Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Green Party Senators for drafting this very comprehensive motion. I listened to the informative and entertaining speech from Senator Garvey on the issue. As a pure inner-city woman who grew up in a concrete jungle, I always find it useful to listen to contributors with a knowledge of peat, soil and hedgerows.

It is generally accepted that we are in the middle of a climate and biodiversity crisis with dramatic knock-on effects. As the motion notes, around 1 million animal species are threatened with extinction within decades. Last year the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services stated that we are losing plants and animals hundreds of times faster than in the past. The twin challenges of climate change and a biodiversity crisis arrived at our door very suddenly. We can choose to rise to the challenge, enhance our food security and rise to the challenge of the effects of climate change or we can decide to ignore it.

The effect of the climate and biodiversity crisis on the world we live in, is immense. Today each of us came into this Chamber with a face mask. We are required to socially distance from each other. We have limited contact with friends. We will not have the same Christmas this year because we are in the middle of a pandemic, which scientists warn will become a more frequent occurrence in the coming years. This is because of the climate and biodiversity crisis we have.

Over the weekend, in a supplement to the Financial Times, the scientist who co-discovered Ebola said that we are living in the age of pandemics because of how we treat our planet. He specifically pointed out issues such as deforestation and the loss of biodiversity as the key drivers of our exposure to more zoological viruses, as some animals need to expand their range, move into new areas and their natural home is destroyed.

The Labour Party supports of the Sinn Féin amendment which references the shocking report last week from the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, which pointed out that our forestry industry is a net contributor to CO₂emissions and that we should be moving to a more sustainable and biodiverse model of forestry. This needs to start with our commercial forestry arm, Coillte, which had prioritised non-native trees. Some 92% of the forests in the Dublin Mountains are comprised of non-native species.

Ireland has a very low tree coverage at just 11%, in the area where I live in Dublin's inner city, we have extremely low tree coverage. Somebody gave a load of seeds to Dublin Corporation in the 1950s and we have pear trees which are dangerous for older people and not suitable for an inner-city environment.

In our previous work on both climate and forestry Bills, my Labour Party colleagues, Deputy Sherlock and Senator Hoey, pushed hard to promote alternative forest systems, like continuous cover and broadleaf forests, which we argued was better for climate change mitigation and provided co-benefits such as protecting our biodiversity.

During this debate we have heard many people who have a strong rural and farming background but I want to give an urban perspective. The majority of the world's population live in cities and we have higher density. In giving this perspective, it is vital to state the impact that our local authorities can have in supporting biodiversity in our urban centres. Simple changes and interventions such as supporting more biodiverse non-interventions are really important in terms of maintenance. Natural interventions are very simple and cheap, such as planting wildflowers, and developing pollinator plans and pathways. However, much more can be done to take this beyond lip service. It should not be limited to the climate or parks sections of local authorities. I shall give an example of something that happened in my area a few years ago, which has also happened in other countries. This issue needs to move beyond specific Departments to other areas that local authorities are dealing with, in terms of our built environment. Temporary allotments were established in an area that was being regenerated with housing and after the financial crash social housing was built. When moving the allotments we found another space but many councillors questioned whether we should put allotments on top of buildings. We were told no because of the depth of soil and heaviness required and, unfortunately, there was no greening of the building in terms of design.

The programme for Government contains a commitment to build 50,000 publicly built houses over the next five years, which I am not sure I believe. We need to prioritise greening but that does not have to be complicated or expensive. It just needs to be encouraged. People need to be informed that sometimes not being green and pristine is a good way to approach the issue. For example, Milan has a vertical green building comprised of trees called the Bosco Verticale that people travel from all over the world to see and we should incorporate that into our built environment. The new architectural challenge is to create the garden cities of the 21st century. We want density because we want people to move around and we want to support a non-car culture but we must do all that in our building environment. We could very easily incorporate biodiverse environments into that. Simple interventions that do not cost an awful lot of money need to be encouraged and mainstreamed into local authorities. The OPW did a lot of work for diversity week but other agencies and the OPW need to mainstream their thinking when it comes to the lands and buildings they maintain.

We support this motion and the Sinn Féin amendment. It is very promising that the Green Party has prioritised this issue by tabling a motion. I look forward to working with other Members of the Seanad over the next couple of years in terms of mainstreaming that thinking and bringing an inner city voice to the challenges of biodiversity and climate change.