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“UNPRECEDENTED” OPPOSITION TO a proposed European law seeking to protect and restore nature is “very concerning”, Green MEPs have said.
In December, countries from around the world came to a landmark agreement on nature at the COP15 for biodiversity, promising to protect 30% of the planet and 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.
The European Union came to the negotiation table in Montreal with an important piece of proposed legislation in its back pocket: a Nature Restoration Law that would be the first law of its kind to enshrine targets across the bloc for restoring ecosystems, habitats and species on land and at sea.
However, pushback against the law is threatening whether it will pass through the EU Parliament, which it is feared could have significant consequences for nature, farmers who rely on the land, and the EU’s credibility in international negotiations.
In an interview with The Journal, Irish MEP Grace O’Sullivan and German MEP Jutta Paulus, both Greens, outlined how restoring ecosystems will help both nature and humans – and what is at stake if that does not occur.
The Nature Restoration Law isn’t just about nature – “it is about us”, said Paulus, the lead negotiator on the proposed legislation for the Greens-European Free Alliance political grouping.
“It is about people as a civilisation. You cannot build an economy if you don’t have clean water. You cannot run an economy if you don’t have clean air to breathe. You cannot grow food if your soils get degraded and are no longer fertile,” she said.
“All of these ecosystem services are the basis of our civilisation. This is why it is so important to now to work to restore them.”
The law is concerned with all types of ecosystems – grasslands and forests, rivers and lakes, peatlands and agricultural land, and towns and cities too.
It would, for the first time, set legally-binding restoration targets for ecosystems that must cover at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea area by 2030 and all ecosystems that are in need of restoration by 2050.
Much of the public attention given to the law so far has centred around its aims for restoring peatlands, which have been seriously degraded – only 10% of Europe’s peatlands are currently considered to be in good condition.
Paulus described peatlands – which provide a home for many types of insects and birds and trap carbon in the ground instead of it being released into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas – as humans’ “ally” in fighting the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.
“10% of species globally are dependent on healthy wetlands and peatlands. 60% of birds use wetlands and peatlands either as breeding sites or as resting sites when they go migrating,” she said.
“They need to take breaks and for that they need wetlands and peatlands because they can find food there and also shelter. They will be protected from predators like foxes for example – foxes don’t like to swim.
“Peatlands are also our most important store of organic carbon. Peatlands cover 3%, of the land area of the globe but they store twice as much carbon as all forests combined.
“When you drain peatland and the air comes in contact with the peat, the microbes start eating up that organic matter. If you have one hectare of drained peatland in agricultural use, it emits up to 40 tonnes of CO2 per year, whereas a natural peatland accumulates four to eight tonnes of CO2 per year. It’s a huge difference.”
However, the prospect of ‘rewetting’ peatlands has caused immense concern for farmers who work on land that was previously drained.
In Ireland, the Irish Farmers Association has campaigned against the law, with IFA President Tim Cullinan suggesting it would have a “negative effect on the rural economy and the future of Irish farming”.
It’s also caused a rupture within the European Parliament, particularly coming from the European People’s Party, which is the political grouping that Fine Gael MEPs sit in.
EPP/Fine Gael MEP Colm Markey has stated that he would not support the law in its current form.
“The current legislation pits food production against the environment. It puts them on the opposite end of the same spectrum. We need to enable biodiversity to flourish in an active productive model,” Markey said.
“If we don’t do this, it quite simply won’t work. We need to stop legislating, stop lecturing and stop pontificating. We need to empower, enable and work with. That’s how we get real change in agriculture.”
However, in the same debate, EU Commissioner for Financial Stability Mairead McGuiness – also a member of Fine Gael, and formerly an agricultural journalist before entering politics – defended the law, saying that it will “help” rather than “harm” farmers.
“Without the actions set out in our proposal for nature restoration and the sustainable use of pesticides, farmers’ livelihoods and, indeed, food security will be put at risk. Again, this is what the science is telling us,” the Commissioner said.
“These proposals are about ensuring that there is a future for our farms, our farmers and those who work in the food supply chain. Our proposals aim to help farmers, not harm them.”
The issue has also been raised in the Oireachtas this week, with Rural TDs criticising the legislation and calling for a debate in the Dáil.
