Mr. Sorley McCaughey:

I thank the committee. We understand that the committee has received a lot of requests to speak from interested parties on the subject of the climate action and low carbon development Bill, so we are grateful for the opportunity to contribute an international perspective to the committee's ongoing work. We spent the last two days in Dublin Castle at the Hunger, Nutrition and Climate Justice conference hosted by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice. It was a remarkable event in many ways, not least because of the participation of so many organisations from communities around the globe who are dealing with and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Three of those partners are with us today to share with the committee their experience of the impacts of a changing climate and the committee will hear from them shortly. I was fortunate to have been a participant as well. By way of some opening remarks, I would like to share with the committee three observations from the conference. The first is the urgency of the issue. Hearing first-hand accounts of failing crops brought about by prolonged drought or torrential rain washing away soils and seeds was a reminder to all of us there that climate change is happening and is causing devastation for millions of people around the world. It is challenging the very existence of communities dependent on the land for their existence, is disproportionately affecting women and children and is threatening to set back by years the development gains made by developing countries over the last two decades. As former US Vice President Al Gore remarked at the conference, opening the newspaper or hearing the news these days is like taking a nature walk through the Book of Revelation. Yesterday, we heard from my colleague, Mr. Mithika Mwenda, that 36 Kenyans had lost their lives in floods across the country. It was all the more moving and telling that many of these places that were suffering from flooding traditionally suffer from droughts. Now it is floods that are taking the lives of people. Rachel Kyte, a vice president at the World Bank, described at the conference how in some parts of the globe, extreme weather events that used to happen once every 100 years are now happening as often as every five or six years. Crucially, the time between these extreme weather events is insufficient for communities to recover. They are being hit with a fresh weather event before they have had time to get back on their feet, setting their development back two or three years at a time and undermining all the good work that has been done up to that point.

The second observation I made was the incredible innovation, intelligence and resilience that communities, villages and individuals are continuing to show in the face of these stark challenges. A focus of the conference was to record and exchange the adaptation experience of partners in different situations. There was a complete global reach from the Arctic circle down to the Pacific islands and we heard some hugely impressive accounts from people who have responded and changed the way they have worked the land to adapt to a changing climate. Of course, none of that innovation will mean anything if the planet continues on its current emissions pathway, which, at the moment, will bring us to a 6-degree warming by the end of the century. All the development gains and all the creative responses to climate change are in danger of being washed away by flooding and storms or blown away in a massive dust bowl.

This brings me to my third observation. While there was a wealth of discussion and a rich exchange of views between policy makers and communities at the coalface about ways of adapting to the changing climate and challenges with regard to food security and nutrition, there was less, indeed very little, discussion about the bigger issues - or the elephant in the room, as I heard it being referred to on more than one occasion. The elephant in the room was, and is, the role and responsibility of industrialised countries to address climate change. It is a fact that industrialised countries need to dramatically reduce their emissions in line with what the science tells us if we are to have any chance of keeping below a 2°C rise. Even a 2°C rise will have massive implications for many developing countries. I know some of our partner organisations believe 2°C is too high and that the figure needs to be 1.5°C or below. The other elephant in the room was that rich countries have yet to honour their commitments made under the UNFCCC to provide new money - and by "new", we do not mean aid money repackaged and recycled as climate money. Countries need that money to help them adapt to climate change and scale up local adaptation projects. It is, as was mentioned by some of the participants, a question of justice. It was the actions of the countries of the industrialised north that caused climate change, and they and we bear an historical responsibility for creating climate change that needs to be acknowledged and acted on. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, in his brief appearance at the conference, acknowledged as much when he noted that it is those who did least to create climate change who are suffering the worst consequences. It is not the first time I have heard the Minister say that and it is an important reality and worth repeating. Action on climate change is a question of justice.

This brings us to the context of this meeting, the climate action and low carbon development Bill. The question is whether we can view the Bill in its current format as being a meaningful contribution to addressing some of that historical injustice and whether it will provide reassurance to people such as my colleagues here today that countries such as Ireland, which is steeped in a history of global solidarity and the promotion of international development, are playing their part in tackling runaway climate change. Christian Aid, Trócaire and Oxfam, which are partners of the organisations represented here today, share the view that the climate Bill in its current form does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the situation that we as a global community, but particularly those in developing countries, are faced with. In particular, we feel that the absence of any targets from the heads of Bill betrays a lack of urgency and ambition on the part of the Government towards the climate crisis and undermines our international claims to be a leading voice in addressing the hunger, nutrition and climate change nexus. The fact that we will be adhering to EU targets is a missed opportunity on the part of the Government for Ireland to plot its own ambitious path towards a low-carbon future and to provide certainty about Government policy and a clear pathway for emissions reductions, as the programme for Government puts it. The Bill as it stands gives no such certainty for the future and for those businesses and individuals wishing to invest in the green economy.

At this point I will hand over to my colleagues, who will provide far more eloquent and articulate first-hand accounts of what living at the thin end of the climate change wedge is like. They will tell us what climate justice means to them. I wish the committee well as it continues on the process of consultation on the Bill. I hope that the contributions today will provide a useful international dimension to the committee's deliberations. Climate change, like many of the problems that challenge societies today, is a global challenge which demands that the domestic policies we adopt in our country are at the very least mindful of the potential consequences that these actions may be having on other countries.