The Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss will continue to discuss its recommendations over the next weeks to advise the government on how Ireland will tackle the crisis going forward.
An independent chairperson and 99 randomly selected members of the public are tasked to bring forward proposals on how the state can improve its response to biodiversity loss.
Over a course of six months, members from all walks of life, heard from experts on topics including protected sites and species, agriculture, marine environments, forestry, and peatlands.
At its last scheduled meeting held at the end of November, the assembly voted on recommendations and called for the right to a clean and healthy environment and biodiversity protection to be included in the constitution.
A total of 17 recommendations were adopted which urge the state to take decisive action to address biodiversity loss and restoration in Ireland. However, members refused to conclude the process just yet.
While the draft proposals are already there, the assembly will discuss more recommendations in 2023 before the final report will go to the Oireachtas, assembly chair Dr. Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin told Agriland.
The assembly will meet for one more weekend to finalise the details at the end of January. Reflecting on and describing the process to date as a “huge success”, she said:
“The most important recommendation was the fact that the state needs to act urgently to address biodiversity loss, and that it has failed to adequately resource, monitor and enforce the national and EU laws adopted in Ireland.
“The draft is already there, but it is to actually spend time as an assembly to discuss the recommendations and maybe make amendments to the wording and to then vote on them.”
Agriculture
Ní Shúilleabháin recalled how one member, a farmer from the west of Ireland, said he wasn’t convinced of the process at the first two weekends, but then started looking at things in a different way and changed his mind on a number of issues.
At its fourth meeting back in October, the citizens’ assembly heard that more focused funding is required for farmers to be able to preserve and restore biodiversity on their farms.
There was a lot of empathy and growing understanding in the room as farm organisations including the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), among others, shared their experiences in protecting nature, she previously said.
Community-led initiatives seem to work best and farmers need to be supported by having access to the right information and the right people, but also to the right funding as a resource for the work they are doing, she said.
“Certainly people realised that there is no point in having a sweeping policy to say that one thing is going to work for the whole country because the land is very different across the whole island.
“Farmers’ perspective has certainly been part of our discussions. It is a collaborative view, not who is right, who is wrong and who is to blame, but how we are going to find a solution that is workable for everybody,” she said.
Biodiversity loss
In its recommendations, the citizens’ assembly called on the state to review Ireland’s current food policy in the context of the biodiversity crisis, particularly in agriculture, to balance the affordability and quality of food.
“So many farmers [in their presentations] said the cheap food policy is actually damaging to farmers who couldn’t necessarily focus as many resources on biodiversity because of it,” she said.
Another proposal is to incentivise the domestic and commercial use of natural, cost-friendly alternatives to drastically reduce the use of pesticides in line with EU policy.
The state should regulate the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers while maintaining food security, and improve schemes for the safe disposal of unused hazardous materials and containers, the assembly said.
Ní Shúilleabháin added that some time was spent on this recommendation and a lot of farmers contributed to the wording of the proposal before members voted on it.
“Ireland has put out a message now to say that the Irish Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss has decided that this issue is so important it should be in the constitution.
“I do think it is an important and positive message coming from Ireland that we are incredibly proud of our country, our countryside and our environment and that’s something that people feel we should cherish and look after a bit more,” she said.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment and Climate Action recently launched a report which made 75 recommendations, including 15 on agriculture and land use, on how Ireland should restore biodiversity in nature.
Besides greater engagement with landowners on peatland restoration and better incentives for farmers protecting biodiversity and wildlife, the report has called for a dedicated Joint Committee on Biodiversity.
Agreeing with this recommendation, the assembly chair said biodiversity is a different issue to climate change which needs to be addressed separately, while keeping in mind the links between the two.
“Climate change drives biodiversity loss so it is an important part of it but it is a broader issue and that requires some consideration.
“In that regard, I would support the recommendation to have a dedicated biodiversity committee, she said.
Ní Shúilleabháin added that the buy-in that members have had to the assembly process cannot be underestimated.
“This is now quite an informed group of people and that’s what makes the deliberate democracy process stand out. We should be proud that this is how we are considering such a difficult issue like biodiversity loss,” she said.