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This is an extract from the most recent edition of Temperature Check, The Journal’s monthly climate newsletter. To receive Temperature Check to your inbox, sign up in the box at the end of this article.
When Storm Babet hit the south of the country this month, it left destruction in its wake which locals said they couldn’t remember seeing in decades. The scale of the chaos it wrought has been a reminder for many, and a wake-up call for others, that climate change is increasing the risk of more frequent and more intense storms.
After Storm Babet, Alan O’Connor, a Cork councillor based in Carrigtwohill, told Temperature Check that he visited an apartment building where some of the ground floor apartments had flooded.
“I spoke to a resident and it was heartbreaking. They moved in only recently and now they’ve had to move out until repairs are made.”
“People got in touch to try to bring to the council’s attention places where there was a need for sandbags or where roads had been flooded and damage had been done to put it on the council’s list of work,” O’Connor said.
“I took photographs of the places where flooding happened. Hopefully that can contribute to an assessment of what’s happened, how the floods have impacted people, and how we can mitigate against that going forward.”
That’s really the question now – what can be done to try to protect communities from the impacts of this type of extreme weather event again?
Dr Mary Bourke is an Associate Professor of Geography at Trinity College Dublin whose research specialises in geomorphology and natural flood management.
Speaking to The Journal for Temperature Check, Dr Bourke explained: “The real problem is that we haven’t recognised that by building on floodplains, we are putting ourselves in harm’s way. There are historical reasons for that [...] but we’re now dealing with the fact that we are in the way of natural floods.”
“Traditionally, we decided we were going to build the walls of the river higher and make the floor of the river deeper by dredging,” she said. “That worked – it got the water through the villages and towns without overtopping the bank – but all that was doing was moving the problem to the next neighbour down from there.”
Instead, rather than trying to seize control of nature, she said, we need to learn to work with it – a technique called nature-based solutions.
“There’s two approaches in Ireland. One is the hard engineering that will have to be deployed in these towns and villages that historically have evolved around a river system, because you’re not going to move a town and you’re not going to move a village,” Dr Bourke said.
“That’s fine, but there are a lot of other things that can be done and have been deployed across Europe that are really, really successful in terms of working with the river natural system.
“If you allow a river to reconnect to its own floodplain, the one that it built before we tried to straighten it, that slows everything down a little bit because it’s got to go the long way around rather than the short way down, and all of these measures that slow things down a little bit join together to be very, very effective.”
She pointed to how climate change means Ireland is “going to see a lot more floods and we’re going to see that the rain causing these floods is torrential”.
“We need to be approaching this not just thinking about one problem. At the moment, we’re building houses that are trying to be A-rated for energy consumption, and that’s fine, that’s good, but you can’t ignore the fact that we’re coming into a climate you also need to build house that are protected from floods,” she said.
“Stop thinking about one thing and think about what is the maximum we can get out of a particular development in terms of protecting people from climate change.”
Dr Mary Bourke also spoke on the most recent episode of The Journal’s The Explainer podcast. You can listen back to it on our website.
Similarly, Councillor Alan O’Connor emphasised that the floods must be seen in the context of climate change rather than as isolated events.
“In my experience, this feels like the first event of an extremity where the impact has been severe and it’s really brought home to me the risks of climate change,” he said.
“In terms of what we need to do going forward, I think we can’t omit to mention the climate question. Mitigating climate, taking climate action, reducing our emissions, and trying to reduce the severity of these events going forward,” he said. “We’re a small country, of course, but one person, one country, can make a difference.”
“These things will become more intense. Even if we take good climate action, flooding may happen again, it may become more frequent. The rainfall event which happened recently is very likely to happen again, so then we must look to adaptation.”
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If the British side break the protocol to suit a few hardline unionists in the north then I hope the eu come down hard on them for breaking an international trade agreement and they are punished by extra tariffs.johnson,Cummings and frost will bring Britain back to the stone age
@speedy: Yes agree and their US trade deal is then history.
@speedy: if they eliminate checks etc the UK will just become a back door to the EU. No way EU could agree to it. If UK want frictionless trade with the EU, you need to be in the EU. Johnson and his crew are just playing for the UK press… The big bad EU…. Actually it’s the petulant arrogant UK… But facts don’t matter to them.
@Mark H: They don’t even have to be in the EU, just be part of the customs union, which was on offer to them while negotiating. Remember the Norway style deal that was talked of… yeah.
@Mark H:
To use a Wembley analogy, they’re trying to get in for free!
@Diarmuid Hunt: Or agree to have a mechanism where the standards will be the same or equivalent. Not the “let’s pretend that our standards are equivalent, even though we might deviate from EU standards”
@speedy: you forgot Lord Rees of the Moggs.
@speedy: Cummings?
@Mark H: When have the facts ever mattered to any British Government.
wow is this for real .. how can any country any foreign trade minister sign an agreement with Great Britain in the knowledge that they will sign it and then change it to suit themselves, seriously who do these people think they are
The uk starting to dictate to EU but I think they are wasting their time as the protocol is what they signed up for and the DUP campaigned hard for brexit
An “honesty box” ? Yeah, that should work out well.
