The National Biodiversity Data Centre has published its 23rd edition of Biodiversity Ireland which is our bi-annual newsletter. It is a way of showcasing aspects of the project work of the National Biodiversity Data Centre, but also to highlight some of the recording and survey work undertaken by key partners.
Please read below for Liam Lysaght, the Centre’s Director comments on the newsletter.
In May 2019, Ireland declared a Climate and Biodiversity Emergency, the second country in the world to do so. Biodiversity was ‘bolted’ onto the endorsement by Dáil Éireann of the impressive report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action. Some viewed this declaration as an important symbolic, but largely empty, gesture by legislators. With the benefit of hindsight, it can be considered a watershed moment in terms of political consciousness of the biodiversity crisis Ireland is experiencing.
The Convention on Biological Diversity was ratified by Ireland in 1996, but for many years there was little evidence that ratification of the Convention was little other than a reporting exercise. The declaration by Dáil Éireann of the Climate and Biodiversity Emergency meant that the term ‘biodiversity’ entered the lexicon of political vocabulary and is now used regularly in debates in the Houses of the Oireachtas on a range of issues.
It is worth highlighting some of the new developments since then. Biodiversity policy entered centre stage as part of the Programme for Government agreed in 2020.
In addition to the appointment of a deeply knowledgeable and committed Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform in Malcolm Noonan, Ireland now has Pippa Hackett as Minister of State for Land Use and Biodiversity within the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Our Taoiseach, Micheál Martin is increasingly highlighting, through his words and actions, his concern about biodiversity loss, proving that biodiversity is now firmly on the Government’s agenda.
The establishment of a Citizens’ Assembly on
Biodiversity Loss to report and make recommendations to the Houses of the Oireachtas before the end of the year is hugely significant. Similarly, the Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss has been established and will make recommendations for consideration by Minister of State, Malcolm Noonan. These developments are being keenly observed by many countries in different parts of the world.
Government policy on biodiversity is currently being developed through the 4th National Biodiversity Action Plan, a process that is driven by far greater energy than heretofore and should translate the Government’s concern into a comprehensive series of actions. This is all being done against a backdrop of reorganisation of the National Parks and Wildlife Service to make it more fit for purpose to meet the present-day challenges, and a greatly improved budget allocated to biodiversity to help deliver more actions on the ground to support biodiversity conservation.
By any standards, this is huge progress and credit should be given for what has been achieved. But the scale of biodiversity loss is so acute, it can only be halted and reversed through transformative change. There is no
evidence yet that this re-energised policy platform will deliver the transformative change that is needed. This level of policy ambition needs to be maintained and to grow over the years ahead.
