Climate change boss critical of farmer exclusion from rewetting meeting

The head of Ireland’s Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC) has criticised the Department of Agriculture’s hosting of a key meeting about re-wetting 80,000ha of farmed peatland.

When asked by the Irish Farmers Journal what she thought of farmers being left outside the door when use of their land was being discussed at a recent Department of Agriculture-convened meeting, Marie Donnelly said: “Clearly it’s not the way to go forward.”

“Not only will farmers have to be involved, farmers would have to be compensated, because they will be reducing their productivity, and they will need financial support in that process,” Donnelly told the Irish Farmers Journal at a briefing on the cost of not taking climate action on Monday.

She described rewetting as “a real opportunity” but warned: “it has to be done correctly with those who will be active in that space as full partners”, who will need to be supported financially.”

She called for an additional €1bn of funding to be channelled to rewetting and forestry from the Government, on top of existing funding. This, she said, would reduce the carbon output by 3.5m tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

“The numbers we're talking about here are on top of business as usual. So it's not cheap. You know, we might have fines coming down the track. They're expensive. Some of these measures are also expensive. But the point we're making is that it's better to spend the money now,” Donnelly said.

Complex

The CCAC chair acknowledged the complexity of rewetting as a climate change action, saying: “The issue of re-wetting is not straightforward, because when it comes to land, that field might be right for re-wetting, but this one might not, so you can't just, you know, do a broad brush and say, we'll do this, and we won't do that.”

“It will have to be done at a local level, at an individual level, and you can’t do that without the farmer being involved.”

The IFA has called a national meeting on Thursday 6 March in Athlone, to discuss what it has called “policy threats to farming on peat soils”.

IFA deputy president Alice Doyle said: “Firstly, farmers need to be fully informed about what is going on. Most of these issues are resulting from decisions made by the previous Government and the previous EU Commission.

“However, the new Government and Commission seem to be hellbent on implementing all of these measures, despite promises of simplification and reduced bureaucracy,” she said.

“These measures threaten to wipe out commercial farming and devalue land at the stroke of a pen,” she said.