Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to see the Minister in the Chamber today. Many families are having similar experiences to his and I hope the outcomes are as positive.

The Minister and I have similar views on many of these issues and I agree with an awful lot of what he has said. The Minister said earlier that this was going to be a huge challenge but he believes that we can do it, that we will be good at it as a country, and I agree with him about that. Look at how we have managed the Covid-19 crisis. We came together and showed solidarity as a community to fight the virus. Climate change is as big a challenge for us to get through and we will only do so together.

As has been shown during the Covid crisis, the key to solidarity and seeking to ensure we bring everyone along is communication. We have seen over recent weeks how a lack of clear and concise communication and bringing people along has the potential to undermine the message. That potential is also there on the issue of climate change.

We are pleading for solidarity and people have to feel that they are listened to and that they understand what is being asked of them. The Minister launched the waste policy last week. There are a lot of good things and ideas in that policy and the Social Democrats will be supportive of it. However, there was a sense at the time when he launched the policy that there was a lot of concern among especially vulnerable people in our communities, those on low wages and those who are already struggling. Those people felt that the policy was going to impact them in a negative way. Much of that came down to a lack of consultation and communication and a failure to see the problem from the side of those people. I know that the Minister had an advisory group to help him work on the plan. It was set up prior to his term in office and has been ongoing for a while.

I think there are 30-odd groups within the advisory group, including the Retail Action Group, the Rediscovery Centre, the Irish Farmers Association and the Chartered Institute of Waste Management. They are all important stakeholders that should be consulted in the development of such a policy but, unfortunately, there was no representative body for people at risk of poverty. That was a big gap. There was also no on-the-ground representative body for people with disabilities. The statutory disability group was represented but there were no grassroots representative groups that could speak on behalf of people with disabilities and at risk of poverty. If those voices had been involved in the consultation over the creation of this document and the development of this policy, the result last week would have been better, people would have understood from where the policy was coming and would not have been as fearful and concerned about the outcomes.

All of us here are aware that a just transition is incredibly important. Addressing climate change is not something that we can do while leaving a large section of our community behind. It has to be a just transition and the key to ensuring that happens is applying principles of fairness and proportionality. The Social Democrats believe that the best way to handle responsibly the transition to a low-carbon economy is to adopt ways which not only minimise the effect on the environment but which ensure that those least able to adapt are supported and are not negatively impacted by climate change policies. The transition needs to be fair to everyone, including farmers, fishermen, people with disabilities and those living in poverty. They are all stakeholders and we must poverty-proof, disability-proof and region-proof our climate action policies to make sure that all those affected are consulted in the drafting of these important policies. That did not happen with the waste document that was published last week. I do not think that was intentional but I ask that, in the future, the Minister ensures that those voices are heard and those people are a part of the consultation process for all climate change actions, documents and policies.

The forestry Bill does not fall under the remit of the Minister but there are overlaps with his responsibilities. I have serious concerns about the Bill from the perspective of environmental planning. The Bill seeks to limit people's ability to engage in the forestry planning process. I have concerns about its legality under the Aarhus Convention and I do not think it is going to solve the problem. I do not think that stopping people from having their say on these particular applications will solve the problem because the issue is a resourcing one. If the Department had ensured that there were sufficient resources to deal with the applications as they came in, we would not be in the position we will be when discussing the Bill next week and trying to force through something that will undermine people's rights to engage in environmental planning in this country. We need to protect and strengthen people's participation in environmental issues, particularly now. We also need to protect democracy and transparency which are cornerstones of climate action.

I was pleased to hear the Minister talk about the different stages and elements of addressing climate action and the emphasis he has put on biodiversity. This is something that I am keen to see incorporated into climate action development. It is seen as a separate process a lot of the time and there is a lack of understanding that it would be difficult to address climate change without also addressing the issues that affect biodiversity. There will be benefits for biodiversity when climate change is dealt with and we cannot address them as separate, siloed issues. My preference would have been for biodiversity to have been incorporated into the Minister's Department when the Government was being formed because that is the best place for it. It will cause difficulties that biodiversity falls under the remit of a separate Department and I think that responsibility needs to be integrated. At the moment, we have separate plans, reports and actions for biodiversity and climate change. We do not want to see that gap widening and we need to integrate all those plans and strategies to ensure a cohesive climate change and biodiversity focus over the next five years.

It is not just biodiversity. As the Minister himself mentioned, water quality, flooding and other issues the OPW deals with all need to be looked at through the lens of biodiversity. I am hopeful that will happen although I am not 100% certain it will. I will be raising it continually over the coming years.

I do not know if the Minister had an opportunity to watch Sir David Attenborough's nature programme during the week. It highlighted the incredible crisis we face globally. When we watch these programmes, we can sometimes think of this as something that is happening elsewhere like on the plains of Africa, Alaska or Antarctica. However, it is happening here and it is happening incredibly quickly. It is not something we can ignore. Experts estimate there has been a 97% decline in curlew numbers since the 1980s. That is huge. The curlew is not an isolated example. Our bee populations are down by a third. All of these fundamental biological aspects of our environmental system are fading away and we need to put all of our efforts into stopping that. Addressing climate change will be key in doing so. The problem is multifaceted and our response will also need to be multifaceted.

We need to ensure our ecosystems are incorporated into a cross-sectoral adaptation policy and are not treated as separate processes but as a complement to our technological and economic measures. When we talk about climate change we sometimes focus on emissions reductions, technology and electric vehicles but to address climate change we will need to look to nature a lot more. I am hopeful that the Minister is taking this on board and that, as part of his remit, he will ensure we are not only looking at the technological aspects of climate adaptation and mitigation but at the natural aspects as well.

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