THIS YEAR WAS the year that nature protection went from being a little-noticed issue on the political fringes to one that is centre-stage in national and EU politics.
This was demonstrated by the unholy row over the Nature Restoration Law which started out as a fairly modest set of proposals to address the collapse of critical ecosystems across the continent, but ended up being the most explosive of the set of measures within the EU’s ‘Green Deal’ and a lightning rod for the hard right political agenda.
However, despite a concerted effort by the farming lobby in Ireland to kill it off, the Irish government emerged as an unlikely champion for the law, which was eventually approved in June. The final agreement, which was agreed by the Parliament’s ENVI committee in November even restored many of the elements that had earlier been gutted by MEPs so that the restoration of agricultural ecosystems, including the rewetting of farmed peatlands, will form part of the final law.
The Irish government can also be said to be putting its money where its mouth is, with the announcement of a €3.15 billion ‘climate and nature fund’ in this year’s budget. In October, a barely noticed Dáil vote gave legal status to our National Biodiversity Action Plan. We’ve been churning out these plans since the 1990s, to little effect, but our fourth plan, due early in 2024, will finally have some teeth. Nature conservation with teeth and money may actually produce results!
In April, the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss published its report with 159 recommendations. We also got the findings of a Children’s and Young People’s Citizens’ Assembly which made its own recommendations, including that wolves and other extinct animals should be reintroduced to Ireland.
Both reports convey shock that things have deteriorated so badly for nature but were a boost for the environmental groups which have been campaigning on these issues for years.
Many of the recommendations were endorsed by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment and Climate Action in December, but it remains to be seen whether the more contentious issues, such as a referendum on Rights for Nature, developing a new national food strategy, changing the legal remit of Coillte and Bord na Móna, or repealing the Arterial Drainage Act, will actually be implemented.
Plans and laws are all well and good, but biodiversity continues to be under immense pressure. 2023 was the hottest year on record and we felt it in Ireland with an unprecedented marine heat wave in June. Nevertheless, there has been some good news. This summer ospreys, a bird of prey, were reintroduced to Ireland having gone extinct in the 19th century.
A 35% increase in the corncrake population was recorded while they are now breeding in more areas. It’s the first time in over a decade that the number of breeding territories of this endangered bird exceeded 100.
Barn owls had a breeding season that “surpasses all previous records” according to BirdWatch Ireland and there was even good news for curlews, which had its most successful year for rearing young since 2017. These successes are down to the efforts of conservationists working with farmers and the government and show that when it’s done right, conservation works. There was more good news for birds with the announcement in December of a €25 million initiative aimed at some of our most threatened species: curlew, dunlin, lapwing and golden plover.
Change does not come easy, and 2023 saw some chickens come home to roost for the dairy sector as the EU announced that Ireland’s derogation from the Nitrates Directive would no longer permit the spreading of 250kg per hectare of animal manure nitrogen on land, reducing it to 220 kg/ha from January.
Until the last moment, the industry and its political backers seemed convinced that the EU would back down. In November, the government invited Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius, to Dublin in a quest for ‘flexibility’, but – embarrassingly — he left them empty-handed.
The penny may finally be dropping that our unsustainable food production model needs a radical overhaul. If this doesn’t happen, and an improvement in our deteriorating water quality does not materialise, further cuts in nitrogen limits are on the cards.
Although overlooked, our food system includes the vast oceans that surround our shores, and fishing remains the biggest pressure on ecosystems. Despite a legal deadline of ending overfishing by 2020, the practice continues and even worsened slightly in 2023. Protecting the ocean from fishing is probably the quickest and easiest thing we could do for climate and biodiversity, yet action remains captive to vested interests.
The government missed a deadline for publishing legislation for Marine Protected Areas (MPA), is dragging its feet on creating ‘strictly protected’ areas (where there would be no fishing allowed) and is showing no sign of implementing a Programme for Government promise of protecting coastal waters from unrestricted trawling, even inside the few MPAs we have.
In September, ecologists were left scratching their heads at the announcement of a new National Park along the River Boyne in Meath. The area is one of historical and archaeological significance, but its value for nature is unclear. Indeed, it just highlighted that despite a promise to introduce legislation and management plans for our National Parks in 2023 (they currently have no legal status), there has been no sign of either. Why we are still waiting for measures to address the overgrazing in Killarney National Park, for instance, remains a mystery to many people.
So while some progress was made in 2023, we are still waiting for the big changes that are needed to address the biodiversity crisis. In 2024, we will see whether landowners embrace the new programme for forest expansion and if overfishing will finally come to an end following legal action (a case is currently before the European Court of Justice). We will find out if the government is serious about acting on the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly and if our meat and dairy industry is finally ready for an honest conversation about environmental limits.
Pádraic Fogarty is an environmental campaigner.
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