Fine Gael Senator Sean Kyne said: “It is a concern. We have gone full circle here. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were grants to drain land, clear scrub and improve. We have now gone full circle and it is difficult.”
“Rewetting is particularly concerning because, if one landowner were to close off drains for rewetting, it would have a knock-on effect on waters upstream. This cannot be done piecemeal. It has to be done as part of a plan. There needs to be an initial focus on State-owned land,” Kyne said.
Fianna Fáil MEP Billy Kelleher has also spoken out against he law, saying that rewetting land that was drained for agriculture would “imperil farms and livelihoods and further drive up the cost of land”.
The EPP is the largest political grouping in the parliament with 175 seats, and its opposition to the law is creating significant concern for proponents.
“We are very concerned because EPP has announced that they want to kill the law,” Paulus said, describing a potential block as “unprecedented”.
“It’s of course very important to compensate the land owners, because they cannot just say ‘let’s forget about our income and we will just rewet our peatland and stop farming’ – that’s not the solution, of course,” she said.
“But it is very short-sighted to say, ‘well, we best do nothing’.
If we do nothing, our ecosystems keep on degrading, and in 10 or 15 years time, the farmers won’t have any income at all because the soil will be so degraded.
“I think what the EPP is doing by, let’s say, deepening the ditch and saying ‘them’ against ‘us’, that doesn’t help. That doesn’t help in the crisis we’re in.”
Paulus said that “even going beyond this important legislation, what we are seeing is that on the European level, EPP is moving further towards the far right”.
“Looking away, neglecting the problem, doesn’t make the problem go away. Certainly not.”
On the international stage, failing to make progress on protecting and restoring natural ecosystems risks hurting the EU’s credibility in future negotiations.
To get the biodiversity agreement over the line at COP15 in December, it was “vital that we could show we are already negotiating a law to put this into European law”, Paulus said.
Given that Europe has destroyed large swathes of nature over the course of centuries, while other continents still have some “vast stretches of wilderness”, Paulus outlined that the “global south especially said, ‘well, you cannot come to us and say, hey, you have to protect and restore and not do anything at home’. But we could say, well, we are doing something, look, we are bringing forward legislation.”
“Therefore, I think on the international level, it would be a fatal signal if this law were stopped because then we would not be a reliable negotiation partner anymore. And of course, Brazil or India or China would say why should we do something? If Europe just scrapped it, why should we do something?”
Journal Media’s investigative platform Noteworthy reported earlier this year that Ireland is faring terribly at managing protected nature sites.
Over half of Ireland’s native plants have declined since the 1950s.
A recent Citizens’ Assembly on biodiversity loss made 159 recommendations to the State on protecting biodiversity and calling for constitutional changes to ensure people have a right to a clean, healthy and safe environment and to embed protections for nature into the constitution.
Irish MEP Grace O’Sullivan described the result of the assembly as “very positive”.
“When the facts were laid bare, those citizens realised that we have to take targeted measures within certain timelines,” O’Sullivan said. “The UN has already said this has to be the decade where we make these changes, and the recommendations there would definitely fold in very nicely with the [EU] legislation.”
O’Sullivan said that beyond rewetting agricultural land, a focus in Ireland should be on restoring land under public ownership, such as through Bord na Móna and Coillte.
The MEP pointed to Abbeyleix Bog in Co Laois as an example of a successful restoration project, describing its benefits for carbon sequestration and biodiversity but also for the health and wellbeing of the local community.
She said that an impact assessment of the legislation has already taken place but that she would also support further in-depth assessment of the local impacts in Ireland to “support farmers to understand how they can benefit”.
“We are in a fight against time. That’s very, very clear. We know that many farmers are already working to enhance nature and restore degraded habitats on their own farmland,” O’Sullivan said.
“We need it at scale now and that’s why for me, the public land owned by Bord na Mona and Coillte, everything should be done to make sure that those ecosystems and habitats are working really effectively in order to give us those ecosystem services, those benefits.
“That is the low-hanging fruit. Then, the farmer lands after that, that’s where we need to ensure that farmers feel that they’re listened to and that and that their contribution can be rewarded.”
