Professor Yvonne Buckley:

The question is around whether the ambition or the targets for biodiversity need to be embedded in this Bill or if reference to the biodiversity strategy is sufficient. There is absolutely no doubt we need to slow, stop and then reverse biodiversity loss. If we are going to write it into this legislation, we should write into every single piece of legislation that everything we do from now on should be slowing, stopping and reversing biodiversity loss and the new global biodiversity strategies that will be announced next year put some real tough targets on the table in terms of global ambition. We have missed every single biodiversity target that has been on the table until now so targets alone are not getting us where we need to be. There is no doubt we need to have the implementation of things like the national biodiversity plan, the EU biodiversity strategy and the global biodiversity strategy better resourced and better supported.

I am not a legislator, so I do not know where that ambition needs to be. I do not know whether it should be written strongly into this legislation at the start that actions taken for climate mitigation and adaptation should not impact on biodiversity. I would love to see that in every piece of legislation that goes through the Dáil. That will be part of the national biodiversity strategy, so it will be rewritten or redone for next year and will take the EU and global diversity strategies together with their targets into account when it does that.

The real problem here, however, is not the targets. We can have all the targets we want. The implementation is the problem, so if we can find ways of better implementing things like our national strategy, that is where the challenge is. If it helps to have those strong targets in legislation like this, then I totally support that.

The second question was around implementation and if we know where carbon is currently and where we have the capacity to store more carbon through nature-based solutions. I do not believe we have those maps yet. More needs to be done to figure out where we have the capacity to reduce emissions in the landscape through remediation of land, land use and coastal and seascape use, and where we have the capacity to put in place nature-based solutions to sequester additional amounts of carbon, either blue carbon in the sea or green carbon on land. We definitely need those measures in place and those maps on that data.