CESAM participated in Sustainability Day 2026, an initiative integrated into the Open Week of the Águeda School of Technology and Management (ESTGA). Amadeu Soares, Director of CESAM, attended the event’s activities and visited the new ESTGA building in the centre of Águeda, an infrastructure that will strengthen the school’s capacity by providing new spaces dedicated to teaching, research, and collaboration with companies.
The programme began with the opening of the international photography exhibition “Bichos de Cá, Bichos de Lá”, dedicated to the biodiversity of Portuguese-speaking countries. The exhibition features 41 photographic panels portraying several species of fauna from Portugal, Mozambique, and Brazil, highlighting the importance of biodiversity conservation and the essential role each species plays in ecosystems. The exhibition “Bichos de Cá, Bichos de Lá” results from a partnership between CESAM-UA (Portugal), Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz, Brazil), through PICTIS, and the Osuwela Association (Mozambique), underlining the international and collaborative nature of this initiative.
Following the exhibition opening, the lecture “Climate change and its implications for health” was delivered by researcher Gabriel Selbach Hofmann, who addressed the impacts of climate change on human and environmental health. At the beginning of the session, Amadeu Soares delivered a few opening remarks, highlighting the importance of scientific cooperation and raising public awareness about global sustainability challenges.
For CESAM, participating in this Sustainability Day is a way to demonstrate that, in the Environment, nothing exists in isolation: species, ecosystems, and human communities are deeply interconnected. The international travelling exhibition “Bichos de Cá, Bichos de Lá” and the subsequent lecture illustrated this central idea of our research — One Health — to an audience largely composed of secondary school and ESTGA students, reinforcing the importance of environmental literacy from the earliest stages of education.
CESAM’s participation in this initiative reinforces the centre’s commitment to promoting environmental literacy, advancing sustainability research, and strengthening the dialogue between science and society.
