Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

In 2016, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2016 to 2025 the United Nations decade of action on nutrition. It set out a concrete timeline for the implementation of commitments to meet a set of global nutrition targets by 2025 and identified what it called an unprecedented opportunity for addressing all forms of malnutrition.

I do not know how I can make that commitment sit alongside what I heard on "Morning Ireland" today. Paul Healy, Trócaire's country director for Somalia, spoke to the programme from Dollow in south central Somalia. He described a situation that he called an absolute disaster. He said, "Our stabilisation centre for severe and acute malnutrition is absolutely jam-packed with starving children". That is playing out all across central Somalia. The lives of people have been completely destroyed by extreme drought.

As Deputy Brady mentioned, the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe playing out across east Africa, the Horn of Africa in particular, is unthinkable. In Somalia alone, over 1 million people have been displaced from their lands due to the scale of the drought. Their land is gone; it is parched. Their animals are dead and over 3 million livestock have been lost already. The rains have failed for four consecutive years. According to Paul Healy, this is deeper, longer and more severe than any drought in living memory. He said on "Morning Ireland" that there are currently half a million children in Somalia on the edge of death. I know the Minister of State has small children at home, as do I. I cannot hear that statement and not relate it to my life. If we think of the deep and lingering scar that we experienced on the Irish national psyche from the Great Famine, what is being played out in east Africa at the moment is worse. Have no doubt that what we are seeing are climate refugees, among the first victims of a changed and changing climate. They are paying a price for a crisis that is not of their making. It is we in the global north who have historically had the greatest impact on the Earth's atmosphere, changing its composition through the use of fossil fuels. It is we in the global north who continue to produce the greatest share of greenhouse gas emissions. To put it in context, the average person in Ireland will generate over 90 times the carbon emissions of a Somalian in any given year.

Mr. Healy welcomed Irish Aid putting forward €30 million for the Horn of Africa. I very much welcome it too, but the global community has to do a lot more. Ireland was instrumental in the development of the sustainable development goals. We co-chaired those sessions along with Kenya. We cannot leave our involvement there. We have to actively pursue the vindication of the sustainable development goals in any forum in which we have the opportunity to do so, be it in the UN or European Council meetings. We also need to bring these issues to COP27, which this year will be hosted in Africa. We have to put the issue of a loss and damage facility front and centre in those discussions. Those who have contributed least to the issue of climate change are the ones who are on the front line and are suffering the most.

We talk about fairness in Ireland a lot. We say, "fair play" to a Minister, cothrom na Féinne. It is something that comes easily to our lips. We need to apply the basic human principle of fairness across the board for us to have any hope of there being a just transition for people in the developing world.

I will make a final comment on COP27. I was, frankly, disgusted to see Coca-Cola, one of the largest, if not the largest, plastic polluters on the face of the earth announced as the event's sponsor. If I brought a can of Coke in here or wore a Coca-Cola t-shirt, the Minister of State would eat me alive, and he would be dead right. Yet, we see fit to splash it across the Conference of Parties where we are discussing the huge and driving need for us to work together to make a difference across climate change.

This is greenwashing of the highest order. It badly undermines COP27 and was an absolutely terrible decision by the organisers.

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