Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I have received apologies from Senator Higgins. The purpose of this session is to have a discussion on carbon sequestration, carbon sources and sinks, and land management. Nature restoration is a related issue. On behalf of the committee, I welcome Dr. Ken Byrne, University of Limerick, who is in the committee room with us. Joining us online from Germany is Professor Hans Joosten, researcher in the University of Greifswald, and Dr. James Moran, lecturer in ecology and biology at the Atlantic Technological University in Galway. Dr. Moran has been with the committee previously. All the witnesses are very welcome.

As usual, before we begin I will read the note on privilege. Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be considered damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in respect of an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction. For the two witnesses who are attending remotely from outside the Leinster House campus, there are limitations to parliamentary privilege and, as such, they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as a witness who is physically present in the room does.

Members of the committee are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I also remind members that they are only allowed to participate in this meeting if they are physically located on the Leinster House complex. In this regard, I ask all members who are joining us online to confirm prior to making their contributions to the meeting that they are indeed on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

I invite Dr. Byrne to make his opening statement.

Dr. Ken Byrne:

I am very appreciative of the invitation from the committee to speak on the subject of sequestration, land management and nature restoration. The area of forest in Ireland is approximately 770,000 ha, which is 11% of the total land area. Most of these forests have been established during the past century. Coniferous species cover 71.2% of the forest area and broadleaves the remaining 28.8%. In addition to sequestering atmospheric carbon, Irish forests can contribute to climate change mitigation through the provision of wood products, which can displace energy-intensive materials in construction and energy generation. Due to Ireland's relatively high rainfall and moderate temperatures, our soils are very favourable to the accumulation of organic matter and, consequently, carbon.

Peatlands cover between 20% and 25% of the Irish landscape and contain two thirds of national soil carbon stocks. Pristine or undrained peatlands are long-term carbon sinks and sources of methane. This is altered dramatically by drainage and land use change, which lowers the water table and transforms a peatland from a carbon sink to a source. The amount of emissions from peat soils following drainage depends on several factors, including peat type, nutritional status, hydrology and previous land use. Afforestation has been a major driver of drainage and land use change in Irish peatlands and peat is the dominant soil type in Irish forests, accounting for 38.7% of the total area.

When assessing the role of these forests in carbon sequestration the key question is whether the losses of soil carbon from peatland drainage are compensated by carbon sequestration by the growing forest. Despite the prominence of peatland forests in out national forest estate, very few studies have investigated the carbon cycle in these forests. The first study of forests on blanket peatlands found that such soils emitted 0.59 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year. Recent research has concluded that forested blanket peatlands emit 1.68 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year. By tripling the estimated loss of soil carbon from forested peatlands this study has altered our understanding of the carbon sequestration potential of these forests. The losses of soil carbon may be partially or wholly compensated through carbon uptake by the growing trees. The compensatory capacity would be less for low-productivity compared with high-productivity forests.

In a recent study of Coillte forests the climate impact of rewetting 8,000 ha of low-productivity peatland forests over a 50-year period was assessed. This study found that such a rewetting programme would have little short-term benefit in terms of climate mitigation. Furthermore, when emissions due to deforestation are included, emissions from rewetting are two to five times greater than the reduction in soil emissions. These findings suggest that the short-term benefits of rewetting are negative. When considered in terms of global warming potential over the full time series of the study, 2021 to 2100, there is no climate mitigation benefit. This is due to the greater warming potential of methane which is the dominant greenhouse gas emitted from rewetted peatland. However, it should be emphasised that there have been very few studies of the effect of rewetting and greenhouse gas exchange in forested peatlands in Ireland. Furthermore, it may take several years for the emission reduction benefit of rewetting to occur. There are also likely to be forested peatland sites where rewetting is desirable form a climate perspective but technically difficult to achieve due to site-specific factors such as drainage, slope, hydrology or land use in adjacent areas. In such cases there is a need to develop alternative management systems such as semi-natural woodland. However, research and field-based assessment of such management systems is required.

The role of forests in mitigating climate change through sequestering carbon through changes in management and reduced harvest, on one hand, and providing renewable material and energy, on the other, are, at first consideration, competing aims that are frequently investigated separately. A focus on sequestration at the cost of wood use ignores the relationship between these interlinked roles. Focusing on the management of forests to produce long-term and large-scale carbon sinks ignores both the risk of some forests becoming unstable as they mature and becoming carbon sources and the post-harvest role of forests in climate mitigation. Sustainable forest management can balance both of these roles. As far back as 1730, Von Carlowitz defined sustainable forest management as "harvest should balance growth". This can be extended to include social and environmental roles and, with regard to carbon, management of forests so that harvest removals can be made while maintaining a net carbon sink. In Ireland, this is complicated further by so-called legacy issues such as: a low afforestation rate; uneven age-class distribution; and a large proportion of forests located on peat soils.

There is a need to address these and other issues by diversifying the forest estate through a range of measures, including: rewetting of peat soils; semi-natural woodland on peat soils; forest management mechanisms such as rotation length; diversifying species composition; and adopting new silvicultural systems such as continuous cover forestry. Such changes should, however, be informed by investigation of the carbon balance of Irish forests and interdisciplinary research that facilitates understanding of the impact of such changes on the economic, social and environmental services of our forests. This is essential if we are to harness the climate mitigation potential of our forests, not just in sequestering carbon in forest ecosystems but also in providing renewable material for construction and energy.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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We will now hear from Professor Joosten.

Professor Hans Joosten:

I am trying to share my screen. Can members see it? Can they see the information on the issue with peatlands?

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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We are not seeing that just yet.

Professor Hans Joosten:

I need permission to share my screen.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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If the professor wants to continue with his statement, one of the officials will be able to share his presentation to our screens.

Professor Hans Joosten:

The statement is the presentation.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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We will share it from our side here.

Professor Hans Joosten:

Yes, but I would like to see it where you are.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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We are going to try to get the presentation up now.

Professor Hans Joosten:

We tested it before and it worked well.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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We can see the presentation. Can Professor Joosten see it? The professor's microphone is muted. We will try to resolve the problem. While we are doing that, we will take Dr. Moran's opening statement.

Dr. James Moran:

I thank the committee for the invitation to present this statement. Apologies that I cannot be there in person. I am a senior lecturer in biology and ecology in the department of natural resources and the environment at the Atlantic Technological University, ATU, in Galway. I lead the agro-ecology and rural development, ARD, research group. The group concentrates on sustainable agricultural and land use systems with a focus on the Common Agriculture Policy and improving agri-environment policy and practice.

I will concentrate on several key topics relating to the demands on our land base to contribute to enhanced climate action and nature restoration while maintaining viable food and fibre production. To respond to these needs as a society, we need to work within an integrated land use framework and be cognisant of the need to adopt an adaptive management approach, essentially learning while doing. This will require large-scale changes to our land use system over the next 30 years, which society can only achieve with clear direction and leadership from Government and whole-of-government supports. This requires substantial institutional innovation and capacity building. We have seen local communities and individuals across the country take the lead. We must create an enabling environment where local action is fostered and takes place within and contributes to larger regional and national land use transformation. This needs to take place as part of an integrated land use strategy with clear land use targets and goals over the short term, five years, medium term, 30 years, and long term, inter-generational time horizons.

We must start from the fundamental realisation that we have to achieve this for the survival of human society. We must respond with urgent action to the interrelated climate and biodiversity crises that were acknowledged in the Government declaration on the climate and biodiversity emergency more than three years ago. We must also recognise, as I informed the committee in November 2021, that Ireland has a diverse mix of landscapes characterised by differences in geology, topography, soils, climatic variation and land cover, with a wide range in land use capacity. One size does not fit all and different land types are advantaged to provide particular services, for example: high quantities of food and fibre; carbon storage; flood alleviation; space for nature; amenity; and recreational value. We must create a system which recognises the different capacities of our diverse land base and where it is possible for different areas to capitalise on their natural advantages.

In February 2022, we began a six-month contract awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, to undertake a land use evidence review research project as part of phase 1 of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications national land use evidence review. The project was led by my colleague, Dr. Eamon Haughey, at ATU and involved collaboration with Dr. David Styles from the University of Galway, Dr. Matt Saunders from Trinity Colleague Dublin and Ms. Ruth Bennett Coady from ATU. The report provides: an overview of current land cover, land use and trends in Ireland; a review of overall agriculture and land use, land use change and forestry, LULUCF; greenhouse gas fluxes; climate change scenarios and their impact on ecosystem functioning; modelling of land use change scenarios for net zero by 2050; and possible synergies and trade-offs resulting from land use change for net zero, together with options to support policy development. The report highlights that there are substantial differences in the dominant land cover classes between regions. The agriculture, forestry and other land use, AFOLU, sector was a significant net source of greenhouse gas emissions in Ireland during the period 2016 to 2020, with an average of 27,707 ± 888 kt CO2 equivalent per year.

