Dr. Peter Doran:

There is a series of fascinating conversations there. The Deputy is quite right that the rights of nature conversation stands and creates a bit of tension with what one might say is the dominant discourse around ecosystem services and natural capital. It is interesting. I have taken part in conversations with one of the authors of the ecosystem services discourse approach and even he now recognises that there is a blind spot in that approach. Unless there is an explicit alternative value system, the default is the pricing system. We are still dealing with what some would regard as the essence of the problem, that is, the enclosure and reduction of nature to the status of a commodity. The rights of nature conversation disrupts and calls attention to the need for an explicit alternative value system that ensures we no longer, by default, approach nature from a commoditised perspective.

All of this is linked to the empowerment of indigenous peoples in Latin America and the coming to power of alternative knowledge systems based on a critique of the Euro-modern export - the Euro modernity, which has been exported - not least having been tried and tested on this island. There is a pushback against the so-called one world system, that is, the one version or homogenous version of the world and how we organise our economy and how we relate to land. Indigenous people would relate to land as part of their larger selves, as part of their collective identity. The Deputy is quite right that this is not just an exotic conversation; this is at the heart of some of the observations we are beginning to make about our own history as well as our history of the Irish language tradition and its interruption by the experience of colonialism.

There are fascinating projects throughout the island that are beginning to see there are deep connections between the restoration of our linguistic heritage and our new relationships with land and sense of responsibility to local landscapes. In the past week there has been a report on an arts-led project in the Burren making that very point with regard to the fact we have hidden very beautiful epistemologies and lithologies in our language tradition. We do not have to go to Latin America; it is all here on our doorstep.