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LAST UPDATE | 15 Jun 2023
A COMMITTEE VOTE on the EU’s proposed new law to restore degraded land has been postponed to the end of the month after a jam-packed session went over time this morning.
The legislation would set specific targets for the first time on restoring nature through measures such as rewetting areas of drained peatlands, increasing green spaces in urban areas, and improving biodiversity in lands used for agriculture and forestry.
There are strong divisions among MEPs over the proposal, with the European People’s Party, the political grouping that Fine Gael sits in, withdrawing from committee negotiations at the end of May.
The EU’s Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) committee of 88 MEPs convened this morning for a highly anticipated meeting to vote on the proposed package and determine whether it would move forward to a full vote by the Parliament.
A vote on whether it should be rejected outright was narrowly defeated in a tie of 44 votes to 44 – below the threshold that would have been required to accept the rejection.
This allowed the committee to move forward with voting on compromises to the text.
However, it reached the end of its allocated time without having finished voting on all of the amendments and was beginning to overlap with a scheduled plenary session of the full Parliament on other voting matters.
The outstanding votes on the nature restoration proposal have been postponed until 27 June.
Supporters of the law say it is necessary for taking action on protecting and restoring the natural world to allow plants, animals, birds and insects to survive and thrive, carbon to be stored in the land instead of being released into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas, and humans to continue to benefit from the land in areas like food production and water quality.
Opponents’ main concerns are with the capacity of member states to carry out the measures proposed, the amount of land that would need to be restored, and to what extent that could mean land currently used for agriculture would need to be repurposed.
The division on the continent spilled over into Irish politics in recent weeks, including between coalition partners Fine Gael and the Green Party.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of Fine Gael said there were aspects of the law that he felt were “going too far and not fully recognising how we use land in Ireland in particular”.
Junior minister Ossian Smyth of the Greens said he was “disappointed” with the EPP decision to pull out of negotiations: “Forget the coalition and politics, I think Irish people love nature and want to protect it.”
Speaking in the Dáil this afternoon during Leaders’ Questions, Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns said that “instead of supporting the measures, the Taoiseach has slated them”.
“He’s propagated fears that farmers will be forced to leave their land as part of the law. He has done this despite the fact the fact that he knows or at least should know this is not true,” Cairns said.
“There is no future for farming unless we protect our ecosystems and our biodiversity. I should know because I am a farmer, my mother is a farmer, I have lived and worked on a farm for my entire life,” she said.
“I am deeply committed to ensuring that farmers have a future in this country. That means being deeply committed to protecting our critically endangered habitats and biodiversity. I do not see these things as being in any way in conflict with each other. Quite the opposite. They are intrinsically linked.”
In response, Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien said that the government believes the proposed law “provides an opportunity for transformative change in relation to achieving nature restoration in Ireland and the EU as a whole”.
Ireland remains absolutely supportive of the ambition and principles underpinning these regulations. There is a challenge involved in meeting the ambition proposed and that does remain significant.
“These include the extremely tight timeframes for quantification of targets and measures, for the preparation of national restoration plans, and for the delivery of targets,” he said.
“Regarding agriculture, anything farmers will be asked to do will be voluntary, and they will be supported financially for any measures. You’re right to raise that issue because it’s not a question of pitting farmers against biodiversity.”
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Rewetting it will deprive people of between 10% and 50% of their acreage for farming. They say more than 340,000 hectares will need to be rewetted. That is land the size of Co Tipperary, removed from production. It will lead to massive job losses.”
This law is bad news for rural Ireland. A law made by people who are surrounded by concrete,glass and asphalt. People who know nothing about rural Ireland apart from a visit to their holiday home down the country (west of the M50).
@Barry Donnelly: I urge people to read the recent article by Eoghan Daltun on this site. Google “Yes, state budget surpluses should be used to pay farmers to rewild their land”.