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I’m all for seeking out renewable alternatives but the fact is this cannot be established over night, none are perfect or capable of meeting Ireland’s and indeed Europe’s needs. Nuclear solutions are the best options at the moment but no one will accept these so we must rely on solutions like gas with a medium term objective to wean off fossil fuels.
@Wreck Tangle: No one will even consider the safe, clean, low carbon nuclear solution so instead Ireland will continue to invest in intermittent renewables backed up by dirty base load due to ignorance and irrational fear.
No wind & dark winters mean we continue to rely heavily on gas, peat, coal & oil. No wonder oil & gas companies are so fond of renewables.
@Wreck Tangle: sorry but the environment needs change and it needs it now. No more excuses.
@Brendan Cooney: sorry but your desire for immediate change no matter the human consequences is not very important and is not supported by the democratic structures in either Ireland or the EU. So without bothering to offer any excuses, please rest assured the facility will be going ahead as planned and will afford us the ability to import and store LNG at a far higher rate in future.
@Brendan Cooney: you miss the trnasition require gas, First we need remove Peat, then coalm, then OIl. Gas is essential in every single transition plan and gas itself has an abilty to have hydrogen and green gas added to it. Add in carbon capture and storage and only the uniformed would have an issue with gas being the low carbon fuel irelands requires as we add renewables and try to electrify everything!
@Brendan Cooney:
100% agree Brendan but the only viable transition is that all countries migrate rapidly to nuclear options. The wider public will never accept this and in fact we are generally seeing the opposite with countries that produce nuclear energy.
@Wreck Tangle: The wider Irish public need to be educated correctly about the benefits, safety and real risks of Nuclear Energy.
But not by hysterical liars like Helen Caldicott or local scaremongers like Adi Roche whose CCI website continues to spout lies about Chernobyl and its impact. Love this little nugget from CCI website “Scientists feared that a further explosion could occur, producing a force of three to five megatons, and exposing the whole of Europe to enormous radioactive contamination.”
Imagine a thermonuclear yield from steam explosion FFS
@Gavin Tobin: Nonsense the waste remains toxic for millions of years – even the US has major problems disposing of the waste and look at Japan about to dump massive amounts of nuclear waste into the sea having already dumped huge amounts.
@Wreck Tangle: im madsively opposed tofracking for a fg she fought back against climate crisis unlike her party fg
@GO GREEN: Yawn…toxic & radioactive are different.
Nuclear is safest, cleanest power generation available by any metric and takes responsibility for it’s own waste rather than discharge into atmosphere.
Nuclear opponents are contributing to climate chaos and playing into hand’s of oil & gas industry.
@Gavin Tobin: You’re right on this. We really need the Greens to come up to speed on this, like their colleagues in Finland. Every and any idiot in the energy business knows Gen 4 nuclear is the only way this climate issue is going to be solved worldwide. Exponential increase in coal burning out in Asia. Air travel and data storage going wild. Wind and solar are largely subsidy harvesting scams with terrible load factors. So say Schellenberger and Hansen who persuaded Clinton and Obama to put 200 billion dollars into wind and solar, and now realize it was all a disaster. We have to get over this Homer Simpson at Mr.Byrne’s Springfield Plant syndrome. Three units at Moneypoint and one in each of the peat station locations, with all the waste heat going to massive new hydroponic vegetable, flower and fish enterprises, to put Holland to shame. Five minute Youtube tells all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju59gcdmdvI&t=150s
@Nicholas Grubb: that’s not true, name one Irish expert saying it’s a solution for Ireland.
I never once came across one and worked in the energy sector and research for years.
Where’s the picture from lads? Sim city 2000?
@Todd Unctuous:
Comment of the week!
@Todd Unctuous: Sim City 2020! :)
Ireland needs this facility badly, we are the last country on the western supply grid and if things get anyway tight in relation to supply of this vital energy supply we will be the first country for which they will turn the off the tap.
Fracked gas accounts for a very high percentage of gas supplies across the globe, it accounts for somewhere around 70% of gas produces by the USA. People saying that the current supply that Ireland receiving is not from fracked gas supplies it absolute balderdash.
@Brian Fitzgerald: Nonsense it will be used to power data centres – fracked gas emits huge amounts of methane heating up the planet as Arctic disappears and West Antarctica begins to disintegrate. There is enough renewable power to power Ireland twice over.
