Keep Focus and Keep Walking. Interview with José Archer

The Blue Flag program is ran by Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) to initiate, maintain and improve water quality in sewage. It was created in 1987 and has become a successful program that is carried out throughout the world.

In Portugal, José Archer, now the president of ABAE, joined the team in 1995. The overall subject is to focus on educating children and youth, entrepreneurs and policy makers in the sense of sustainable development in the local water.

In fact, he became the president of ABAE in Portugal, due to an invitation from one of his friends in 1995 and since then he stayed in charge of it. At the same time the YRE and the Eco-Schools were starting as real projects in Portugal and were also embraced by him. Nowadays it involves 50 people working within a framework to keep it functional.

Since he became a part of it until today, he acknowledges that it has changed a lot, affirming that “The blue flag started in 1987 and by that time the conditions of the beaches were completely different, and the way people act and used the beaches was diferent.” According to him, by convincing the governments to invest, by avoiding the pollution that contaminates the waters and by changing people’s minds and attitudes might result in young generations being more aware.

In the beggining there were only 30 beaches with the flag outside the urban centers however, as claimed by José, “Bit by bit, generation by generation we now have around 300 beaches with the flag, which represents more than 50% of the whole beaches in Portugal.”Moreover the difference is obvious since nowadays, the beaches are clean, well organised and in very good conditions.

From José Archer’s point of view “It’s not easy to convince people to join these kind of projects but it’s much easier to convince and to get young people involved in it than older people.” By doing this it will be more simple to estabilish a goal and achieve it and by calculating the progress made it is possible to foresee what needs a change.

Since the European Blue Flag Association is responsible for raising awareness of citizens, José agrees and states that “This is like running and there’s always a destination. The more prepared you are the fastest and further you may go.”

After being asked about what he thought that are the differences between YRE projects and missions and others, he believes that what makes the diference is the action. Besides making sure people are aware of the issues we now face, there is an intention of changing attitudes and move people to take action. And José really feels that the actions and the search for a solution is important and it definetly can be achieved.

Group 1: Maria Camila Lau, Vihn Le, Martins Mozga, Tal Maymom, Aleksandar Arsovski, Natalia Mrazova, Maria Konyukhova, Joana Pedro.