Within this, forest land and associated harvested wood products provide an important net sink despite forest on peatland being a source. Grasslands on mineral soils are also a net sink but are outweighed by emissions from grasslands on peat soils.

The Government has committed to achieve net zero by 2050 and the report explores land use change scenarios to reach net zero in the AFOLU sector by 2050. It must be noted that there are proposals under the EU Fit for 55 package to amend the LULUCF regulation to merge the LULUCF sector and non-CO2 agriculture sector into a new climate pillar. This new pillar would have a target of climate neutrality by 2035 and a target for negative emissions thereafter.

To explore land use change scenarios required to reach AFOLU net zero by 2050, several scenarios were developed based on the general overview for a back-casting approach of livestock intensification, GOBLIN, model approach and a set of simplified baseline assumptions. Recognising the inherent simplification in this scenario modelling approach, the exercise highlights the scale of the land use change required to reach net zero in AFOLU by 2050. Even when methane was excluded, it was only possible to reach net zero in AFOLU by 2050 by including each of the following measures: increased livestock production efficiency resulting in 30% emissions reduction; reducing ruminant livestock numbers by up to 30%; ambitious organic soil rewetting or raising water tables on up to 90% of drained organic soils; and 500,000 ha of additional forest area by 2050.

The report explores the potential impacts of this land use change on biodiversity and water resources. Without effective spatial targeting and subsequent land management, there is potential for substantial trade-offs for biodiversity and water. This level of change in the AFOLU system is urgently required and we must not delay in putting plans in place to deliver the required change. Through lack of action, we have already put ourselves in a position such that our emissions in the AFOLU sector have risen rather than declined in recent years. This makes the required changes even more difficult to achieve and increases the risk that, in meeting net zero targets, there could be major unintended consequences for water quality and biodiversity as well as many other provisioning and non-provisioning ecosystem services, ultimately making the situation worse in the medium and long term.

With regard to land use in Ireland, we cannot move from a situation of production tunnel vision to one of carbon tunnel vision. We must have an integrated land use developed by Government in 2023. Continued biodiversity loss has the potential to limit the effectiveness of mitigation measures and will further reduce the resilience of ecosystems to climate change extremes. The report highlights that, for successful climate change mitigation and for measures to have significant co-benefits for biodiversity, water quality and water regulation, a range of site-specific conditions must be considered. This ultimately requires site-by-site planning and management, with land use targeted to meet multiple goals, cognisant of the baseline condition and capacity of the site. This must be cognisant of trade-offs and synergies to balance environmental, social and economic outcomes.

Analysis of some key current policy documents highlights that, in many cases, various existing policy targets are not aligned or consistent with the level of land use change required to meet AFOLU net zero by 2050. There is scope for climate action to be deployed across the land use sector but there must be more effective knowledge sharing and innovation development with land managers to enable effective and timely climate actions. An enabling environment is required and important knowledge gaps that hamper rapid progress across multiple sectors must be addressed. These include the need for more detailed data on land cover and land use - a new high-resolution national land cover map from Ordnance Survey Ireland and the Environmental Protection Agency is expected in November 2022 - and more detailed information on soil carbon fluxes across land cover types. There is also currently uncertainty with regard to climate impacts on the land system and the contribution of areas of semi-natural vegetation to climate mitigation.

From what I have outlined, it is clear there is currently no carbon credit in the AFOLU sector nationally as we have a significant debit on our AFOLU greenhouse gas balance sheet. Given current land cover and land use practices, and even with improved measurement and significant land use change, we are unlikely to have any carbon credits in the AFOLU sector in the medium term. However, this national AFOLU greenhouse gas balance sheet masks the substantial variation between individual land parcels and farms which have different land cover and land management practices. To enable and incentivise positive land use management, we must urgently create an enabling policy environment for action by local communities.

I will finish with some observations on carbon farming, which is essentially agriculture practices that remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in soil, and by highlighting that we are further along the development pathway in relation to carbon farming initiatives in Ireland than is generally understood. Understanding what we know from the evidence I have given, these carbon removals should not be traded in the carbon markets, thereby allowing other sectors outside AFOLU to offset their emissions and potentially avoid emissions reductions within their sectors. Carbon credits essentially do not currently exist in the land use sector.

One of the most promising carbon farming measures is the conservation and restoration of peatlands, which also has significant potential co-benefits for biodiversity. It also has significant potential for climate change adaptation, building resilience of catchments to flooding from predicted more frequent extreme weather events associated with climate change. Ireland has a number of pilot results-based payment programmes under way, including the Wild Atlantic Nature LIFE Integrated Project, which targets blanket bog landscapes in west and north west, and the FarmPEAT European Innovation Partnership, which targets raised bog landscapes in the midlands.

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is also in the process of rolling out the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, co-operation project, which includes results-based payments for peatlands together with supporting actions and landscape measures to enhance their quality. The results-based approach is highlighted as a promising and feasible mechanism to incentivise carbon farming in a technical guidance handbook on results-based carbon mechanisms produced last year for the European Commission. This handbook specifically highlights the potential of the hybrid results-based model and references development work in Ireland spearheaded by the Burren programme for biodiversity and water. The guidance handbook also highlights the possibility for, and potential of, quantifying co-benefits for other ecosystem services besides carbon storage via bundling and grouping of ecosystem services together in one package. The locally adapted results-based payments projects in Ireland have already adopted an integrated approach with field scoring systems designed to incentivise nature, water and carbon ecosystem services within ten-point field scoring systems. This is set to be rolled out across peatland areas within the eight ACRES co-operation project areas under Ireland’s Common Agricultural Policy strategic plan for the period from 2023 to 2027. ACRES is not without its challenges but Ireland is demonstrating ambition in this area and we must all work to ensure a proven impactful approach at local scale can now be scaled up within a national framework. More work is needed to quantify the exact carbon benefits associated with individual field scores, but we can combine more extensive monitoring with existing field scoring systems, essentially learning while doing and adopting an adaptive management approach. We must build on this work and not start from scratch with carbon farming initiatives.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I thank Dr. Moran for his opening statement. We will try again to get Professor Joosten's presentation. We cannot see the slides nor can we hear Professor Joosten at the moment.

Professor Hans Joosten:

Can the committee see me?

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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We can now see and hear Professor Joosten. We can also see the presentation. Does he wish to continue?

Professor Hans Joosten:

Yes. Let us try it. I thank the committee for inviting me. I cannot speak so quickly as I am not a native English speaker but I will show the committee some helpful pictures.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Just to interrupt, we do not have a great deal of time today so I ask the professor to be as brief as he can.

Professor Hans Joosten:

I will go fast. As all of the members will know, our planet is getting warmer and warmer, with decreasing food and water security and growing social breakdown, conflict and migration. The frequency and severity of disasters is rapidly increasing, with enormous losses of life and money. In the Paris Agreement, we unanimously agreed that this situation must be ended. The Paris Agreement has made the world simple. We now have one common goal, to limit climate change to below 2°C, preferably to 1.5°C. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on warming of 1.5°C of 2018 spelled out what this means for greenhouse gas emissions. It means that CO2 emissions have to reach net zero by 2050, that there must be a net sink thereafter, and that methane emissions must reduce by 50% and nitrous oxide emissions by 20%.

This means we all also have to change our behaviour with respect to peatlands. In natural peatlands, mires, the production of biomass is larger than the decay and, as a result, dead plants accumulate as peat. This peat is conserved by permanent water saturation. Natural peatlands are therefore always wetlands. Peat accumulates over thousands of years and stores concentrated carbon in thick layers. The annual global peatlands carbon sink is not that large, equalling only 1% of emissions from fossil fuels. This means peatlands will not save the world and we will have to do it ourselves. The importance of peatlands is in their carbon stock. Peatland is peat land.

Peatlands are the most space-effective carbon stores of all terrestrial ecosystems. Nowhere is so much carbon found per hectare as in peatlands. A 15-cm-thick layer of peat contains per hectare more carbon than what is considered to be a high carbon stock tropical rainforest, so if we want to protect tropical rainforest, we also have to protect every 15 cm and more of peat.

The people's problems are caused mainly by drainage. That has to do with the fact that peat is like pickled gherkins conserved in water that is a little acidic. When you remove the conserving water the organic matter rots away to carbon dioxide. Peatlands are therefore like bombs. As long as you do not touch them, you can easily sleep on them, but if you light the fuse, you go to hell.

