Port of Call LAST UPDATE June 18, 2009
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May 31, 2009 Malaga, Spain – Meeting New Partner Organizations
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Malaga’s city centre is complete with an array of historical buildings from a variety of backgrounds including Roman, Arabic, and classical Spanish.

As the last port of call during the Mediterranean section of the 66th Global Voyage, Peace Boat visited for the first time the lush city of Malaga, on Spain’s Costa del Sol (Sunshine Coast). Situated on the southern point of Spain near the Gibraltar Strait, Malaga was founded by the Phoenicians more than 3,000 years ago. It was one of the last bastions of Arab rule on the Iberian Peninsula, with the ruling Muslims resisting the reconquest until the 16th century. Malaga is renowned throughout Spain as having a year round genial climate and as a result can support a large variety of plant species. The diversity and extent of flora in and around Malaga has encouraged an ecologically aware society and a number of environmentally-minded NGOs. As it was Peace Boat’s first visit to Malaga, an effort was made to meet some of these organisations and learn about their work in order to forge new partnerships and foster new friendships.
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Peace Boat staff member Karaki Mine listens to Aulaga president Ines Cheka talk about their tree-repopulating scheme at one of their nurseries.
Aulaga is a completely volunteer-run NGO that focuses on promoting environmental education, local ecology and uniting a wide variety of experienced people from different disciplines of environmental study. The NGO began in 1999 as a small group of similarly minded people who wanted to repopulate the Malaga city area with native flora and has grown in recent years to include a variety of campaigns and activities around Malaga and Andalusia. Their primary objective is to make the citizens of Malaga aware of climate change and what they can do in their immediate environment to lead lives that are more ecologically friendly. In order to raise awareness of these issues amongst the citizens of Malaga a variety of initiatives are implemented, the most well known being Limpiar el Mundo (Clean the World). Inspired by a nation-wide program that is run annually in Australia, Limpiar el Mundo began in 1993 and is endorsed by the United Nations. Limpiar el Mundo is an activity that dedicates a single morning towards cleaning the local environment. It is an effective activity to build community spirit and awareness, an integral part of creating a sustainable and ecologically friendly lifestyle.
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Peace Boat participant Mosu listens to a distant echo at the Malaga botanic gardens. Malaga’s climate can support flora from a large variety of different climate zones making it renowned throughout Spain.

Another one of Aulaga’s activities is their Tres R’s (three R’s) campaign, which exhibits their belief that education is key to initiate change. Tres R’s proclaims the virtues of reducing, recycling and reusing and has produced such schemes as the recycling amongst the local community of exhausted and potentially dangerous photocopier toners and printer ink cartridges which contain toxic substances. Another example of Aulaga’s educational programs is their Christmas Campaign, which aims to encourage responsible consumerism during the leadup to Christmas by resisting excessive shopping and buying products that are produced in a socially responsible manner such as Fair Trade goods, locally produced goods, recyclable goods, and toys without batteries.
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Participants overlooking the scenic costal city of Malaga from the 15th century Arab fortress
Aside from Aulaga’s campaign drives, they are constantly involved in the repopulation of Malaga’s surrounds with native fauna and they have many nurseries around Malaga where volunteers spend time growing seedlings to be planted around the city. New volunteers to Aulaga undertake an educational course where they receive hands on experience on how to manage the nurseries as well as learning about tree repopulation techniques and the social philosophies of Aulaga regarding sustainable living.