He says “Well, as a small farmer myself, I can tell you that such a measure could NOT be more needed. If done right, it has the potential to be a game-changer in a positive way not only for nature, but also farming communities, the climate, and to be massively beneficial for society at large.”
It is bizarre that some people fanatically wish to see the destruction of this country’s environment continue unabated.
@Barry Donnelly: a law proposed by people who want a habitable planet for future generations and objected to by those looking at profit only.
@Barry Donnelly: No planet, no life and remember the land before man got clever and fooked things up? We are going to have too, reduce World population and stop putting profit before planet, if we are to survive? Otherwise, say bye as a species!
@Barry Donnelly: The overwhelming majority of the rewetting will be on state owned land, mainly the cutaway bogs owned by Bord Na Mona, and state owned wetlands in our national parks.
This is hugely important: essentially it’s a vote on whether we really wish to have a habitable planet.
@Brendan O’Brien: Is it really? When US, India China etc. continue with gay abandon, it makes no difference what the EU does. The damage these countries do will poison the entire planet.
@Bat Boy: Those countries may not be doing enough (it is not true that they are doing nothing), but that’s all the more reason for the EU to do what’s needed.
@Brendan O’Brien: Believing the EU can solve a problem this large is a bit like thinking a man with a bucket can stop a massive ship from sinking.
@Bat Boy: The EU is a very large bloc and can certainly make a difference. Your philosophy is that we should just let the ship sink?
@Brendan O’Brien: No not at all, I am answering your point that a habitable planet hinges on this decision.
@Bat Boy: Which isn’t what I said. This will show whether *we wish* to have a habitable planet. If we throw in the towel, clearly we don’t.
@Brendan O’Brien:
I’d have to disagree. This is the low hanging fruit. Surely we start at what’s totally unnecessary consumption. The land is used to grow food to help us survive. The latest item delivered directly to your door on a ship from China (enter any other land you wish), then driven to your door to be used a handful of times to then be dumped and shipped off to africa to lie in a landfill may be a place to start. Easy to blame the farmers.
The powers that be won’t tackle the over consumption because it would cripple the economy of the world. We need more, more stuff, more waste, more flights to make more money to keep the pockets full. Farmers care for our environment more than anyone (maybe not mega farmers but rural Irish farmers do!).
@Brendan O’Brien: Without acceptance from the main culprits, it will be nothing more than a wish..
@Clodagh Nic L: Yes, but all of this can be complementary. We can still produce plenty of food while protecting and restoring the environment. I think farmers need more responsible leadership from their organizations, and better communication from the state, but framing absolutely everything as ‘an attack on rural Ireland’, like the ‘Rural Independents’ do, just won’t wash anymore. Blindly continuing on the same path isn’t a realistic option.
@Clodagh Nic L: while your assessment of consumer culture has merit, your assertion that Irish farmers care.more than anyone about the environment is astonishing. Irish farmers has destroyed with abandon, our rivers, hills, lakes, forests and all for the EU penny. We need to put a stop to the untouchable special class that runs riot over the country side.
Irish political class were bought off tears ago by various groups and lobbyists both inside and outside of Ireland. I would include the farming organisations in that mix but the ordinary small farmer like the general public are ignored.
Donate your back garden to Brussels if you want to get involved with but keep your hands off the property of others.
@Barry Donnelly: Equally it could be argued that people who think like you should be told to keep your hands off of the subsidies that you are happy to receive from urban Ireland. That is if you expect the rest off us to accept that your property rights are more important than the future of humanity…..what say you to that?
@michael mcsharry: Urban Ireland does not pay for subsidies, we all pay. We subsidise food to have security, do you understand what the alternative is?