As for the framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, we have done large meta-analyses and the relationship is clear: the deeper the water table, the higher the greenhouse gas emissions. For central Europe we have a simple rule of thumb: ten is five, that is, every 10 cm drop in the average water level leads to 5 tonnes more of greenhouse gas emissions per hectare. To give an example, deeply drained grassland on peat in a temperate zone emits 29 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per hectare per year, a number that does not say anything but that is equivalent to the emissions of an average car driving 145,000 km every year. As a consequence, the food print of the products generated on such land is immense: 1 kg of cheese from peat meadows contains 45 kg of CO2 equivalent, and 1 l of milk equals the CO2 content of 2 l of petrol. If you like to drink a glass of milk in the morning, think that you might as well drink 1 l of petrol. One hectare of oil palm on peat emits 60 tonnes of CO2 equivalent every year, which is equal to 50 economy-class return flights from Berlin to Jakarta. As a result, drained peatlands globally, which is only 15% of the total peatland extent, emit 2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. That means that 0.4% of the land of this planet produces 5% of all global emissions.

On the screen is the new map of peatland emissions per country that we presented last week at the climate convention. The committee will see that even Ireland, which is rather small as a country, lights up on this global map. The light that comes from Russia, China and Indonesia is very impressive. If this is expressed as a proportion of emissions from drained peatlands relative to fossil fuels and cement, Ireland's contribution becomes even more evident. It is in the same category as that of Belarus, Mongolia, Indonesia and Uganda.

Worldwide, it is agricultural use that is the main cause of peatland drainage and emissions. Some 80% is caused by agriculture. In Germany, 6.7% of agricultural land is on organic soils, but this causes 40% of all agricultural emissions, including methane from animals and nitrous oxide from fertilisers. Everywhere in the EU it looks the same or even worse. In the EU, 3% of agricultural land is responsible for 25% of all agricultural emissions. In Ireland 7% of agricultural land is responsible for 32% of all agricultural emissions. That can also be expressed in monetary terms. In Germany peatland agriculture causes annual climate damage of €8.5 billion and gets €400 million in European Union subsidies for that, so the committee can see that the polluter pays principle is put on its head. We pay peatland agriculture while it causes massive climate damage, and in that way we frustrate sensible solutions.

Rewetting, as was said before, solves most of these problems and provides additional ecosystem services. The Paris Agreement implies that, until 2050, we will have to rewet all drained peatland in the world, meaning 20,000 sq. km per year. For the European Union this means rewetting 5,000 sq. km per year until 2050. If I say that, people often say it is illusory or naive. Then I say that Finland drained 3,000 sq. km every year in the 1970s. It therefore seems possible with the right narratives and the right aims.

The best example currently is Indonesia. In 2015, that country had 20,000 sq. km, or 2 million ha, of peat fires that killed 100,000 people, brought 500,000 people into hospital and caused domestic damage totalling approximately $20 billion, $30 billion or $40 billion. Then the president decided that something had to change. He created a task force directly under his responsibility, and in the period 2017 to 2022, Indonesia has rewetted 37,000 sq. km of peatlands. That is almost 20 times as much as the whole of Europe in its entire history. Indonesia is a developing country that was forced to take action. The rewetting was not all optimal. That is why I have put the word in inverted commas in my presentation.

Rewetting in Europe has tended to focus on the easy stuff: abandoned and low productive land with few emissions. However, we have to go to the core of the problem: intensive agriculture and forestry on drained peat. The goal is clear, but how to reach it? For Germany we have developed a transformation pathway starting now, where almost all peatland is drained, and early in 2050, when almost all peatland will be rewetted. It is clear this is not an individual but a societal challenge, similarly large as phasing out fossil fuels. We need a peatland master plan. As Harald Grethe, one of the advisers to the Government in respect of agriculture, said recently to farmers, in future they will either cultivate their peatlands wet or they will not cultivate them at all.

After rewetting there are only two options. The first is to make new wet nature, which is good for biodiversity and other ecosystem services, but if we also need biomass production, and for that purpose peatlands have been drained, we have to go to paludiculture, meaning wet agriculture and forestry. The problem is that most polluted production lines need another ten to 15 years of development for their large-scale implementation.

The interim solution lies in carbon credits. Ever more institutions, countries and cities adopt net-zero emission targets and they cannot reach those on their own yet, so they need offsets. Then rewetting becomes interesting also because carbon prices are rising rapidly. They have risen 20-fold in the past ten years. Prices will keep rising from €200 to €700 per tonne, according to studies of the German environmental ministry. We therefore have to give emission rights for drained areas and carbon certificates with government price guarantees until 2045. Then farmers can decide whether to continue as before or to rewet at some point in time, with or without paludiculture. This will give time for paludiculture to develop well, flanked by abundant research and development. After 2050, everything must be wet or the farmer on continuously drained peatland must buy expensive certificates. This situation leads in the medium term to protection of trust. It is not the fault of the farmers that they are on drained peatlands - that was a cultural achievement - but in the longer term we have to go to the polluter pays system. That is a fair balance of interest.

The last issue to address is methane after rewetting. If you have to choose between carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide from drained peatlands and methane of rewetted peatlands, you always have to go for the methane because methane is a strong but short-lasting greenhouse gas, whereas CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas but it accumulates. In the long term CO2 is always worse. The grey line on the graph on the screen pictures what happens when we do not rewet the peatlands. The committee will see an increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with increasing radiative forcing. If we rewet in this model, in the year 2000 we see a slight increase in the radiative forcing to start with but in 2030 we see a breakeven point is already reached. Even if methane emissions are initially ten times higher than under natural conditions, which sometimes happens, we see that these lines cross already in 2035. In the long term CO2 is always worse.

The message for Ireland, therefore, is clear: keep wet peatlands wet and make drained peatlands wet again, and if you have to use them, use them wet as paludiculture.

There will be no Paris without peatlands. Peatlands must be wet for the climate, land and people.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I apologise for the technical difficulties we had earlier. Professor Joosten's statement was very detailed and clear. I know English is not his first language, but he displayed a fluency for which I thank him.

I have a question for Dr. Moran and Professor Joosten. Regarding the opportunities in carbon farming, we heard last week that there could be very significant opportunity there. I take Dr. Moran's point that we cannot go from intensive food production to intensive carbon sequestration and not be fully aware of the potential consequences of that. It is a very complex subject. If I am quoting him correctly, Mr. Niall Ó Brolcháin said at a meeting of the committee last week that there is significant opportunity for carbon farming and the development of sphagnum moss. He said that, ultimately, it might be a solution to the shortage of peat in the horticulture industry. It seems that there is often a narrative that rewetting is about putting farmland out of use and out of use for food production but really it is about raising the water table. In many cases, food production can continue while in other cases, there are opportunities for sphagnum growth and perhaps harvesting of that down the line. Could Dr. Moran comment on that.

Dr. James Moran:

I agree with the statement last week that there are significant opportunities here, particularly within the farm peatlands project in the midlands. This is looking at scoring systems for grasslands on reclaimed raised bog areas. The indicators they have used are basically wet plant indicators. The more these wet plant indicators are present within the field, the more the farmer gets paid. They also look at indicators in terms of the depth of the water table. We know from natural peatlands systems, particularly fenlands, that as long as we can keep the water table within 25 cm of the surface of the ground for the entire year - that is the lowest level it can go to - we are retaining a lot of the carbon storage at depth within the soil.

We will have to essentially raise the water table to that level across the landscape in these areas in the midlands, which will give rise to difficulties in terms of having grassland or grazing on these at the shoulders of the year in particular. It might reduce the amount of grazing time on these lands. We have to adapt our farming systems in light of this. It might require lowering the intensity of grazing on the farm as a whole but if the farmers are getting paid for the carbon storage and sequestration and other benefits in terms of biodiversity and water storage on this land, it should not impact on the economic potential of these communities if we design it well and actually should favour them and improve their potential in terms of the multiple additional services that would be provided in terms of water services, nature services, carbon and climate services as well as possibly lower-intensity food production services. We have a similar situation with regard to blanket bogs in the west of Ireland-----

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I want to stick to the rules on timing. Could Professor Joosten answer and perhaps speak to Dr. Moran's response on the economic opportunities that might be there?

Professor Hans Joosten:

The point of departure is that from a climate point of view, we have to rewet all peatlands. There is then the question of can we do on these lands from an economic point of view. We should not forget that these lands have been drained for productivity. Of course, when we change our diet substantially and substantially reduce the consumption of meat and dairy, it simply means we will release millions of hectares in the EU that will become available. Even if we keep our diet, we must think about what kind of economic opportunities are on rewetted peatlands. We must simply say there are not so many opportunities for food production on rewetted peatlands. That is no issue. There is also a lot of production of energy crops on mineral soils. It is simply a matter of swapping land use, which is not uncommon. We must focus on crops that bring something.

