The National Plan for Nature Restoration and the implementation of the deposit-and-reimbursement packaging system will be among the topics marking the coming year in the environmental field, according to the environmental association Zero.
In a statement summarizing the year 2025, the environmental association also points to what it considers the critical moments of 2026 for the environment in Portugal, highlighting the finalization and submission to the European Commission of the restoration plan, whose delivery is due on the first day of September.
This implies, according to Zero, the design “of robust financial incentives that mobilize private landowners, who hold the overwhelming majority of the national rural land, without whom any terrestrial restoration strategy will be doomed to remain on paper”.
In the marine domain, it will also be necessary to establish strictly protected areas to allow ecosystem restoration, warns Zero.
The association notes that, after four years of delay, in April 2026 the deposit-and-reimbursement system for plastic and metal beverage packaging is due to be launched. It says that these systems enable very high collection rates.
The coming year should also include updates to the Roadmap for Climate Neutrality and the Green Industrial Strategy, provided for in the Climate Bases Law and still to be created, Zero predicts; Portugal has until July 31, 2026 to transpose the Right to Repair Directive.
The year now ending was marked, according to the association, by the “race to the abyss of ‘business as usual’” of the European Union, approving a simplification agenda that is in fact a deregulation agenda.
Zero believes that environmentally positive facts that marked the year included the entry into force of the High Seas Treaty, the creation of the Northeast Atlantic Emissions Control Area by the International Maritime Organization, or the implementation by several municipalities of high-efficiency urban waste collection and management systems, and the creation of the Lusophone Network for Climate.
Among negative factors, among others, the lack of effectiveness in addressing the urban waste problem and the inertia of nature conservation policies in Portugal, exemplified by the lack of a National Register of Classified Natural Values, as well as recurring delays in implementing the Climate Bases Law.