@GO GREEN: “There is enough renewable power to power Ireland twice over”. Maybe. But not when the wind isn’t blowing. Or did you forget that nugget? If we left energy policy to Greens alone we’d be back in the Stone Age and all using compostable toilets. We do not have the capacity to store renewable energy in sufficient quantities to provide power when the wind isn’t blowing. Therefore we need fossil fuels for the time being. Or nuclear. But you’re ideologically opposes to both no matter what the science says.
@GO GREEN: no , no there is not “enough renewable power to lower Ireland twice over”.
Where did you get this idea?
We have enough resources in renewable mainly wind to achieve most of our electricty from it but it would be replacing gas and it’s dependent on weather.
Then electricty is only 20% of energy so we still have to replace the other 80%.
Anyone who thinks Ireland doesn’t need gas has zero idea about the energy transition Ireland requires.
The best thing we could expect is 3% of TPER a year and currently we are at 11% overall. So after ten years we still only 44% TPER renewable.
And we in reality we might achieve 2% a year. That leaves us at 31% by 2030.
So no just no there is not.
@Brian Fitzgerald: We are happy to sell you our fracked gas and oil to assuage your sensibilities. Go wook go broke!
@John R: You have never heard of wave energy or solar or geothermal or battery storage either I suppose and there very few days in Ireland when the wind is not blowing.
@GO GREEN:
What happens when there is a two or three week winter, blocking high pressure event, which tends to be a whole of Western Europe occurrence.? The only way we can do this world wide is to have a power source that can keep the fossil fuels including fracked gas, in the ground, and until in fifty or one hundred years time, we have fusion, Gen 4, mass produced modular nuclear is the ONLY answer. Anyone who hasn’t even bothered to look up the difference between this type and the previous ones, needs to get educated.
@Nicholas Grubb: gas. That’s the only plan and nobody in any public body is looking at nuclear.
@GO GREEN: wave energy has no indication of ever contributing to renewable energy production.
It’s a we need more funding for the next breakthrough energy.
Reality is we don’t need wave energy and offshore wind is more than sufficient.
Battery storage is not an option for longer than a few hours , not a solution.
Hydrogen gas produced For excess wind is a likely solution.
Another reason we will and we need to keep gas as it can and will have it’s carbon content lowered in the future and even now it’s low carbon compared to electricty.
No has no power for Ireland, assuming we go EV In future also.
Good. The Shannon LNG terminal should have been built a decade ago. It must be built now, post-haste. The Irish people need energy security.
@J. Reid: Its for data centres not the Irish people.
@GO GREEN:
How do you know it would just be for data centres? its not in article.
@GO GREEN: now that’s a well-conceived economic strategy for success. Where would you prefer those data centres to be? Northern Ireland, the UK or elsewhere in the EU?
@Dermot Killian: They only provide a minimum of jobs and use the electricity of a small city, they can go where ever they like, but stay out of Ireland.
@Maurice: It was well documented in a Sunday newspaper a few months back.
@Dermot Killian: there is practically zero return for the taxpayer having data storage centres with the exception of the initial build (a carbon heavy process also). Data centres have extremely low employment levels and consume huge amounts of energy.
It will be no use looking for Wallace and Ming when yo are sitting in your living room trying to keep warm with a candle
@Euro is Dead: Eamonn Ryan will make it illegal to sell candles, like the smoky coal and the diesel cars.
Mark Ruffalo and his peers I presume are donating all they have towards r&d renewable projects?
This fracked gas will be imported from US and Canada on native land against the wishes of the native Canadians – it will also be used to power data centres that provide very few jobs but need enough electricity to power a small city. This gas is raising emissions on a day in which 120 mile chunk of ice fell off Antarctica.
@GO GREEN: good we could do with some global warming right now as far as I am concerned.
@Dermot Killian: That is exactly what we are getting, warmer waters fuelling more and more powerful storms, not real Winter of weeks of dry hard frost weather like we used to get decades ago.
LNG will be needed in the changeover to renewables.
For example ships that used heavy fuel oil are being forced to use alternatives LNG is the best option until hydrogen comes online.