There are several promising crops. The Chairman mentioned sphagnum moss. There is unlimited demand for sphagnum moss. We have the largest pilot site for sphagnum cultivation and several other things are running. We see there is good demand for things. We must focus on which wetland plants have special characteristics. This is the structure of plants and the specific ingredients. For example, we have farms where sundew is cultivated for medical purposes, etc. We have worked through our sphagnum cultivation economically. It appears that if we can increase productivity with 30%, we can simply compete with fossil peat on the world market. We now use sphagnum that has been collected randomly from the wild. We have a cultivation project and have already achieved an increase in productivity of 40% with selected sphagnum species. This means there is an opportunity to compete on the same prices with market fossil peat. Of course, we can request, as farmers, additional payments for environment achievements such as emission reductions from biodiversity, which would create extra income. I see large perspectives in paludiculture because the products you can cultivate are unique and are exactly what we need for combatting climate change.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I am a bit confused. Last week, we were told rewetting wetlands was very uncertain, with estimates from 1 tonne to 10 tonnes. As a result, they struggled with carbon farming development but this week, we are hearing one speaker say that rewetting may have no impact while other speakers say it has major potential. As a result, I am a bit confused. Did I misread the intent of the different evidence?

We heard from different speakers that we should have a target of net zero for all of the greenhouse gases from agriculture land use but we heard from Professor Joosten that we are looking for a 50% reduction in methane and net zero for carbon dioxide. I am getting confused as to what targets we should be setting. It seems we are being given different targets by different speakers. Could the witnesses clarify what the appropriate targets are and whether wetland can deliver for us in a way that would allow us to pay farmers a reliable dividend? We were told last week that we would have great difficulty paying such a dividend.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Dr. Byrne made the point about rewetting, but it related to existing forests. He indicated that there is no benefit to rewetting existing forests on peatlands. I think that is what Deputy Bruton is referring to.

Dr. Ken Byrne:

I will respond to Deputy Bruton on that point. Professor Joosten might be better placed to respond with regard to agriculture. When we say rewetting, we need to be very clear about the context and the land use circumstances in which we are proposing it because each brings a particular set of challenges, and it is well-demonstrated for agriculture. One of the key challenges with forests is it is effectively deforestation.

When the forest is removed, it leaves branches and such material on the ground, which decay and create a source of CO2 that persists for some time, whereas other systems do not have so great a burden of biomass that is ready to decompose, and that has to be considered. How quickly that decays is crucial and, of course, methane is important.

Many of these forests, although they are on peatland, provide timber, and if we transfer that land use into rewetting, we will face the loss of that timber production or, alternatively, that timber supply will come from the rest of the forest estate or may be compensated by afforestation. We have to consider the impacts at a wider landscape level and not just locally.

I responded briefly because I am cognisant of the limited time.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I will give more time later if that is required.

Professor Hans Joosten:

The second question related to the aims that are being put forward. We must remember that the IPCC in 2018 calculated that to reach the Paris Agreement goals, we would have to reduce emissions, and it specified that as 100% with respect to CO2, 50% to methane and 20% to nitrous oxide. The aims with respect to methane and nitrous oxide are all about food security. We cannot have rice or have ruminants grazing without methane emissions. If we push back methane emissions to zero, that will simply mean that we will have stopped eating rice, the most common food worldwide, and using ruminants for food, which is necessary in large parts of the world where only grass is available.

Nitrous oxide is a product of fertilisation. If we stop using artificial fertiliser or fertilisation completely, that will simply mean cereals will not have enough protein to be able to make bread, and that is what is behind these limited reductions with respect to methane and nitrous oxide. Therefore, the IPCC has stated we should focus on CO2 because that is the easiest goal to achieve while guaranteeing food security. The European Union has subsequently said we want to reach full climate neutrality and we have seen increasing aims, such as shortening the period from 2050 to 2045 or 2040. These are all different aims, formulated at different political levels, that we have to keep in mind.

With respect to the emission reduction effect of rewetting, we have to keep in mind that various peatlands do not have the same emissions. Deeply drained peatlands have much higher emissions than shallowly drained peatlands, so if we rewet the latter, it will lead to fewer emission reductions. These differentiations have been acknowledged by the IPCC in the report we wrote in 2014, where we identified various land use types for which different emission factors apply and for which different emission reductions can be calculated.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Is there capacity to identify a plot of land and say what carbon dividend it might yield? We were told last week that that could not be done because two years later, we might find it amounted to only one tenth of what we were originally committing to supporting on the farm. We were told this issue of great uncertainty faced a carbon farming regime.

Professor Hans Joosten:

That is the question of monitoring. We know there is strict relationship between the level of other environmental factors and emissions. We have developed methods for monitoring these changes, such as the greenhouse gas emissions site types model, in which we identify 60 land use types where we simply monitor emissions from peatlands by way of their vegetation. It is possible that this could be also commercially applied and acknowledged by the verified carbon standard, the largest voluntary carbon standard in the world. We are able to do so and, in respect of peatlands, we can simply say how much the emissions are and what the future emissions will be, depending on the result of the rewetting. If we dam up a ditch, we cannot exactly predict how much the water level will rise. Of course, we can make a general prediction and calculate the emission reduction, but all carbon schemes are based on monitoring over time to check whether the expected emission reductions have really been achieved, and only these carbon credits are sold.

Dr. James Moran:

To clarify, we are talking about different things. Dr. Byrne talked about the rewetting of forests, whereas Professor Joosten and I talked about the rewetting of peatlands and grasslands, which are two very different matters. We did a lot of damage to all these systems by draining them in the first instance, and we have done a lot of damage to peatlands by putting forests on them. The question is whether we are going to do more damage by rewetting them. In that case, it is uncertain whether we would do more harm than good by rewetting forests, but we will certainly do good by rewetting grasslands and peatlands in terms of carbon balances.

As for the uncertainty relating to the measurement of this, there is uncertainty. Much of it depends on the prediction of whether the rewetting will be successful. This is why we are going along the lines of these results-based payments and paying for carbon nature and water in an integrated framework, and using the plan's indicators for the basis of payments, as Professor Joosten outlined. We can now make these payments to farmers based on the success of rewetting as measured by the plants that will come back to these areas and the effective rising of the water table. That has been trialled successfully throughout the west, the north west and the midlands. We can make these payments and carry out the measurements at the same time to verify the carbon on this.

It was frustrating to hear what was said last week. We do not have time to wait for research and monitoring; we must take action now. Action on the rewetting of peatlands and the raising of the water tables on grasslands will have a positive carbon dividend. We do not know the exact figures, but we can sure as hell find out with a monitoring period and run it alongside while we are taking action at the same time. We cannot afford to delay anymore.

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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The big issue with carbon sequestration has always related to how to calculate its value in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the European Commission will on 30 November publish rules on how that will be quantified, which will start the debate process in the European Parliament. Naturally, we want to ensure that those calculations are beneficial to carbon farming and that the certification process will not be too onerous on farmers to take part in. What does Dr. Moran consider to be the correct quantitative scheme and what does it need to look at to stimulate carbon farming in Ireland? How could a certification scheme be kept simple to encourage small-scale farmers to get involved? When it comes to carbon farming in general in Ireland, are we making it attractive for farmers to get involved in the first instance?

My final question is for Dr. Byrne. At the moment, 11% of Ireland is under forestry and the Government's target is for that to be 17% by 2030. Is that a feasible target in the next eight years?

Dr. James Moran:

As for making a certification scheme simple for farmers, it would involve developing a simple scoring system on a field-by-field basis. Quite simply, in the case of the scoring systems that have been developed so far, an improved agricultural grassland on peat soils, with a water table that is 1 m or more below the surface of the ground for the vast majority of the year, is low scoring and is actively emitting carbon. If the water table has risen, that will increase the number of wetland plants and there will be more sedges and other types of plants within that. We have developed simple colour and picture guides to identify these plants on the trials in the midlands and throughout the west. If the farm raises the water table 0.5 m or so close to the surface, with some wetland plants coming in, that could be a medium score. They are very high scores, at the top of the surface. They have sphagnum mosses growing on them, which are easily identified. They are moss-dominated and sedge-dominated, as opposed to grass-dominated, fields. We can easily see this with pictures.

Alongside this, we conduct the monitoring in situat the same time to verify what exactly the carbon emissions are on that first case that I described, whether the medium quality or the high quality. We have this certification scheme in place that is monitored by local teams. The farmers get an advisory and it is exactly the same as what we are doing in the midlands. A certain proportion of this can be certified and monitored by the inspectorate within the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine or set up within the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

We have been doing this for the past ten to 15 years in the Burren, with certification for biodiversity and water on a simple scoring system. We have been doing it on the European innovation partnerships for peatlands in the upland areas for the past five years. Now we can do it in this context in the coming years.

Dr. Ken Byrne:

If I remember right, the Senator referred to going from 11% to 17% between now and 2030. That is land use change on an unprecedented scale. If my calculations are right - forgive me if they are not - that is approximately 65,000 ha per year, or slightly under 1% of the land area, approximately-----

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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My question related to the afforested area. The figure comes from www.forestry.ie.