@Fr. Fintan Stack: Ha, yeah I laughed out loud at that part. What could possibly go wrong?!
After years of waiting for the UK to reveal its frictionless technological solution to eliminate customs checks for goods entering Northern Ireland, we are presented with the honesty box!
Breaking the protocol and putting the Good Friday agreement in danger will do them no favors on Capitol Hill .
The tories should have been honest in the very beginning with the electorate
@Hugh Mc Donnell: Tories honest…. That shouldn’t be in the one sentence
@Niall Lee: it’s called an oxymoron
They used to say “The sun never sets on the empire” I think that’s because even God wouldn’t trust them in the dark.
@Francis Devenney: or it’s because it never rose in the first place (still in the dark ages)
The Brits are at it again.
@Handsome McWonderful: Evidence in support:
If Brexit has taught us anything, it is that the UK can’t be trusted to tell the truth.
So the only way to make the protocol work is to ignore it and the agreement they signed up to.
You’d swear they didn’t help write the thing with the way they’re carrying on
Honestly I think it’s just time to take a hard line with Britain, they haven’t approached negotiations in good faith since the outset and seem to think every agreement and promise they’ve made in the past can be broken as they please.
A tinpot country run by a despot would have more integrity and competence than this lot. Only option now for the EU is hard retaliatory punitive tariffs which will paint these delinquants as the victims for ignoring the deal they made an international law treaty. This statement will be the malicious falsehood that they ever intended to honour or implement the protocol. England / UK is sinking down the toilet under that joke Johnson.
Really! An honesty box!? I wouldn’t trust the Brits as far as I could throw them!!! What a laugh…
Oh hahaha let’s sign an honesty box with all the cocaine producing countries too!
The NIP was a concession made to the UK by the EU. The UK made the argument that they would implement the checks when they formulated the agreement. All the EU has asked for is that the UK comply with their side of the agreement.
Today it was stated in the UK parliament that UK suppliers are deciding not to export goods into NI because of the hassle of complying they can’t be bothered to do the necessary paperwork.
NI are in a unique position that the protocol allows them to export goods into the EU and also into the UK without restrictions. Most UK companies would give their right arm to be able to do the same.
So, where does the problem seem to be…… The DUP.
They need to realise this is not like one of Boris’ revolving marriages – negotiated it, signed up for it – stuck with it -
Global warming, pandemic, age of online misinformation, asymmetric warfare, ransomware, rise of far-right…..and the English; was it ever thus!
UK should need to consult the dictionary to study the meaning of “honesty “ and then try and understand why other EU countries do not trust them in particular when Johnson is in charge.
Wish someone would just tell them to feck off
@David Lynch: we did, they only got three quarters of the message
More of the same BS. How long did it take the UK to “negotiate” Brexit?
Unbelievable arrogance!
Any nation thinking of doing a trade deal with the UK (under this current government) should think hard and tread cautiously – better still – save yourselves a massive headache – just don’t do it.
U.K attempting to move the goalposts while the match is being played
An ‘Honesty Box’…operated by the Tories? Hahahaha
Oven Ready
Oven ready turkey
I wonder where ‘On the right side’ is? Poor dear.
@Bill Spill: I hope he has realised that there is no point posting anymore, bar the odd you know who, nobody agrees with him, just laugh at him.
Who the fook do they think they are ……
Four years hundreds of thousands of wasted money and time !!M
It’s time to collapse the agreement & go to WTO
@Joe Thorpe: how could anyone trust them in any agreement their goose is well and truly cooked
What a shower of eejits.
The brits made a nuts of the negotiations and now they want to change it
borderless ireland because of the good Friday agreement. So stick a border in the northern part of the Irish Sea – drive a wedge between mainland uk and it’s sovereign country Northern Ireland to protect the good Friday agreement. Oh hold on that can’t be right can it? Guess it is …. Whilst everyone in Europe rejoices at getting one over on the uk the good Friday agreement will unravel. But not because of the uk. If I was frost I’d tell Northern Ireland we tried our best leave matters as they are and wait for the fun and games to start.
@Nigel Barlow: how about the Britain and HMG gives back the country they stole and pillaged back to its rightful owners.
@Gary G: quite welcome to It
That’s Feck with a ‘eU’
What amazing is they continue to go this route after the G8 and the G20 meetings. Where they were clearly told by the rest of the world. Don’t even try and do this.
Irish hory indeed world history has so many examples of the British and “Honesty”.
Yet the expect everybody to agree with this.
An agreement they insisted upon and agreed to, now they have changed their mind because of their own red tape, which they insisted upon.
I expected them to pull some dirty tricks but nothing as simple minded as this.
The laughable part is they are saying they got great trade deals from other countries and so far every one of them is worse than the present EU deal.
The have not move the goalposts, they are trying to change the game and the rules as they go along. The rest of the world is sharpening their knives as the realise how weak the Uk government are.
have your say