Nature-based solutions This week saw a significant milestone in Ireland’s tortuous journey from climate laggard to climate leader with the publication of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill. It is a significant achievement for the Green Party in particular, which delivered on its promise to deliver the bill within the first 100 […]
The left is right The emergence of a ‘left-green’ conversation in Ireland seems to have gone unnoticed in the mainstream media. Its most notable figures inside the Oireachtas are Neasa Hourigan, Green Party TD for Dublin Central, Bríd Smith in People Before Profit, Alice-Mary Higgins (Ind) and Lynn Boylan of Sinn Féin. The Social Democrats, […]
Don’t ask me to be optimistic As far as apocalyptic weeks go, the one just gone has been impressive. The week started with the publication of a study showing that the rate at which ice sheets in the polar regions are melting is tracking the worst case scenarios which had been predicted in the 5th […]
Pádraic’s Blog: The Hardest Animal to Live With Bringing wolves back to Ireland has many supporters but for many it is all just a stretch too far. The conflict would be fierce and fraught, at least if current attitudes to nature are anything to go by. Can’t we just manage what we have? Why would […]
In search of the real A couple of years back I attended a conference on ‘Natural Capital’ in the National Concert Hall in Dublin. Natural Capital is a way of bringing nature into national economic accounting structures in order to value what are termed ‘ecosystem services’ – i.e. the things that keep us alive like […]
Golden Plovers, sheep, peat and ‘Hurling from the Ditch’ Last week the IWT issued a press release calling for sheep to be removed from hills as an emergency measure to allow for the recovery of damaged peatlands, particularly blanket bogs. It followed the publication of a report from the National Parks and Wildlife Service which […]
