Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Mankind has always sought to bend nature to its will, but what has changed, of course, is the global industrial scale on which we are now wreaking unintended damage, which is enormous. The way in which we meet our needs for nutrition, travel, shelter and comfort is doing huge damage. It is estimated that we are on course to use more materials in one year than nature can replenish in three, and you do not need to be Einstein to see the consequences of that. The impact of overstretched nature is everywhere to be seen: microplastics in our seas, climate warming, the decline of pollinators, species loss, habitat loss, pollution and so on. We know its consequences. The sheer complexity of those consequences, however, underline that it will be equally complex to resolve those damages. We need to work on how we will create a framework whereby that can be done.

Many people feel overwhelmed by the sheer scale of what is happening, and I find, listening to the debate, that sometimes the ecologists and the conservationists speak a language that the rest of us really struggle to understand - even the word "biodiversity" as opposed to the word "nature". I struggle to understand why we need to change the word. I also worry when I hear in the House increasing vilification of commercial involvement in the work to redress the damage to nature because the reality is that if we do not have commercial involvement at the heart of this, we are doomed to fail.

I commend the Minister on the progress he is making. He is strengthening capacity and budgets, creating better frameworks and creating better data. I welcome particularly the citizens' assembly, which has really underpinned the strategic importance of protecting nature for the citizens of this country.

I do feel, however, that we are in danger of committing to targets without really knowing whether we have the policy tools to deliver them, and the consequence of that is that there is a high risk of disillusionment, especially when people do not clearly understand the nature of the challenges here. We need to be more careful in how we approach this. Land use is a good case in point. The intention of the Government, as I understand it, is to halve the impact of land use on emissions. The reality, however, is that we have just discovered that the impact of land use on emissions is 60% higher than we had thought it was and it is heading on a trajectory that probably makes the 50% cut totally unachievable. There is real danger in putting in place targets where we do not have any credible pathway to deliver them.

In face of the bewildering range of change we have to mobilise here, surely it makes sense to seek to integrate the various strategies that are now evolving - the climate strategy, the waste strategy, the biodiversity strategy, the air quality strategy, and I am sure the list goes on - into some single context that ordinary people can understand, whether they be businesspeople or consumers. We have that to hand. The Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, is responsible for the circular economy. The circular economy goes to the core of looking at the entire way in which we design, the way we meet our needs, the materials we choose to use, the processes we choose and the way in which we handle them and used to prolong their life, the waste cycle and the end of life of those products. That is the context to integrate these things and to bring together the damage to nature and the damage that waste discarding causes. It is something we all understand. The citizens' assembly pointed to the fact that our grandparents did this in the past. They understood the need to protect nature and the need to be frugal in the way we use materials and the need not to throw away things before their useful life. It also has a tremendous moral appeal to people who struggle with the sheer complexity of some of the debate as to what needs to be achieved.

The other merit it has is that it is not a finger-pointing framework; it is a problem-solving framework. It sees everyone in the challenge together. It does not point the finger at farmers or any particular group. It sees consumers, producers and those who design products as being all part of a way to meet this challenge. I believe that the way in which we can integrate this is not, as the citizens' assembly has suggested, having a single Minister for this, a single agency, a single Oireachtas committee, a single court; it is to integrate what is happening in each and every sector of our community and combining it to try to deliver circular thinking.

"Circular thinking" is not a great phrase but it is about how we meet the needs for nutrition, travel and all the basics. We must meet them in a way that does not damage nature, the climate and what we can pass on to the next generation. We need to think about how we are going to persuade people to come with us on this journey rather than have a vast range of targets and strategies that confuse people.

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