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AS THE MEMBERS of the Dáil settle at home away from Dublin as summer recess begins, the news that greenhouse gas emissions fell last year to their lowest level in 30 years will be welcomed by government politicians, particularly those in the Green Party.
Proof positive, they will say, that green policies are showing results even at a time when both the economy and the population have expanded. Roderic O’Gorman, the new Green Party leader, will want to build on this positivity after a disappointing (but not disastrous) showing at the local and European elections.
Some in that party will feel that an opportunity to elect a leader from outside Dublin has been missed at a time when those opposed to the green agenda are happy to present any kind of change as ‘anti-rural’. On the other hand, the results of the recent parliamentary elections in France indicate that O’Gorman’s emphasis on social justice in tandem with environmental action has electoral appeal.
Green Party members feel they are delivering on their promises and will point to the latest report from the Environmental Protection Agency to prove it. But how much has been delivered for nature?
Biodiversity, unlike greenhouse gas emissions, does not lend itself to easy metrics and annual reporting and there is no evidence to say that species and habitats are yet recovering at the scale needed. But change has happened.
Perhaps most significant has been the reform of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) under Minister of State Malcolm Noonan. It is now an independent agency and has seen an increase in its non-payroll budget from €28.7 million in 2020 to €69.1 million today, and an increase in staff from 350 to 537.
Senior NPWS staff were in front of the Joint Oireachtas Committee last month where they were keen to stress that the ship was turning. In addition, big budget projects are underway for everything from bog restoration to boosting numbers of threatened birds.
On the downside, we still have no plans for addressing problems in National Parks and the NPWS online presence remains woeful. Noonan, who, along with Eamon Ryan, was an important champion for the Nature Restoration Law, was also instrumental in the establishment of a hefty €3.15 billion fund for nature projects which will come on stream in 2026. Overall, this is a legacy worthy of celebration.
Also on a positive note, the completion of the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss in 2023 marked a milestone in public engagement and set out in no uncertain terms what needs to happen. Another box ticked.
However, the very big pressures on biodiversity in Ireland remain substantially unchanged. At sea, for instance, there are next to no measures to limit fishing pressure in special areas of conservation; a promise to reinstate a ban on trawling in inshore waters remains unfulfilled; the government refused to support a European Commission initiative to ban bottom trawling in marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2030; and there is still no sign of a law for the creation of MPAs – making it increasingly unlikely that we can meet an international pledge of protecting 30% of our sea by the end of the decade. These are all things the government could have done without EU approval.
On land, we now have a new programme for afforestation. On the plus side, it comes with substantial funding of €1.3 billion while minister Pippa Hackett succeeded in ironing out the regulatory mess that she inherited from her predecessor.
However, the final plan seems to have satisfied nobody. The Green Party had a mandate to do away entirely with a deeply unpopular and ecologically disastrous policy of planting monocultures of conifers and prioritising the expansion of native forests but failed to do so. Peatlands and high nature value farmland have better protections from afforestation but on the other hand, stiff fees were introduced for people wanting to participate in forestry planning in the belief that ‘objectors’ were holding things up. Meanwhile, the rate of afforestation is set to be even lower this year (716 hectares for the year to the end of June) than it was last year, and falls well, well short of a target to reach 8,000 hectares per annum.
Agriculture remains the granddaddy of all our environmental problems. Fianna Fáil’s Charlie McConalogue oversaw the introduction of a new round of the Common Agriculture Policy but very little of the nearly €10 billion is going to measurable improvements in the environment. The celebrated project in the Burren, Co. Clare has seen biodiversity indicators go into decline since its introduction. A promise to phase out badger culling “as soon as possible” is nowhere near being achieved and 5,258 of these beautiful animals were snared and shot in 2022, while TB in cattle rose to record levels.
Perhaps the greatest positive change is that farmers are no longer penalised for having natural habitats on their land but the promise in 2020 that they would be rewarded “for sequestering carbon, restoring biodiversity, improving water and air quality” has not been fulfilled.
This government has had an unprecedented level of financial and public backing to implement needed changes to how we use our land and sea. Yet we haven’t seen those changes materialise and the next government may not be so fortunate. Compared to what the government itself promised in 2020, they have fallen a long way short in addressing the biodiversity crisis. The Green Party, which was a driver of the green elements in the programme for government, has clocked up many achievements but they must be disappointed that their influence over the other big parties was not greater.
Pádraic Fogarty is an environmental campaigner.
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