Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister of State on his new role, I wish him well in it and I look forward to working with him over the next few years, particularly on issues of biodiversity. I am delighted to speak on this legislation, which I hope paves the way for the suite of legislative measures required if we are to meet our national and international climate action obligations.

This Bill has many remits, including the establishment of the climate action fund, which I will focus on in my contribution today. While I welcome the Bill, I have put forward amendments which will be discussed on Committee Stage tomorrow and which seek to further strengthen the capacity of the climate action fund. My amendments will ensure that funding from the climate action fund is sustainably channelled across various climate action projects that aim to reduce our carbon emissions, mitigate climate change and facilitate a just transition. My amendments also outline the need to increase our focus on the protection and preservation of biodiversity and natural heritage. This is something I feel strongly about and which has been the poor relation to climate action policy.

As a legislator, I am dismayed that climate action in all its variety has been split between three different Departments. At present, climate action remains in the Department of Communications, Climate Action and the Environment, while responsibility for the environment is now being spread across others, including water within the Department of housing, where heritage and biodiversity have also found their new home.

Waste, environmental awareness and climate are with the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment while forestry and the marine are within the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Environmental groups and organisations campaigned throughout the lifetime of the previous Government to have all aspects of climate and climate action under one Department. They now face another Dáil term doing the same all over again. Our first battle against climate change is with our ability to manage our response as a nation. This requires a unified Department for climate and nature under one Minister to ensure cohesion across all climate and biodiversity spheres.

For now, it is important that we strengthen the Bill as much as we can. I believe it presents an opportunity to address the policy and funding gap that exists between biodiversity and climate action which has plagued this country's response to climate change. One does not work without the other. They are two sides of the same coin but are often treated like different currencies altogether. For too long biodiversity has been viewed as an entirely separate process to climate action. The siloed nature of national climate action policy reflects this notion. To date there are separate plans, reports and actions both for biodiversity and climate. A widening gap is emerging between biodiversity and climate action with little communication between the two processes. I hope this is addressed somewhat in the forthcoming climate action Bill.

A more balanced national approach means incorporating the ecosystem into cross-sectoral adaptation policies and not treating them as separate processes but as complementary to our technological and economic measures. If we can do this it will make for more sustainable adaptation and a more comprehensive approach to climate change.

Too often national policy has been predominantly focused on the technological and economic aspects of climate action, resulting in a human-centric approach to climate change. Adaptation measures are decided by their impact on our economy and not on the environment while mitigation measures are focused on technological solutions as opposed to natural ones. While these are important, the Government has been too quick to overlook the major role nature can and must play in our response to climate change. We need to shift our national response towards a nature-based approach to climate action, building in nature-based solutions and moving away from viewing climate action entirely through an economic lens. If we continue to view climate action in this way we risk failing to identify the role nature-based solutions can have and we will fail to identify the impacts our climate actions are having on biodiversity and nature. If we do not integrate climate action and biodiversity effectively in national policy we could do more damage to nature in our bid to save the planet.

Emerging scientific research on biodiversity continues to endorse nature's role in the carbon cycle. Not only does nature help to regulate the climate, it contains myriad nature-based solutions for both climate adaptation and mitigation.

During the elections this year I had the pleasure of launching the Social Democrats biodiversity policy document on protecting our fauna and natural environment. It sets out exactly where we believe we need to go in terms of biodiversity. I urge the Minister of State to consider it as part of the climate action fund. The policy includes initiatives such as a requirement that State bodies first examine upstream natural-based solutions when considering works required to deal with flood relief and protection; a voluntary purchase scheme for unprofitable farmland to be converted into protected native woodland; incentives for the practice of agri-forestry and silvopasture; and incentives for the planting of native trees on private land and for sustainable felling and harvesting practices. We need to develop a blue carbon strategy that will identify blue carbon sites such as seagrass, kelp and salt marshes. We need other projects to incorporate biodiversity policy, as promoted by the Social Democrats, including the promotion and expansion of wildlife corridors across our country. We recognise the potential of rivers, canals and the road network as potential natural corridors. We need to encourage our local councils to create native woodland walks and wildflower meadows in existing and new parks. We need national legislation to significantly reduce or eliminate the non-agricultural use of pesticides and herbicides outdoors. There are many other proposals. I will not go through all of them today but I believe the Minister of State would agree with me on many of these measures and would probably have considerable interest in them as well. I am more than happy to sit down and discuss them further with the Minister of State.

