Papers by Joana Gaspar de Freitas
Climate Change Management, 2018
Climate change is responsible for mean sea level rise. Coastal flooding and erosion put at risk i... more Climate change is responsible for mean sea level rise. Coastal flooding and erosion put at risk infrastructures and activities that humans have been developing in the littoral during the twentieth century. Perceptions about this space changed and people forgot that coasts are instable territories. Solutions to mitigate the impacts of climate change in coastal zones are now being searched. Looking back, to the past, can help. For centuries, the fishing communities developed strategies to survive in this hostile environment. Their ecological traditional knowledge can provide practical responses to present challenges. The last IPCC report recognizes that local and traditional knowledge, being a major resource in response to climate change, have not been used consistently. The aim of this chapter is to address the case of the Portuguese fishing populations to show how they developed coping practices using the available resources and simple technical means. Fishers’ key-strategies included special architecture forms, seasonal activities and a specific local knowledge that permitted them to recognized climate and coastline changes. Their lessons are compared to mitigation and adaptation measures being proposed nowadays. This allows to establish which ones are more suited to the Portuguese coast specificity and therefore will probably be more effective. These examples are useful for improving communication with decision-makers and increasing public awareness of future changes stressing the need for a more sustainable development.
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Interações Homem - Meio nas zonas costeiras: Brasil / Portugal, pp.123-136, Ed. Corbã, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil. ISBN: 978-85-98460-15-4, 2013
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Tese de doutoramento, Historia (Historia Contemporânea), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Let... more Tese de doutoramento, Historia (Historia Contemporânea), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2011
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Journal of Integrated Coastal Zone Management, 2021
Costa da Caparica, located south of Lisbon, has been since the 1960s the favourite beach of the p... more Costa da Caparica, located south of Lisbon, has been since the 1960s the favourite beach of the population of the Portuguese capital. The bridge over the Tagus river (1966), connecting the two margins, has facilitated the access to that wide beach of sand and dunes. Due to its natural features and proximity to Lisbon, Caparica become a highly populated area, where different social and economic activities compete for the use of the available space, increasing pressure upon the local ecosystems. The situation is even more problematic, because that littoral has been deeply affected by coastal erosion from the 1950s onwards. Authorities have been dealing with the issue using groynes and artificial beach nourishments. Since 2015, the Municipality of Almada is investing in the rehabilitation of the dunes of the beach of S. João, placing fences to retain the sand and planting vegetation. This programme is particularly interesting from a coastal management history point of view, because the...
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Ambiente e Educação. Revista de Educação Ambiental, 2020
Na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, uma equipa interdisciplinar esta a desenvolver ... more Na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, uma equipa interdisciplinar esta a desenvolver um projeto europeu sobre dunas costeiras. Estes ambientes vistos geralmente como simples “montes de areias” sao ecossistemas importantissimos na dinâmica litoral e tem muitas historias para contar. Com o objetivo de contribuir para a disseminacao da ciencia e fomentar a educacao ambiental, foi proposto aos professores de uma turma do ensino basico a realizacao de um trabalho conjunto, para abordar o tema das dunas e desenvolver conteudos que permitam a sua divulgacao nas escolas. O que se apresenta neste artigo e justificacao dessa proposta e os materiais que vao ser trabalhados. Espera-se que a experiencia, depois de testada, possa ser replicada com outras turmas e grupos etarios. At the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon (Portugal), an interdisciplinary team is developing a European project on coastal sand dunes. These environments usually seen as simple “piles o...
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Environment and History, 2021
In the Anthropocene, dunes act as a natural defence from sea-level rise and storm surges while pr... more In the Anthropocene, dunes act as a natural defence from sea-level rise and storm surges while providing ‘ecosystem’ services. This article uses scientific and historical data to examine the Manawatū-Whanganui dune field in New Zealand from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Dunes that were destabilised due to European settlements and their activities were drifting inland causing social, economic and political problems. Attempts to prevent dune mobility occurred at the time in many parts of the world. Thus, knowledge was shared between countries through experts and migrants. The consequences of the implemented solutions and new environmental conditions mean that dunes are still a major issue in the region. A comparative analysis of historical and present-day dune management practices provides a better understanding of long-term dune drift. In conclusion, interdisciplinary analyses of long-term relations between dunes and society must be taken into account for their holistic...
