Dodgy Dealings Under the Sea Hundreds of records released to Coastal Concern Alliance, a citizens’ group, under Freedom of Information and Access to Information on the Environment rules raise serious questions for habitat protection and wind farm development in the Irish Sea Was there political interference in designating sites for nature conservation in 2012 when […]
Sinn Féin and biodiversity June 11th 2022 The government is nearing its second birthday. At the end of this year, at the halfway point if the government goes to full term, Micheál Martin will be replaced as Taoiseach by Leo Varadkar. While Martin has backed a response to the biodiversity emergency, even addressing the National […]
30 years of plans… and counting May 28th 2022 Next month (June) will mark the 30th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit. That’s right, 30 years. In 1992, when I was just finished my first year in college and heading off for a summer of fun in Munich, thousands of delegates from across the globe […]
Could this be a super year? Yesterday (May 14th) marked the first full day of the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, nearly three years since the idea was first mooted on the very same day the Dáil declared a climate and biodiversity emergency. Hardly an emergency response but a welcome development all the same. 100 […]
Is this progress? I had a dream that I was listing to Claire Byrne’s RTÉ radio show every day this week where she interviewed politicians from across the spectrum on the imminent extinction of curlews in Ireland. I imagined I heard Fine Gael’s Patrick O’Donovan list all the townlands in his constituency where curlews could […]
Doing Nothing on the Bogs It’s nearly a decade since I travelled to Glenveagh in Donegal to look at what I had been told was widespread illegality and habitat destruction inside the eponymous National Park. I found the accusations hard to believe at the time, given the high profile of the Park but there it […]
Rewilding: winning hearts and minds I’ve never particularly liked the term ‘wilderness’. Although it is instantly evocative it carries so much colonialist baggage that I think it best avoided, regardless of whether you think it even exists or not (for background on this I can recommend this important essay by William Cronon). These days many […]
Water – what’s it to you? Where is your nearest water course? Mine is the River Tolka, a fairly short river that rises in farmland in Co. Meath only about 20km from where I live in Dublin. It is perhaps best known as the river that flows past the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin while […]
The Trouble with Turbines Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has placed a spotlight on Europe’s fossil fuel dependence. The war has come on top of already rising fuel prices that, as I write, are seeing petrol prices near €2 a litre. Coincidentally, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this week published its sixth […]
The failure of fisheries science In 2013, as part of an overhaul of the Common Fisheries Policy, the European Union committed to ending overfishing by 2015 ‘where possible’ and by 2020 ‘at the latest’. Needless to say, this deadline came and went but a successful legal challenge by Friends of the Irish Environment in the […]
Speed and Conviction Later this year, June to be precise, will mark the 30th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit. It was a landmark event in the history of the environmental movement which resulted in the international treaties to end biodiversity loss and limit greenhouse gas emissions that remain the centrepieces of the global response […]
Lessons from Costa Rica Forestry continues to be a vexed issue in Ireland. While the forest owners, nurseries, sawmill owners and timber suppliers are mostly focussed on the immediate issues of getting licences for planting and felling, the bigger, and more important issue is the lack of new forest establishment. In fact, due to planned […]
WWF and ‘Origin Green’ ‘Origin Green’, the Bord Bia (and so publicly) funded food marketing programme, started life in 2012. In that time annual greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture (which had been on a downward trajectory) have risen by over 11%, from 19,284 to 21,432 kt CO₂ equivalent. According to the EPA, between their 2012-2014 […]
On hen harriers and water quality Two programmes underway to address environmental issues show how change can be achieved, but also the challenge that lies ahead. Are we addressing the biodiversity emergency? Well, yes and no. There’s no question but that a slew of programmes and measures have been developed in the past five […]
Nature for sale? The COP is entering into its final days. Despite being labelled as a ‘now or never’ moment, the task of meaningfully addressing the climate and biodiversity emergency will remain with us after the delegates head home. No matter what the outcome it is important that momentum is maintained in the days and […]