Dr. Ken Byrne:

We achieved very high afforestation rates in the 1990s, with more than 15,000 ha each year, but that was for only a few years and it has been in steady decline since then. We are now at a very low figure. Past performance being an indicator of the future, one could not be optimistic in that regard. There are also technical issues. For example, it takes the forest nursery sector two or three years to ramp up production of transplants in anticipation of such an area being available. Even if all other barriers were removed, that would still be an obstacle. The Government has just announced a new scheme and there is lots of optimism and goodwill but-----

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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The Government target is for 17% forest cover. That is the equivalent of 1 million ha of forest, by 2030. Fair enough if that is far too ambitious. If we are at 11% now., what should we be aiming for?

Dr. Ken Byrne:

We are at approximately 1,000 ha or 2,000 ha per year. Any improvement on that would be beneficial, as well as fostering other systems, such as agroforestry, for example.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I will jump in there. It is probably not an easy question to answer but if the increase from 11% to 17% is unrealistic, what do we need to be doing from the point of view of sequestering carbon?

Dr. Ken Byrne:

Our forests are on a trajectory to be a source because of the so-called legacy issues. One of the contributing factors in that regard is that because afforestation compensates for removals. When the afforestation rate falls and removals remain the same, one moves towards being a source. We are not even in a gain situation. If we were afforesting, we would just be compensating for our losses. We would need to have a very high value to get it beyond the legacy issue in this regard. As other speakers have been saying, it is important to consider everything at a landscape level. The point made by Dr. Moran in that regard is really good. We have to think about specific soil, climatic and land use conditions and the optimum for them across all land use.

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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I have so many questions that I do not know whether I will be able to get them out straight. I thank the witnesses for their very interesting presentations. In particular, I was taken by the observation by Dr. Moran to the effect that we do not have time and that we just need to get moving on this. A great deal of work and research are being done, and various pilot projects have been pursued for many years. However, there is no bringing all of that together in one plan. As Professor Joosten stated, a peatland master plan or something like that would be ideal. A point I made last week is that the State is the largest landowner in the country. If we are trying to do something very quickly with as much ease as possible, surely the State should be looking at its own land first in order to identify land that has high potential for rewetting, and just rewet it. There should be a blanket ban on doing anything other than rewetting on that State land. While that is happening and settling, there should be development of that peatland master plan and work with stakeholders to try to implement other measures. As a quick first move, however, the State should be rewetting its land. I invite the witnesses to comment on that.

Dr. James Moran:

I totally agree with the Deputy. The State has to take a lead here and demonstrate the possibilities. The two main landowners with responsibility for this are Coillte and Bord na Móna. Large areas of the Coillte estate are peatland that is not even afforested at the moment. There needs to be an ambitious nature restoration remit in respect of that land. We also need to look at the work on which Dr. Byrne is more expert than I, in terms of the failed afforestation on a large proportion of Coillte land. It is basically unharvestable because it was planted on peatland. There is a need to put in a restoration plan for that land which does not make the situation worse in terms of carbon but, rather, improves it, as well as having additional benefits for biodiversity and water storage. Many of these sites are in upland areas and get more intense rainfall. If we do the right thing in those areas and make a sponge of them, we will be alleviating flooding in the lowlands. The State has to take the lead on that, however. The National Parks and Wildlife Service also owns a large proportion of peatlands.

I am involved with the advisory group of the Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss. There has been much discussion on this issue in the past six months. I have been given great hope in terms of what the citizens have learned in the past six months and some of the recommendations that we will be debating and deciding on this weekend. We will have strong recommendations relating to the management of State land in terms of nature restoration, but also for climate benefit. One of the things that hampers this is the Forestry Act 1998 and the duties of Coillte in terms of its overriding production remit and the lack of an overriding responsibility to first manage this land in the interests of our survival as a society and to lead the way in terms of what is possible. It should be demonstrating the art of the possible on public lands in terms of nature restoration, water regulation and climate regulation. Some of the worst management in Europe is currently being demonstrated in respect of a significant proportion of public lands and has been demonstrated in respect of peatland for a number of decades. We must turn that around. We cannot ask the general public - farmers and individuals - to do certain things when they can currently look across their ditch and see the carry-on of Bord na Móna and Coillte in terms of the ongoing inappropriate management of these lands and this ongoing at the moment.

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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In terms of pilot projects, a lot of good work has been done in the Burren. The scoring system to which Dr. Moran referred was working successfully but it appears that the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, is now constraining or has impeded that project to the point where two of the lead scientists on it have stepped down. What barriers are being brought in by ACRES? We do not want really successful programmes that were doing the job we need done to be treated regressively. We should be building on them, not reducing their impact.

Dr. James Moran:

I am very familiar with that situation because I have worked on this with Dr. Brendan Dunford and Dr. Sharon Parr for the past 15 years. What has happened is bloody frustrating. In my evidence to the committee in November of last year, I pointed to this situation and the risks inherent in putting a cap on payments and designing an administrative structure around the general ACRES approach that would hamper local flexibility within the locally led co-operation project approach that the Burren was to roll into. This has major potential. It has all the elements in terms of local co-operation project teams, results-based payments, supporting actions and landscape measures. It is the cap on payments, however, and the payment structure itself which basically allow one to go to medium quality and which do not incentivise high quality to the same extent. People such as Dr. Parr and Dr. Dunford, who will stand by their principles and who want there to be no backsliding anywhere in the country, could not stand over the situation at present. There are fixes to this, and the senior officials know that.

Even within our CAP strategic plan, we put an asterisk in one of the tables to allow for adaptation of the payment structure in exceptional circumstances in terms of delivery of environmental quality. The Burren is so far ahead of other areas and many of the areas are high scoring and delivering high quality now. These are delivering exceptional environmental quality and we need to use the flexibility that we highlighted was needed in our own CAP strategic plan.

From an administrative perspective, I have every sympathy for the departmental officials. They are trying to roll this out from 2,000 farmers currently to 20,000 farmers. However, at the moment, there is a problem in the very high achieving areas that they will not get the rewards and incentives required to maintain that high standard. We will move, in many situations, from a low quality to a medium quality. I do not know whether I am explaining it right because it is quite technical. Dr. Brendan Dunford and Dr. Sharon Parr are meeting with the Minister for State, Senator Hackett, and the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, today - probably at the moment. I am hoping a resolution to this will be found.

We must remember that ACRES is, in general, the right approach, particularly the co-operation project. The problem is we have within ACRES an ACRES general and an ACRES co-operation approach. These are two very different approaches that have been called the same name, which is problematic for communications. In addition, the administrative system is designed around the general approach first and tagging on the more ambitious co-operation locally-led approach afterwards, whereas, to be honest, it needed to be done the other way around.

I do not know if that makes sense. It is a complicated issue.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Yes. That is clear. Dr. Moran has made a complicated matter quite clear, and I thank him for that.

I will go now to Deputy Alan Farrell, who is joining us from his office.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I thank our witnesses for their enlightening contributions thus far. On afforestation, the biggest issue we have, notwithstanding the latest iteration of the afforestation plan, is that we have not hit or come close to hitting a target since 2016. Since then, our targets have increased significantly but our actual afforestation rate has dropped to below 20% of target, to the best of my knowledge. We have touched on swapping land use, as Professor Joosten called it, in terms of what we can achieve with this latest iteration of the afforestation plan. The key question for everybody in the committee is whether it is achievable. With Dr. Byrne’s expertise, what are the knock-on implications if we do not achieve those targets as quickly as possible? While any improvement is welcome, as he said, these targets are being set as high as they are for a purpose and with a good reason. I am not seeing any evidence that the afforestation rate will get above the current level of 2,000 ha.

Dr. Ken Byrne:

Failure to achieve the afforestation target means we will fail to achieve the anticipated sequestration that is contingent on that. In the longer term, we will then fail to have harvests of biomass from such forests in the future, which can displace fossil fuel emissions or provide sawn timber that can displace energy-intensive materials. Our renewable biomass production will suffer in the long term.

It is important to point out that there is potential for a significant gain through forest management measures such as extended rotations, which can deliver significant benefits in the short term and perhaps more benefits than afforestation at less cost. There has been some work done on that, which I would happily share. I did not do it but I am familiar with work that can share in that regard.

I refer to planting trees on peat, for example. As much as it is complicated and we should be careful before we change that, we should not do any more of it. However, when one brings that consideration into account, it immediately takes 20% to 25% of our land bank out of the equation. Then that target, if we were to achieve it, has to be squeezed into other places, and we have many different competing land uses. We need to think very carefully about how we wish to manage the landscape as a whole. That goes back to the points Dr. Moran made earlier, although I do not wish to speak on his behalf. We have to think about what is best not just locally but how that fits into the entire landscape as a whole and what we want to achieve from our landscape in terms of food, fibre, a living for the people who are living on it, recreation and biodiversity. It is a very difficult course to navigate but we have to try to do it. That allows us to not have single objective land uses. We need diversity for a whole host of reasons, which, again, I think Dr. Moran mentioned earlier. I hope I answered the Deputy’s question to some degree.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Yes, Dr. Byrne did. I appreciate the detail. The information he suggested he could provide the committee will most likely be very helpful.