Why do we care about Mark Ruffalo?!
Build a nuclear plant and stick it in Roscommon. Let’s export energy and be self sufficient at the same time, for the first time, with all profits ring fenced for investment in renewable energy.
@Sean Fahey: you can’t put up a sign in this country without someone objecting so what chance would a nuclear plant have and bear in mind that windfarms are being objected to all over the place.
@Derek Lyster: change the planning laws so that the Dail can approve projects considered of national strategic importance such as sporting stadiums, data centers, runways and power plants.
@Sean Fahey: Needs to be a UN law that over rides local laws. We must get over the “planet Ireland” syndrome. Modular Gen 4 could be dropped into any existing thermal plant to replace the coal or gas or yes peat. The UK /Canadian Moltex plan is for a large extra body of molten salt, that can better fill the gaps in the wind, which only has a load factor of 35%.
All to be pushed forward by a damn good UN levy on aviation kerosene and ship’s bunker, where at present there is none.!
Wonder if FG had won the election how she would have voted…….
@Padraic O Sullivan: English team soccer America type o
The ff rep is stating the USA energy indepence line / energy security same thing it will lead to morefracking and the destruction of Ireland with more earthquakes destroyed drinking water trillions of tones of methane released and millions of gallons of toxic chemicals sealed under the ground. Just look up what isfracking on youtube. Please invest in solar panel for heating your water and wind turbines and batterys for powering your appliances not fossil fuels
@Matthew O’Kane: Ireland is not going to frack so don’t worry about earthquakes or groundwater in Ireland. Solar panels are great and can hear water effectively for most of the year but need to be supplemented in Autumn and Winter and early Spring. Wind power is irregular and batteries cannot store sufficient power for daily use. Battery technology is immature. Your entire post is the type of wishful thinking I associate with Greens. Not a scintilla of practicality about the need to transition.
@Matthew O’Kane: go ahead and go broke.
Sake.
and you complain about climate change and then you vote to actually use gas FFS this is so stupid ….should have been rejected
@Elizabeth Eccles:
What’s the alternative that can get Ireland away from gas quick enough that it doesn’t need it??
@Wreck Tangle: Alternative is SMR nuclear
@Gavin Tobin:
I’d agree Gavin..
@Gavin Tobin: Look how many objections a roller-coaster in Tayto Park got, no way a nuclear plant would get approved. Imagine trucks carting spent fuel through rural Ireland to Dublin port. Will never happen.
@Elizabeth Eccles: gas is the lowest carbon fossil fuel and most efficient to use for both heating and electricty. So no there is nothing stupid about using it. Burning inefficient dirty peat and coal is stupid.
Using oil burner is inferior to a domestic gas boiler, better is a heat pump but useless without Having your house suitable for it.
Gas networks also is now injecting green gas, reducing carbon.
There are numerous projects running to create hydrogen from excess renewables to use in the gas network.
Then there is carbon capture and storage. So when you say gas is so stupid it’s actually so Clever!
@Gavin Tobin: let us know when it’s ready.
It’s being talked about for ever same as many things.
When UK has a few of them installed let us know and we can change the rules and have the debate.
@Gavin Tobin: don’t ruin a good argument with common sense. Fear and stupidity rules the day.
Noooooooclear
There goes the Indiscipline, She defies Her Party, Will Bullshit Head discipline her ?
The change FFG will bring is fracked gas….
@MickN: And about time.
Well done to her, i’m glad she did that.
Yes let’s have a little reactor eh reaction on the side folks
Easy to vote against something when you know it’s going to be passed anyway
Mark Ruffalo might do well to heed what is happening in his own country.
Well done Maria Walsh! It takes guts and integrity to stand up and do the right thing rather than meekly following the crowd. You have demonstrated both. We need many more like you if we are to arrest the twin catastrophes of Climate Breakdown and Biodiversity Collapse.
Wonder which is Europe’s most educated, advanced society. Finland? Wonder are the Green Party there pro or anti nuclear.? I think you all know the answer.
loose cannon fg should sack her !
Are FG trying to send a message to the Green party? We can work together?
@Harry Power: like they did when in the locals and jumped on the electorate bandwagon and then blamed anything that moveS apart from FFGRTE HAHAHA
have your say