years I had wanted to make a documentary about eucalyptus monoculture in Portugal, and after the fire of June 17 and 18, 2017, describing the environmental and social consequences of decades of monopolization of the Pinhal Interior Norte territory, where I live for a few months of the year, became an urgent need.
The documentary is divided into three parts. In the first, I collected testimonies from two people who were caught in the flames and from a journalist who followed the firefighters' efforts to extinguish the fire.
The central part of the story is entrusted to João Camargo, a zootechnical and environmental engineer and researcher at the ICS- Instituto de Ciências Sociais of the Universidade de Lisboa, who analyzes the impact of monoculture from an environmental, sociological, and economic perspective.
Camargo's intervention is at the heart of my work because it sheds light on the causal relationships between climate change and natural disasters, the political responsibilities in the impoverishment of Portugal's rural and mountainous areas, and possible solutions to avoid tragedies like the one last June.
The documentary's final protagonist is Pedro Pedrosa, a resident of the village of Ferraria de São João who, in the weeks following the fire, led a small ecological revolution that concluded, at the end of 2017, with the creation of a eucalyptus-free protection zone around the village.
The fire of June 2017 left an indelible mark on the communities of Pedrógão Grande, Figueiró dos Vinhos, and Castanheira de Pera.
The endless greenery of the past has been replaced by the charred skeletons of eucalyptus trees that have begun to rise again, like the phoenix, a few weeks after the flames.
Unfortunately, this rebirth is short-lived: eucalyptus is a species that absorbs large quantities of water and nutrients and, after a few growth cycles, leaves the plantations completely desertified.
If eucalyptus is found in small numbers among other species, the 'coexistence' problems are solvable, but if the cultivation is a monoculture, the result is an ecosystem that makes life impossible for flora and fauna.
In a medium and long term perspective, the monoculture of eucalyptus associated with increasingly frequent droughts and ever higher temperatures can only lead to desertification which will end up increasing an employment crisis and a depopulation of the internal areas of the country".
