Dr. Aoibhinn N? Sh?illeabh?in:

We spoke about this a little earlier but just to reiterate, the conversation around the rights of nature was something that members brought to me from the beginning of the work. It emerged from presentations that were given around global biodiversity, the necessity of biodiversity, and the links between human health and biodiversity. With that, members began to come to me as chair to say they would like to hear more about this. As we went through it, we invited Professor Áine Ryall, who is an international expert from University College Cork, and she gave a great presentation, which I recommend people look back over. It is on the citizens' assembly website. The first point was to emphasis that the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a UN-declared human right. That was the first thing members of the assembly wanted to highlight and emphasise as potentially something we have taken for granted and which is worth considering for bringing into the Constitution. A second element of that was whether we should have a right to degrade or damage nature, and that became part of the conversation. We learned of other places around the world where nature is already being protected, such as in New Zealand and Spain, of other countries that have already brought this into their constitutions, and of conversations that are happening across Europe. It is something in which members were very interested and it naturally emerged from the conversations of the assembly. Again, it was part of the learning process to always try to incorporate the thinking of members and where they are going with that but it was quite surprising how many members voted to support it. That is something worth considering by this committee.