The climate action fund presents us with an opportunity to address the financial shortfalls that plague our attempts to address climate change. No one is in any doubt that funding needs to be increased to protect our natural world. Since climate action has finally been put on the political agenda - and even long before that - Irish organisations and institutions tasked with conservation, environmental education, advocacy and protecting our biodiversity have all been underfunded, understaffed and under-resourced especially compared with our neighbours in Europe. We need to start treating the natural environment on a par with climate action and afford it the appropriate support. Some of our State agencies are struggling with the current funding deficit. The National Parks and Wildlife Service continues to be drastically underfunded. It is difficult for the service to proactively carry out the functions and duties under its remit, despite the best efforts of its staff, due to resourcing pressures.

The National Biodiversity Data Centre, which is tasked with the important role of monitoring our impact on biodiversity, cannot carry out the necessary research to inform us on policymaking. Its funding is based on short-term funding mechanisms but it needs a long-term funding strategy. If we cannot measure our biodiversity and identify a baseline, we cannot identify whether we are improving, or how we are impacting on our environment. The role of the Environmental Protection Agency needs to be expanded further to enable it to manage and inform the impact developments are having on our environment. For environmental NGOs funding is a constant struggle. The environmental NGO community has done incredible work with the little they have in fostering community engagement to protect biodiversity at a grassroots level. I am aware that members of the Irish Environmental Network receive approximately €1 million each year in core funding. The fact is that they need closer to €10 million to make the impact they believe is required to adequately protect our natural heritage. When we compare the €1 million for environmental NGOs, or the €16 million that the National Parks and Wildlife Service gets, with the €16 million that Bord na gCon receives annually, it really paints a bleak picture.

I want to go into greater detail on what incorporating biodiversity with climate action looks like and what kind of initiatives the climate action fund could help to support. These are initiatives promoted by the Social Democrats for the conservation of endangered and vulnerable native species. They include funding for councils and inland fisheries to map and remediate barriers to fish migration as well as State funding for the monitoring and eradication of invasive species.

The marine is another poor relation when it comes to climate action policy. It is time the Government stood up for marine biodiversity and coastal communities and committed to ending overfishing. Our network of marine protected areas needs to expand considerably to protect our rich vibrant marine ecosystem. This needs to be done on an ecologically coherent basis. That is why we need to ensure we have enough investment in our research so that we know what we are protecting and why we are protecting it.

Water pollution must be a thing of the past through the full implementation of key European directives that protect our freshwater sources from pollution and invasive species and ensure good water quality and healthy rivers, lakes and groundwater. We also need a new vision for our forestry to ensure timber production is in line with social, biodiversity and climate obligations. The current outdated tree farm timber production model is not working. A motion on forestry that was put forward in September 2019 called for a "fundamental change in forestry policy away from" the current emphasis on clear-fell short-rotation monoculture to the promotion of natural, diverse and long-term woodland plantations of neighbourhood and farmland trees.

The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated how critical our food security is and how fragile our export driven model is to external shocks. We must ensure that as a small island we are able to feed ourselves. In addition we must halt the catastrophic losses of farmland biodiversity and reward primary producers for restoring it, for protecting water quality and for meeting our climate change commitments. Affordable locally produced food must be at the heart of future plans and agrifood strategies. We must also consider the final recommendations of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action, which placed considerable emphasis on the role of hedgerows in our ecosystem. The committee called for a national hedgerow conservation strategy which recognises the rich climate and biodiversity benefits of our natural hedgerow resource.

Of course none of this can be done unless we bring everyone with us. First and foremost, our duty is to protect vulnerable communities from the effect of climate change and the transition to a low-carbon economy. The climate action fund can help to prioritise projects that aim to facilitate a just transition. The climate action fund should prioritise such projects. Investing in nature-based solutions for climate mitigation will force us all to share the burden of climate change and thereby help vulnerable communities to withstand the disruptive transition to green jobs, new economic models and changes in our weather patterns.

I believe that now is the time to get serious about adopting the EU green deal. I spoke to the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, about it this morning. Its targets devise a comprehensive approach across all aspects of climate action to enable a fair and effective transition to a low-carbon economy. The targets we must implement will require a concrete shift towards a circular economy where waste and excessive consumption is targeted by national policies.

This will require greater investment and initiatives at a community level, encouraging the roll-out of reuse and repair workshops, as well as zero waste and upcycling businesses, particularly in rural areas where jobs can be created and communities upskilled through wiser sustainable use of our natural resources.

We need strong target-driven legislation to be implemented and this needs to be backed up with science and nature-based solutions to help us achieve our climate action and biodiversity targets. Fundamentally, biodiversity and nature, and the capacity of a nature-based solution to deal with climate change adaptation and mitigation, is important. It is an area that has not been given the emphasis it requires. Its value and potential has not been recognised.

Climate change and biodiversity are intrinsically linked. We are not be able to address climate change without addressing biodiversity and the use of nature-based solutions. Our biodiversity will be impacted heavily by climate change and we need to address these two issues in tandem. Biodiversity and climate change are not two separate languages or currencies; they are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.

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