I understand Coillte will re-enter afforestation plans next year. It will not harm sequestration targets but will it help to meet them and help with the benefits of them?

Dr. Ken Byrne:

Yes, it will but not immediately. It takes time. In the medium term, it will, but in the short term, it will be slow to accrue. It takes time to deliver upon this and plantations need time to mature and do not necessarily achieve high sequestration rates until they are in their post canopy closure, so ten, 15, 20 or 30 years in is when it starts to max up. That is why I am suggesting that increasing rotation lengths may be good because the forests are continuing to accrue carbon at a high rate into that extended rotation period. That is why they give such added value or have the potential to do so.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I have two more quick questions. One of them is in relation to the measurement of the benefits of particular uses for particular pieces of land, whether they be rewetted peatland or rewetted forestry lands that were inappropriately used in the eyes of our witnesses. Do we have the expertise for that? Alternatively, does Dr. Moran believe we have the ability to develop that expertise to verify, parcel by parcel, the specific conditions on land?

Professor Joosten mentioned swapping land use in one of his responses to another member – I think it was Deputy Bruton. When it comes to alternatives for certain sectors of food production, specifically mushrooms and-or certain horticultural produce, the alternatives in terms of minimal peat harvesting are few and far between, as far as I am aware. While there are some sectors that are massive users of peat for production, there are alternatives. To the best of Professor Joosten’s knowledge, are there alternatives for crops, specifically mushrooms?

The other question I have for Professor Joosten is a specific one and unrelated to any conversation we have had this afternoon. Should the concept of regrowing peatland be built into the overall plan for the rewetting of bogs in Ireland? Is there a comparable analysis in any other jurisdiction with peatlands where there have been attempts to regrow the peat as well as rewetting and other measures?

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Those were not quick questions and I suspect the answers will not be so quick either.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I ask for a little leeway.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I will allow a little.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Perhaps Dr. Moran would like to start.

Dr. James Moran:

Regarding the verification and monitoring of achievements across multiple goals, including in respect of carbon, biodiversity and water but also in respect of the impact on our food production system, we do not have the capacity at the moment. It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. We do not build the capacity until we actually need it. However, if we cannot do it, nobody in the world can. We are not blowing our own trumpets in saying we have one of the most highly educated societies in the world. We still have a private agricultural sector. In Teagasc, we have a top-class, Europe-leading research, education and advisory service related to land use. There many top-quality scientists in our universities, top-class engineers at work and top-class practitioners on the land.

In the pilot projects we put in place, we developed the capacity in a relatively short period. With regard to the ACRES co-operation project, we are now scaling up from 2,000 farmers to 20,000. We have seen eight co-operation project teams – multidisciplinary teams – built across the relevant areas in the past six months, albeit not without challenges. However, from what I have seen from having been involved in many pilot programmes, working with colleagues across the university and higher education sectors and the education sector in general, and having seen the capacity of 99 random citizens to address biodiversity loss at the citizens' assembly over the past six months, I have no doubt that if we put our mind to this as a country, we can take action, put the incentives in place and monitor, verify, research and improve as we go. We just need to have faith in ourselves and direction from the Government.

As Dr. Byrne stated, we need an integrated land-use strategy, working on a community-by-community and catchment-by-catchment basis within a national framework, so as to go in a particular direction to solve a crisis associated with the climate, biodiversity and future food security and nutrition. Without trying to build it up too much, I believe we have no choice. It is either what I suggest or extinction. When human society's back is to the wall, it can do this. We do not have the capacity at the moment but will develop it as needed.

Professor Hans Joosten:

I fully agree with that. I always say necessity is the mother of invention. We might not be able to do it now but it is necessary to do it. When it was decided to bring a man to the moon, there were no ideas as to how to manage it. However, it was managed, in less than ten years. I see enormous progress with respect to the development of innovative land use on crops on rewetted peatlands. That is indeed possible.

On whether it is possible to regrow a peatland, I have come from a peatland where peat extraction was taking place. As a young man, I studied the regeneration of peat in peat pits after peat extraction and the question of how rapidly new peat is formed. Actually, I invented the word "paludiculture" to describe the cultivation of peat. When we studied it, I noticed that much biomass is lost during peat formation. In the end, only 10% of the primary production material is left as peat. We therefore said that if you want to grow peat, you must harvest it as young as possible. Then we concluded that the youngest peat is actually living peat moss. That is the start of peat moss production. Farmed peat moss is an alternative to peat as it has the same properties.

This is also the future in respect of the forestry issue we discussed. We can produce biomass much faster by using annual plants and annual cropping, and we can make reeds into materials that are as strong as wood. The technical possibilities exist. We have to think outside current frameworks. We must return to short rotation crops because they are much more effective for what I describe. There are good possibilities for peatlands.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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On the question of alternatives for certain sectors, there is an ongoing discussion in Ireland, including in the Oireachtas.

Professor Hans Joosten:

We have to look for economically viable alternatives to the current use of peatland. This will not involve dairy. We have to stop dairy farming on peat. Of course, we can think about water buffalo. They can graze in very wet conditions; it is not a problem. I have done this behind my house. We really have to think about the niche of the crops. Wetland plants are much stronger than dryland plants, simply because they stand in water, which is much heavier. The forces they are exposed to are much stronger. At the same time, they have to bring oxygen to the roots. They have conductive tissue that brings oxygen from the air to the roots. The combination is very strong. There is very good insulating, open material that is ideal for housebuilding, including for making construction plates that can replace cement, steel, etc. These experiments have been done. These developments are the future. We must think outside the box about new materials that peatlands can provide to address the climate problem.

Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for the engagement so far. It is the polar opposite of some of the greenwashing we listen to sometimes. Professor Byrne referred to sustainable forest management. Right now, it is far from sustainable, either ecologically or socially, with some plantations not very popular in the communities in which they are located. Reference was made to sustainability and carbon sinks. We should look to forestry to address future building needs because we have a housing crisis. Wood can be used in the housing sector as a carbon storage mechanism. In this regard, Professor Joosten mentioned the replacement of steel and concrete. Could the witnesses talk about sustainable forest management?

Dr. Moran referred to carbon farming. He said we are much further along the development pathway than is generally understood. I would like him to expand on that. Could he also expand on why carbon farming should not involve trading on carbon markets, certainly outside the agriculture sector?

Dr. Ken Byrne:

We have to find a balance between using timber and putting carbon in the forest, or storing it there through photosynthesis. Interestingly, many talk about mechanisms to offset emissions but photosynthesis is currently the only mechanism that can do that at scale, whether in a forest or in peatlands, as Professor Joosten has mentioned. Therefore, we need to maximise it as much as we can. The greatest benefit to be derived from a forest is taking carbon into it through its management and then moving a sustainable proportion of that carbon into the likes of what the Deputy just mentioned, such as building materials, and displacing energy needs, thus creating a kind of conveyor of carbon. Let us call it that.

I am perhaps not best placed to comment on timber in construction but my impression is that we have not got to a point where we are using timber enough in our houses. I recently heard a figure indicating something like 85% of housing stock being built in Scotland is timber framed. I suspect it is a lot less here. We need to get better at this and promote the use of timber better. Much progress is being made on innovating in the use of our timber. I am not an engineer but believe that making engineered timber products that can be used in the instances in question has great potential. If we are moving towards growing more broadleaf trees, it will create new challenges. It will take longer to supply timber. More attention will need to be paid to the management of the plantations. We must look after them very closely in the early stages because, if we do not, the opportunity to grow a high-quality product will be lost.

Have I answered the Deputy's questions or is there more that I should address?

Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, Dr. Byrne answered them. Perhaps Professor Joosten could speak too. I would be interested in hearing about carbon farming from Dr. Moran.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Did Professor Joosten catch the question?

Professor Hans Joosten:

No. Maybe the Deputy can repeat it. It was not clear to me.

Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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We were talking about forest management. Professor Joosten referred to how wetted bog peatlands could be used to provide material for housebuilding, insulation and so on. Has he anything to add to that?

Professor Hans Joosten:

I can give some examples of cattails or reeds that we cultivate. We can easily make high-quality construction material, insulation plates and so on. Companies might say that if an annual harvest of 100 ha of cattails can be provided, they will build a factory next to the production site. It is economically viable on this scale. We have to think about such matters as how we can use the unique properties of peatland and wetland plants to make products that we need in the future.