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Coastal Studies & Society
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Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman
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Global Environment
The aim of this paper is to present an example of the contribution of environmental historical re... more The aim of this paper is to present an example of the contribution of environmental historical research as a tool base for policy-making and coastal management. Based on an analysis of the tourist phenomenon in the Algarve, and using the Spanish experience as a point of comparison, it presents a consideration of the complex political, economic and social processes that led to the support of a kind of tourism, which was, in part, responsible for the environmental problems of those regions. Research shows that different perceptions, values and uses concerning coastal areas determined the strategies and the solutions adopted in the governance and management of these spaces. The impact of human ideas and practices shaped coastal environments and produced unintended side-effects (e.g. coastal erosion), forcing people to take new actions. The history of these human-environment relationships should not be ignored by those who have responsibilities in coastal issues as it offers insights ab...
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Climate Change Management
Vox populi says “weather isn’t what it used to be”! Climate change has been preferentially approa... more Vox populi says “weather isn’t what it used to be”! Climate change has been preferentially approached regarding the future. Most discussions focus on warming in recent decades and sea mean level rise, leaving aside the fact that climate has been varying over time with different impacts on Earth’s life. It is now possible through several proxies to reconstruct climatic variations in a long-term perspective. History allows to realize how humans faced climatic variations: adapting, migrating or succumbing to them. We are beginning to understand climate influence in the Crusades/Christian Peninsular Conquest and Iberian Discoveries, for example. The better we know the past the better we can have a realistic idea of present and future challenges. Having this in mind, the authors created the first Climate Change curricular unit, in a Portuguese History first degree course. The aim of this chapter is to talk about the experience of using historical examples as a tool to communicate climate change. Being optional in scholar curricula, the course had a good adhesion, attracting students from various areas. Students are eager for these diachronic studies on climate. It is up to professors and scientists to find the better way of giving them the knowledge they seek.
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Revista da Gestão Costeira Integrada / Journal of Integrated Coastal Zone Management, 12(1):32-41, 2012
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The village of Furadouro, in the Northwestern coast of Portugal, is emblematic of current problem... more The village of Furadouro, in the Northwestern coast of Portugal, is emblematic of current problems of coastal management. The purpose of this article is to analyze the interaction between the human communities and the coast in Furadouro, in order to understand how practices and arrangements have contributed to potentiate coastal erosion effects in the last century. The conceptual tools of " socio-natural sites " ; " co-evolution " ; and " socio-natural sites as nexus of practices and arrangements " guide this investigation. The methodology adopted is a socio-ecological long-term research. Data used comes mainly from primary historical sources (church registers, minutes of local authorities' meetings and newspapers) and secondary literature (local writers and monographies). Historical information was cross-referenced with geomorphological data to allow for a more global approach to the coastal erosion phenomenon. The analysis of the evolution of Furadouro shows that human activities were determinant to the increase of coastal erosion problems, not only by contributing to the decrease of sand in the beach, but also by destroying its natural protection structures-the dunes. The reconstruction of past coastal landscapes and human intervention allows us to have a better understanding of the complex and intertwined history of this socio-ecological site, offering as well a model of analysis and interpretation that can be applied to other cases around the world.
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Papers by Joana Gaspar de Freitas
Online Conference
22-24 September 2021
https://isig.fbk.eu/it/events/detail/19715/62nd-study-week-environment-and-infrastructures-from-the-early-modern-period-to-the-present-2021/
The online conference is dedicated to the relationship between environment and infrastructure from the Early Modern period to the Present.
Opening Lecture by
Helmuth Trischler (Deutsches Museum-Rachel Carson Center, Munich)
Concluding Remarks by
John R. McNeill (Georgetown University)
Partecipants
Sabine Barles (University of Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris)
Christoph Bernhardt (Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, Erkner)
Elisabetta Bini (University of Napoli)
Katja Bruisch (Trinity College, Dublin)
Matteo Di Tullio (University of Pavia)
David Edgerton (King’s College, London)
Jean Baptiste Fressoz (EHESS-Paris)
Joana Gaspar de Freitas (University of Lisbon)
David Gentilcore (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Frédéric Graber (Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin - EHESS, Paris)
Astrid Kirchhof Mignon (Humboldt University, Berlin)
Claudio Lorenzini (University of Udine)
John McNeill (Georg Town University)
Simone Müller (Rachel Carson Center, Munich)
Giacomo Parrinello (Sciences Po, Paris)
Tim Soens (University of Antwerp)
Georg Stöger (University of Salzburg)
Helmuth Trischler (Deutsches Museum-Rachel Carson Center, Munich)
Scientific Committee
Giacomo Bonan (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Christoph Cornelißen (University of Frankfurt a.M. – FBK-ISIG)
Katia Occhi (FBK-Istituto storico italo-germanico)