Professor Yvonne Buckley:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to contribute. I am professor of zoology and co-director of Nature+, the centre for biodiversity and sustainable nature-based solutions at Trinity College, Dublin. My expertise lies in ecology, which is the distribution, abundance and function of natural and human-modified ecosystems.

I serve as chair of the national biodiversity forum, which provides independent monitoring of progress in the implementation of the national biodiversity action plan. However, I am speaking today in my personal scientific capacity.

The first objective of the national biodiversity action plan is to mainstream biodiversity into decision making across all sectors. It is well recognised that we cannot tackle climate change without considering the contributions of biodiversity to climate change mitigation and adaptation. It is also well recognised that we are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis that threatens an estimated 1 million species with extinction over the coming decades. This matters for climate change because biodiversity provides climate regulating services for the planet and provides us with the resilience we need for people, our economies and society to withstand the climate change shocks that we are already locked into.

Nature-based solutions can be implemented to help us achieve some of our climate action goals. The European Commission defines nature-based solutions as:

"Solutions that are inspired and supported by nature, which are cost-effective, simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits and help build resilience. Such solutions bring more, and more diverse, nature and natural features and processes into cities, landscapes and seascapes, through locally adapted, resource-efficient and systemic interventions."

Nature-based solutions must therefore benefit biodiversity and support the delivery of a range of ecosystem services in addition to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Active restoration of biodiversity is a nature-based solution that, if done well, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, enables carbon capture and storage, and ensures the resilience of ecosystem service provision from our landscape and seascape to the disruptive effects of climate change.

I will make a number of recommendations. First, all policy instruments resulting from the Bill and the principal Act should comply with and actively support the implementation of the national biodiversity action plan. Instead of the rather vague wording of "enhance biodiversity", which is somewhat open to interpretation, the national biodiversity strategy should be explicitly referenced. The strategy is the touchstone of all biodiversity-related recommendations across the State's remit. Second, the purposes for which moneys may be paid out of the Climate Action Fund should include research on how best to deploy nature-based solutions and monitor their efficacy in order to inform carbon budgets and the projections of greenhouse gas emissions, storage and sequestration. Third, appropriate definitions of biodiversity and nature-based solutions should be included in the Bill, for example, the necessity for nature-based solutions to benefit biodiversity and support the delivery of a range of ecosystem services in addition to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

By reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as the Bill aims to do, we will be putting in place important future protections for biodiversity. By managing some of the shared drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change, we will gain some co-benefits for biodiversity. However, there is a risk that deployment of actions to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change may worsen existing drivers of biodiversity loss and introduce new drivers.

I am glad to see that expertise in biodiversity is specified for the advisory council. It is also useful to have the roles of biodiversity and nature-based solutions explicitly recognised in order to provide for the Climate Action Fund to be used to support projects that seek to increase the removal of greenhouse gases, in particular nature-based solutions that enhance biodiversity. However, there are some inconsistencies in the mention of biodiversity and nature-based solutions that support projects and research and in the utilisation of biodiversity and nature-based solutions for the removal of greenhouse gases and prevention of emissions that I recommend be resolved. Nature-based solutions such as the restoration of carbon-rich ecosystems can remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Remediation of carbon-emitting land use, such as degraded peatlands, can reduce or prevent future emissions. The current wording in the Bill only recognises a role for biodiversity and nature-based solutions in the removal of greenhouse gases and not the reduction of emissions.

The efficiency and benefits from nature-based solution projects can be increased through targeted research as well as through implementation of existing solutions. The current wording recognises the utility of biodiversity and nature-based solutions in projects, but not in research.

To demonstrate the efficacy of nature-based solutions and get recognised value from their implementation, we need to measure and validate impacts as well as monitor effectiveness over short to longer timescales. Provision should be made in the Bill for support of research into adequate measurement and monitoring of the effectiveness of the nature-based solutions that are implemented. These data are critical for setting carbon budgets and projecting future carbon emissions, storage and capture.

We need the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions across the many sectors that this Bill seeks to enable. However, explicit recognition of the role that biodiversity and nature-based solutions can play in mitigating and adapting to climate change as opposed to trading biodiversity off to service climate actions will ensure that the climate actions we take will be win-win for climate and biodiversity.