Political will, funding and a strong plan for public land will all help ensure meaningful progress on restoring our degraded ecosystems, according to environmentalist Fintan Kelly\n<\/p>\n
At the end of last year, the Government published The Status of EU Protected Habitats and Species in Ireland, 2025: Summary Report, known as the Article 17. Published every six years, it provides an update on the conservation status of 59 habitats and 60 species in Ireland protected under the EU Habitats Directive.<\/p>\n
According to this report, 90pc of Ireland\u2019s protected habitats are in \u2018unfavourable\u2019 conservation status, while 51pc are showing deteriorating trends.<\/p>\n
Following the European Council\u2019s adoption of the Nature Restoration Law in 2024, each EU member state must produce their own Nature Restoration Plan to show how they will achieve the targets it sets out. At present, an Independent Advisory Committee on Nature Restoration has been established here, with the task of making recommendations to the Minister of State for Nature, Heritage and Biodiversity on what should be included in the national plan.<\/p>\n
The IEN is a network of 40 environmental non-government organisations that advocates for positive ecological policy changes. Each of its member organisations \u2013 including Friends of the Earth, the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, and the Irish Wildlife Trust \u2013 are involved in the well-being and protection of nature.<\/p>\n
Kelly says that three elements are required if Ireland is to make meaningful progress on restoring degraded ecosystems \u2013 particularly peatlands, native forests and other areas with the most potential to capture carbon and reduce the impact of natural disasters.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fintan Kelly, senior land use officer with the Irish Environmental Network <\/p>\n
1. Strong political leadership<\/p>\n
Kelly says that to date, one of the major obstacles to Ireland developing a cohesive nature restoration strategy has been an official \u201csiloed\u201d approach, with different Government departments playing sometimes conflicting roles in developing the national plan. Currently, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has ownership of Ireland\u2019s proposed Nature Restoration Plan, while the Department of Public Expenditure and Department of Finance holds the purse strings.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless you have strong political leadership to drive change in all of the relevant sectors and departments, it\u2019s very difficult to develop a clear strategy,\u201d he explains. \u201cThe State says they\u2019re going to adopt an all-of-government approach, which on the face of it is a good thing. In practice, what we are seeing is a lot of confusion and bureaucratic barriers, with each department incentivised by different things. An all-of-government approach towards tackling the biodiversity crisis is needed, but ideally, this would involve clear, determined leadership from the Department of the Taoiseach, all the way down the chain.\u201d<\/p>\n
2. Secure funding<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re restoring a house, you need to know exactly what budget you\u2019re working with, so you can see what\u2019s possible,\u201d Kelly says. \u201cThe same principle applies here.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really need dedicated, ring-fenced, long-term finance in order to make the Nature Restoration Plan a reality. We should have seen that in last year\u2019s National Development Plan \u2013 and at a bare minimum, I would have expected that the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund would have received a large allocation for nature restoration. There hasn\u2019t been any concrete action on funding, so IEN is strongly advocating for that to be put in place. Ireland has legal obligations to meet in this regard.\u201d<\/p>\n
3. A strong plan for public land<\/p>\n
\u201cIreland has a lot of privately owned land, including small family farms,\u201d Kelly says, \u201cand plenty of individual farmers are doing their best to help nature on their land. But if we want to really drive Irish nature restoration at the scale that is needed, we need to do that through publicly owned land. This would mean much stronger, more ambitious planning by the state bodies who manage key areas like forests and peatlands. Effectively, the Irish people own that land.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe often hear a narrative that pits humans against nature \u2013 arguing that nature restoration is very difficult, very controversial. But in our experience, from the many communities around Ireland we have engaged with, that\u2019s not true at all. Obviously, people want to see nature restoration done in a way that supports and empowers their communities, but the idea of restoring nature as a whole is broadly popular. Our message is: Ireland can\u2019t achieve transformational change by continuing to do what we have always done in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Political will, funding and a strong plan for public land will all help ensure meaningful progress on restoring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[86755,2885,61,60,43,279],"class_list":{"0":"post-309352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-aisling-maria-cronin","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-review-magazine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}