@Maximus_Demonus: I correct myself. Urban Ireland being more populous and with many more taxpayers pays most of the subsidies either through our EU contribution or directly from our own government to farmers as happened a couple of years ago when an extraordinary payment of 150 million euros was made from our exchequer was to beef farmers to keep the price up as production costs equaled sales income with no profit even with the EU subsidy. Overall beef farming in Ireland is not profitable. We export 90% of it but the Irish taxpayer would get better value for money if most of the suitable .land was turned over to arable farming which is much more efficient in terms of calorific food value. Generally cattle farming and dairy (grazing and growing food for cattle) take about 67% of agricultural land but produce only about 13% of the calories that supply human diets. As to security, we don’t have it as most food is imported and in a shortage situation we would not have the military might to stop another country walking in and taking what they want.
anyone would think they owned the land to do with as they wish
While the objective of the EU may be noble, it is also naive and needs to be adjusted to take the whole picture into account.
The Ukraine crisis has proven that every country should be self-sufficient in producing food (and energy). Germany relied massively on Ukraine for food production, and now they are dealing with staggering inflation that has pushed many into poverty.
Meanwhile, Switzerland has had tariffs for years to stop retailers from buying food products that can be made there. This policy protected farmers/food supply, and the Swiss have much lower inflation than the rest of the EU.
So yes, we should be rewilding European countrysides, but where is the counter-balance? This needs a concurrent framework to provide better farming processes where the same amount (or more) of farming output can be maintained with less land.
@Bat Boy: Simple. The counterbalance is to give more money to EU farmers to do things that would present us with a viable long term future and pay less money to farmers to continue with environmentally unsustainable practises that will do the opposite. However the CAP reform movement is overwhelmed by the power of climate destroying multi national agri corporation lobbyists and their allies in Irish farm organisations.
@Bat Boy: We produced 637,000 tonnes of Beef in 2021 of which 86% was exported, most going to the UK. As for milk production is concerned, in 2021 we produced 8.4 billion litters of milk of which 94% was exported.
We are more than self-sufficient.
See: Milk production up marginally last year on 2021.
We can never go far enough to protect biodiversity. Lobby groups for the status quo alive and well
@Brendan OBrien
I implore everyone to completely discard any points you make.
@Barry Donnelly:
We produced 637,000 tonnes of Beef in 2021, of which 86% was exported.
We produced 425,000 of pig meat in 2021, of which 62% was exported
We produced 8.4 billion litters of milk of in 2021, of which 94% was exported.
We produced 2,457,000 tons of wheat, oats and barley.
I can find recent figures, but in 2011/2021, we were are 92% sufficient for cereals:
77% self-sufficient for Wheat
103% self-sufficient for Barley
127% self-sufficient for Oats
In 2019: https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/oat-exports-far-outweigh-imports/
Also, I see dairy cow numbers increased 54% since 2012, from 1.05 million to 1.604 million.
I think we are more than self-sufficient and can rewild parts of Ireland.
@David Jordan: how anyone can read the numbers then say the farmers are working to feed the country is baffling.
Good old lobbying strikes again. Where are those who are supposed to speak for the general public?
@Pato: I did read once that the Monsanto building housing mainly lobbyists which is near the EU parliament building is both bigger and fancier than the EU building itself. The Argi business lobby has its foot on the EU’s throat. We are paying them through the present design of CAP payments to farmers to “keep on keeping on” – business as usual until the planet is destroyed for humans.
When all else fails blame the science. “environmental concerns” are more than a “worthy” time filler for distracted adults, they are the basis of an existential argument about our future based on hard science. You may wrongly dismiss the way science is done now with various types of modelling of different inputs and outcomes. You may, without giving any specifics throw this nonsense out to gullible populists who get their science from social media, but you can’t ignore the fact that it was an Irishman John Tyndall born in 1820 who was the first scientist to warn about global warming? His experiments on the characteristics of water vapour have never been effectively disputed or proved wrong, nor his prediction that continued atmospheric warning would lead to catastrophic climate destruction.
This is good in theory but in practice it might be very heavy handed, it’s tough to work out. Another point is will we be allowed access to this nature as it will still be on people’s land and currently in Ireland we have no right to roam as they do in most other EU countries
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