Last chance? Or no chance? The Irish Wildlife Trust is attending the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. As a first-timer I have been overwhelmed by the enormity of the event. There’s the excitement at witnessing something of such global significance but a disorientation that is only lifting on day 4. World leaders and famous faces […]
Decolonising conservation The Burren winterage festival just finished up with its annual cattle drive. Now in its 20th year it is a reminder of an ancient tradition of transhumance – the movement of cattle from the lowlands to upland winter grazing pastures. It is this practice that lies at the heart of the ecological diversity […]
COPs – what are they good for? It’s nearly 30 years since world leaders met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the Earth Summit. I recently bought a copy of TIME on eBay which anticipated the event with the cover headline ‘Coming Together to Save the Earth’. “What kind of planet will our children inherit? […]
Rewilding Ireland – Where Will be First? Rewilding got a little closer to home this week with the announcement that the Affric Highlands in Scotland are to be added to the Rewilding Europe network. It becomes one of only nine landscape-scale projects (the organisation has many more smaller initiatives which include the Dunsany Estate in […]
IUCN World Congress The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is a global organisation that has worked for the protection of biodiversity since its founding in 1948. It is probably best known for producing ‘red lists’ of species which are endangered with extinction. Its latest assessment, published last week to coincide with its […]
New forests please Hardly a week goes by without articles appearing in the farming press about the dire state of the forestry industry in Ireland. These articles are repetitive (typically reprints of industry press releases) and bemoan the difficultly in getting licences for routine operations. These rarely, if ever, mention that forestry has been a […]
Norwegian Wood Last week I spent some time walking in Norway. Outdoor activity in the country is a national obsession and starts at an early age with their utebarnehage (outdoor kindergardens). Here, children spend much of their week in the forest regardless of the weather. Babies in cots are brought inside for their naps only […]
Taking the train I first left the country in 1986, at the age of 12. It was a much-anticipated family sun holiday to Mallorca. Until then every holiday had been to the caravan in Wexford. This was perfectly normal at the time, leaving the country was expensive. But my generation was quick to catch up. […]
Look to the sea The sea has given us everything. The earliest people lived by, and off, the sea, as have generations that followed. The sea brought us our history, from the Viking and Norman invasions to the Martello towers that were built as look-outs for a Napoleonic invasion. The sea took our hopeful and […]
A year in government The government recently celebrated a year in office. The IWT supported the Programme for Government (PfG) on the basis that – if implemented – it would set us on a course to addressing the biodiversity emergency. Green Party leader and minister for Transport Eamon Ryan, has said that it is the […]
Expect more Extinction Denial Science denial has a long and inglorious history. In 1615 Galileo Galilei was condemned to house arrest for defending Copernicus’ theory that the earth travelled around the sun and not vice versa. In the 1960s, Rachel Carson, an aquatic biologist working for the US Bureau of Fisheries, came under ferocious attack […]
The Urgency of Rewilding This week saw two important publications that bring the urgent need for rewilding closer to being accepted at a policy level. While rewilding has gained widespread popular support, policy-makers and even many ecologists have remained sceptical. Part of this has been the lack of a widely accepted definition, accompanied by its […]
While dairy is the most profitable sector in farming in Ireland, it increasingly faces environmental questions. What are the options? by Oliver Moore There has been strong growth in the dairy sector in Ireland because it is, by a distance, the most profitable sector in Irish farming. Even when overall farm incomes are stable or […]
No budging the agri-debate It is rather depressing to see just how little the debate on agriculture and eco-action has progressed in recent years. The voices of the farming community, typically the leaders of farming organisations, the farming media and a cohort of rural politicians are sticking with their arguments on carbon leakage (if we […]
Ireland’s Agri-Food Strategy 2030 In 2015 Ireland published its last agri-food strategy. ‘FoodWise 2025: A vision for growth’ was unabashed in its ambition. “It represents the shared voice of an industry striving to create a business and regulatory environment in which the extensive growth opportunities of the next 10 years can be fully capitalised on.” […]