Dr. James Moran:

On the carbon market, it is not that we should not trade if we have a net sink, but that, at the moment, within our agriculture, forestry, and other land use sectors, we have no credits to trade. Our balance sheet is in serious debit, so the credits do not exist. Any trading of this is only paper trading and would only be greenwashing by other sectors to avoid reduction in fossil fuel use. That should be a clear point. We are emitting more than 27,000 kt of carbon from our agriculture, forestry and other land use sectors, when we include emissions from our peatlands. As was pointed out last week, improvements in measurements might reduce that figure, but it will certainly not turn it from a serious debit into a credit. In the medium to long term, the credits do not exist. Anybody who says they do is only greenwashing. That said, there are many situations where we have to incentivise individual parcels of land to move into credit. We have parcels of land in the country that are in credit. With carbon farming, we need to develop an incentive system that rewards individual farmers who have parcels of land that are in credit for moving more parcels of land into that system.

I say we are further along because we have developed our results-based farming systems for environmental quality, with an integrated approach to soil quality, hydrological quality and ecosystem quality, with regard to biodiversity value, in our results-based payments system in the Burren. The structures are set up. Based on our existing ten-point scoring systems, where we are restoring the ecosystem quality, we need to understand and quantify what exactly the carbon storage is and the annual carbon sequestration in each of these different land types under different ecological qualities. We have the payment systems. We are scaling this up to 20,000 farmers in eight co-operation project areas over the next months. This is why I am saying we are further along the trajectory. Once we have the quality of the landscapes secured through public finances, then we can look at the other opportunities relating to paludiculture and developing new and novel projects, similar to Professor Joosten's work in Germany. We have a readymade local co-operation project approach that this can be tagged onto to develop carbon farming systems.

Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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I agree with the witnesses. I hope that we all heed their advice.

Professor Hans Joosten:

With respect to peatland rewetting, the first focus is not on sequestration but on avoiding existing emissions. Emissions from drained peatlands are an order of magnitude larger than the sequestration of wet peatlands, so the first priority is rewetting for avoidance. We can also trade these avoidance credits, which we are doing on the market, but we have to keep in mind that it will not be possible after 2050 because it will not be additional anymore, since we decided that in 2050, no emissions can take place anymore. Avoidance credits will not be marketable after 2050 but we have a limited time, of some 20 years, to use avoidance credits as a way to steer the machine to cover all possible developments, including the development of paludiculture.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I thank Professor Joosten. That is useful.

Dr. Ken Byrne:

I will make a couple of points, following on from what Professor Joosten said. From an atmospheric perspective, a reduced emission is the same as an increased uptake. The benefit to the atmosphere is the same. There is a significant benefit to be gained from rewetting peatlands, by simply reducing emissions, even before considering sequestration, which is a longer-term and perhaps much greater challenge in taking the ecosystem to that next step.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank the witnesses. I came in with a set of questions based on having read one of the submissions and I have completely different questions now. I have found the meeting interesting. This is all connected. We seem to be in trouble with our land use and we urgently need to do something. I appreciate the optimism, particularly from Dr. Moran, about how we can do this and what we can do. I would like to share it but I am a little more depressed about the whole scenario. We got the presentation from Dr. Byrne about the forestry situation. I looked at a map that illustrates this. Approximately 71% of our forest coverage is a monoculture of Sitka spruce. There are many problems with getting rid of it, because we would be releasing much carbon. Going round Ireland, one can see that we have destroyed mountainsides where the bog was pristine and beautiful by draining it and planting these forests. Everybody present will agree that we made a bags of our land use over the years. How we reverse it is what puzzles me. If it is doing that much damage, how do we undo that damage and move to a situation with afforestation where we have broadleaf and native trees covering most of our land?

I realised at a young age that this is a horrible environment. If one likes walking the hills and goes through these hills, one can see how dark and void of wildlife they are. There is acid in the water and frogs do not live in it anymore. Birds and insects do not hang about. Flowers do not grow. It is a horrible environment for biodiversity. There is a double problem of biodiversity, dealing with carbon emissions, and doing something about our land use. I would like to share the optimism but I am not sure how we get there. I know from hillwalking this summer that some farmers are draining bogs and getting them ready to plant more Sitka spruce. It is private land rather than public land. How do we deal with that? Do we need to pass laws? How can we stop that from happening? There is more incentive for them to plant Sitka spruce than to do anything else.

I get that a radical transformation is required. I know many young people who are enthusiastic about growing mushrooms and hemp, for example, as an alternative. Hemp can be a building and insulation material. I am not sure that we have the answers here. It has been said that we have top-class bodies such as Teagasc, but do they have the teeth and willingness to say that we have to stop this and rapidly change how we use our land? If it is not done rapidly, then this conversation is quite academic, as far as I understand the science that has been presented. It is a broad question about how we force this agenda for good reasons.

We must incentivise farmers, but the industrial farming lobby is such a strong one in this country that it will not hear any talk of a reduction in the herd number or of the use of nitrates. This is precisely what we need to do, along with rewetting places. I find it worrying that, as we speak, bogs are being drained and being prepared for more Sitka spruce planting, when we have this disastrous management of land.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I call Dr. Byrne.

Dr. Ken Byrne:

I thank the Deputy. I will try to address some of those points. I am neither a lawyer nor an employee of another State institution, so I am not in a position to comment on those elements. I will put my own experience on the table. I come from a community in County Kildare where, when I was a child, everybody worked in Bord na Móna. My father did and that put food on the table. At that time, that was perceived to be the right thing to do for that reason. Much as we might look back now on past land uses and consider those decisions to be wrong in our current context, and perhaps they were, it is important to understand why those changes took place and that we should not continue to make such changes.

I do not think any pristine bogs are being drained now to plant trees. I would be very surprised if that were happening. We must, though, find a way forward. I agree there is every reason to be pessimistic. I have to be honest and say I can find these reasons all the time, and there are, of course, other reasons to be pessimistic about the world too. I agree, therefore, with Dr. Moran that we must be optimistic and believe we can do this because the alternative is just too much to think about. We must change the way society is moving. I return to the point Dr. Moran made regarding trying to chart a way forward for our landscape which looks at what is the balance between all these things we wish to do. We must grow food, whatever this food may be, we must sequester carbon and we must try to protect our water. We must try to find a balanced way forward in doing all these things and this is challenging and difficult, but we need to get on with it. We need to do it now.

There is a great groundswell of goodwill among people out there. Dr. Moran mentioned this in some of the examples he gave, and I ask him to forgive me for speaking on his behalf so much, and it testifies to this fact. This goodwill must be harnessed. People must be empowered to undertake these changes. Equally, they must be allowed to make mistakes. Land use is a diverse, mixed and complex topic, with a host of different interacting factors. We can of course try to decide the best way to move forward but we will make mistakes. We should not, however, punish others for making these mistakes and for trying to find a way forward in respect of land use, rewarding people or whatever the case may be. We need our forests to deliver timber as well as all these other services. What the balance in this regard should be is a question for discussion of course. Have I responded in some way, Chair?

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Yes, I think so. Dr. Byrne has given as much to talk about.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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This question is a bit like asking how long is a piece of string. It is worrying that we either need legislation or we need to incentivise farmers and those who live on the land in a proper way, and it does not seem that either of these things are being done. We seem to be hanging somewhere in the middle. Perhaps we need a bit of both approaches.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I will bring in Dr. Moran, because he did say in his statement that much good was being done and it was a case of scaling and ramping up this work. Is that correct?

Dr. James Moran:

Yes. To be honest, I am trying to be optimistic now, but when we look at the situation from a national level we can be overwhelmed by the complexity. I am seriously bloody annoyed at the carry-on at national level when we try to scale up any of these local initiatives. We often do not have the institutional capacity to do this now, so institutional reform is needed to make local action possible.

As scientists, we are always trained to break down complex problems into manageable units. In this context, I get overwhelmed when I look at this subject in national and international perspectives in respect of climate change, biodiversity loss, food security and the population globally hitting more than 8 billion at the start of this week. What I have seen from working in this area for more than 20 years, though, is that it is not as complex when working at local level. There are fewer vested interests in place, though there are vested interests and people. At local level generally, though, people have the best interests of their places and communities in mind because they have to live there and cannot move away.

If we can do this on a community-by-community and catchment-by-catchment basis, then the State will have to create this integrated land use framework. It should set targets for what we need, recognise the capacity of each individual bit of land and put the right incentives in place. It is not, however, just a question of incentives. We need good laws and regulations that put a backstop in place that we can build on and that will prevent any more environmental or societal deterioration. The economic situation has to be bent to the will of serving society and to work within the capacity of the environment. It should not be the other way round, which is the set-up now.

We need this fundamental change, but my plea to committee members, as the legislators and leaders in the country across political parties and as the representatives of our local communities, is that they must create the enabling environment that will lead to local action that will collectively solve these issues. This means better regulation, sorting out our State agencies, sorting out our EIA regulations, getting down to the nitty-gritty of this endeavour, promoting peatland restoration and better land use in general and sorting out our forestry strategy and not having a situation where we are going to continue to lock-in a great deal of monoculture forestry over the next several years, despite the greenwashing and things we say at national level in respect of having a whole new forestry strategy.

An awful lot of the stuff we are doing now talks the big game and has targets for major aspirations. When we look at the actions, though, these are tweaking and fiddling around the edges of the problems and not going headlong towards achieving these goals. When these goals are set, I think an awful lot of people in the administrative systems fundamentally believe them to be unachievable anyway and so we will just continue on with what we know. This is a call for there to be leadership, a strategic approach and enabling of action at local community level.

We can get bogged down in the complexity of the situation and be defeatist regarding the task at hand. The alternative is to struggle on and to make things happen. I do not care what the political party people are in or what social side of things they are on. It makes no difference whether people are left, right or centre. Fundamentally, we are all in this together. If the environment deteriorates, then society will be gone and who will give a damn about the economy when there is no one around to need it?

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank Dr. Moran.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I call Professor Joosten.

Professor Hans Joosten:

I support what Dr. Moran said by giving the example of Indonesia. In that country, after 2050, it has simply been prescribed that all concession holders must raise the water levels to a minimum of 40 cm below the surface. Of course, those concession holders took this to court, but all the big companies have lost their cases because the judge correctly said it is the task of the state to protect its civilians and to secure the future. The result now is that if the water level drops for a longer time below 40 cm, then the concessions will simply be withdrawn. A monitoring system with 10,000 sites has been installed. The readings from those sites are plotted every second week and the results then centralised in a computer system. It automatically warns landowners that their water levels are too low. The system also monitors the meteorological outlook and predicts what can be done with rainfall to raise water levels. This is a system that works. It has been calculated that in this way emissions have been reduced by 270 Mt per year. This is possible simply by prescription. We must find such ways as well. Stupid things must be forbidden.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I thank Deputy Smith for her questions. I call Deputy O'Rourke.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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Some of the issues I was going to address have been dealt with, so this is helpful. I will come at this topic in another way. Starting with Dr. Byrne, regarding forests on peatlands, I think it was Dr. Moran who said we are not sure whether taking them off those lands would do more harm than good.

Regarding the approach to forests on peatlands, what are the guiding principles that should inform us in how we treat them in the time ahead? Should we clear them or maintain them, or what approach should be taken there? One of the issues that came up last week was around the appropriateness of putting renewables, whether onshore wind or solar, on our peatlands. Does any of the witnesses have a perspective on that? We heard that it depends on the level of deterioration of the peatlands when it comes to wind and that there was never a case for solar. I ask the witnesses to reflect on that. I have a question for Dr. Moran. If he could identify three or five initial immediate asks of the Government, what would they be? Professor Joosten touched on the international examples. Does he have any others around approaches or best practice? I accept that this is an emerging area. He pointed to Indonesia. Is there anywhere else?

Dr. Ken Byrne:

I will respond to the Deputy's first point about forested peatlands. Perhaps I would say this anyway but from a scientific perspective, our knowledge on the ground based on actual data collection is almost non-existent. We need to address that gap urgently but I also agree with Dr. Moran that we need to get moving and start doing things. We need a good monitoring programme. There has been some rewetting of forested bogs in the past. Coillte has a new programme called Wild Western Peatlands, and is working on that in the Inagh Valley in Connemara, for example. There is effort going on in those places. We need demonstration and testing on the ground to identify the kinds of sites where rewetting can be achieved and is most feasible. That is probably most likely in the short term in places where drainage did not work very well in the first instance. They can perhaps be more easily put onto a rewetting trajectory. One also has to pay consideration to the interaction with the surrounding landscape, where it may cross land ownership boundaries, and how that impact may come the other way. Professor Joosten said that wetlands and peatlands are landscapes so they have to be considered in a landscape context. They are not something you can draw a line around and isolate and say you will rewet here. There will be spillover impacts and they need to be considered. We also need to consider that if forested peatlands are to be taken out of forestry the impact that will have on the wider forestry sector and the larger landscape level in terms of the services that might come from those forests. I am mainly thinking about timber production and what that means for elsewhere. I do not know if those are useful responses.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, that is helpful.

Dr. Ken Byrne:

Are there other points I need to address?

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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Does Dr. Byrne have a perspective on renewables?

Dr. Ken Byrne:

I must say I do not but I would like to see a place where wind farm developments could be consistent with rewetting or achievable in the same place. I suspect Professor Joosten might have a comment on that so I will happily defer to him.

Professor Hans Joosten:

With regard to wind farms, in The Flow Country in Scotland for example, wind companies buy the areas of forest, cut the forest to increase the wind velocity and dam the ditches that have been dug to enable forest growth. In this way, they restore the peatlands with the cost of having windmills on it. In Germany, we have a policy that photo-electricity is allowed on very degraded peatlands. We also always have to take into account that climate is not the only issue at stake. We have to deal with biodiversity and social issues as well. If there are no other values at stake, it is allowed in Germany to put renewable energy productions on degraded peatlands, provided they are rewetted or at least that their rewetting ability is not jeopardised. These are the boundary collisions you must have.

The Deputy asked for examples of strategies that exist in the world. Indonesia is an impressive example but where I am living in Germany, we now have €2.5 billion available for the next four years for rewetting peatlands. Of the €4 billion that is available for total nature-based solutions, €2 billion is going to rewetting peatlands and we have almost €500,000 from the agriculture ministry for progressing paludicultures. In Germany, the peatlands issue is considered to be so important. We are talking about such large emissions and the positive synergies that can be realised with other policy fields so it is worthwhile to invest in it. The effects of greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands become more and more the longer you wait. The sooner you rewet, the better it is for the climate.

Dr. James Moran:

It is a difficult question. We need to invest the resources now in developing a strategic land use plan for the country to have it finished by December 2023. A national land use evidence review is currently ongoing and that should be completed in the middle of 2023. Once phase 1 is completed in the next couple of weeks, we should progress straight away. We should not wait for phase 2 but start the process of developing our strategic land use plan, integrated across food, fibre, energy production, biodiversity and climate responses. This should be based on evidence. Currently, we do not have sufficient resources inputted into our national land use evidence review, even the very basic aspect of trying to get an understanding of the land cover of the country. We have been talking about the need for a national land cover map and a national land monitoring strategy for over ten years at this stage. It was instigated in 2020 and was due to be completed in the first quarter of 2021. Then it was the fourth quarter of 2021 and then the first quarter of 2022. People like myself and other groups volunteered to do the validation because there were not enough resources put into it by the State and now it is to be published this month. This will give us evidence, for the first time ever, on a field-by-field basis, and we will know what the land cover of the country is. Up until now we have been dependent, on a very coarse scale, on a Corine satellite map from Europe. It is ridiculous that we have been ten years developing that. That is purely because of resources.

We should put our shoulders to the grindstone now and take that evidence from the national land use evidence review. The report I am talking about was submitted to the Department of the end of September. I possibly should not be saying this but I am going to say it anyway because it has to be said. That should be published. It was sent for typesetting on 27 September. It has taken six weeks to print a 100-page document that answers a lot of the questions we are addressing here. There is something wrong here. It is with the Minister for ministerial sign-off. He should sign off the bloody thing and put the information out there in the public domain so we can actually start making evidence-informed decisions. The Government has to stop being worried about what the actual facts say and put them out there. We have an intelligent public. We should not be worried politically about what people are going to think. Put the evidence in front of the people, warts and all, and make the decisions based on the evidence. We need to put our strategic land use plan in place.

As I said before, State companies and State agencies have to start leading on this. We should change the legislation and the Forestry Act, and change the remit of Bord na Móna. Any profits that Coillte generates, before they go back to the State, should be reinvested in solving the legacy issues that we have created. It is not Coillte's problem or that of the staff working in Coillte at the moment. We as a State created the issues we have with forests on peatlands. The dividend goes back to the State from Coillte.

That should be first reinvested into Coillte Nature and all our State lands in order to solve this. Before any other economic activity is done on them, they should have a biodiversity net gain and a carbon net gain imposed on them, before they actually generate any other economic activity in terms of a response to the crisis-----

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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Okay. I will have to cut across Dr. Moran.

Dr. James Moran:

I know that I am getting frustrated as I say all of this, but some of these things are so bloody obvious-----

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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I thank Dr. Moran.

Dr. James Moran:

------in terms of just stopping things that should not be done.

Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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It is past 2 o’clock so I am going to finish the session.

I thank all witnesses for joining us this afternoon and for giving us their perspectives. I thank the members for their engagement and contributions as well. I thank Professor Byrne for coming all the way to Dublin. We really appreciate that. I thank Dr. Moran. I thank Professor Joosten for joining us online from Germany. It is great to have him here and to hear his thoughts on this critically important topic. We are out of time so I will adjourn the meeting.