There is “a concerning lack of progress between the Government’s own ambitions and their actions to date” in addressing the climate crisis and environmental issues, an independent evaluation has found.
The assessment of progress in implementing nearly 300 environmental or climate-related commitments in the 2020 programme for government agreed by Coalition parties was commissioned by Friends of the Earth.
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The three experts awarded the Coalition an overall C grade for “moderate progress” over the past year. That’s down from a C+ grade a year ago, reflecting “a significant drop in the scores for some areas with improvements in other areas”.
The Government’s score on climate dropped from 7.5 to 6, on energy from 6 to 4 and on water from 5.5 to 4.5, while the score on nature and biodiversity jumped from 4.5 to 6.5 and transport edged up from 6.5 to 7. The high scores for progress on waste (8.5) and air quality (7) were maintained while the poor score on agriculture (4) did not improve.
The assessment was carried out by Dr Cara Augustenborg of UCD environmental policy programme, Dr Diarmuid Torney of DCU and Dr Paul Deane of MaREI based in UCC.
Performance in agriculture and forestry was rated as “poor”, while there has been a decline in the energy sector due to increased burning of coal in power generation and low use of renewable energy and in drinking water and wastewater categories.
Progress continued on climate, particularly with respect to governance and financing commitments, but “emissions continue to rise and adaptation plans are sorely lacking”, they said.
“Of all the options open to the Government, delay wasn’t one of them. There is a mismatch between climate ambition and action in Ireland with policy moving at a speed that is both at odds with the existing climate crisis and overlapping fossil fuel energy crisis,” said Dr Deane.
Climate politics is here to stay
Group chairwoman Dr Augustenborg said the Government’s performance to date on commitments was mixed. “While it was uplifting to see significant progress in nature and biodiversity and a policy shift to more active modes of transport, the lack of effort to address water quality was deeply concerning,” she added.
“Significant delays on commitments in the energy and agricultural sectors leads to the risk of not meeting our climate targets ... climate change, biodiversity loss, and water quality continue to worsen. While this Government has made progress in some areas, their pace does not align with Ireland’s deteriorating environmental conditions,” she warned.
Dr Diarmuid Torney, a specialist in environmental governance, said two years into office he would expect to see “clear progression from vision and ambition to detailed implementation. We have had no shortage of vision and ambition, but not nearly enough implementation overall. There has been good progress in some areas, particularly nature and biodiversity, and transport, but a notable lack of action in other areas, particularly energy, agriculture and water.”
FoE chief executive Oisín Coghlan said: “We are in a climate and energy emergency and the Government have to start acting like it. They did it for Covid and Ukraine but they just aren’t doing it for climate. Over the coming months the key tests include the new climate action plan, the fossil energy price crisis and the Citizens’ Assembly on biodiversity.
On climate, the Government must immediately turn the new sectoral pollution limits into policies and measures that actually reduce emissions with an updated Action Plan due in November. They must stand up to fossil fuel interests who are pushing them to address the fossil fuel energy price crisis by locking us into more fossil fuels. Instead of embracing this climate-wrecking false solution the Government must proactively help people save energy and money with retrofitting and active travel, prioritising and protecting those in energy poverty.”
While climate targets are being established, emissions continue to rise, and shortfalls remain in achieving emissions targets. “Commitments in the areas of financing and department and agency mandates are progressing internally, but actions are not being implemented at sufficient pace to address rising emissions,” the expert group noted.
Environmental Protection Agency projections indicate Ireland is likely to achieve a 4 per cent reduction per annum rather than 7 per cent if all planned measures are implemented. “Thus, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the country is going in the wrong direction,” the review found.
‘Climate commitments’
While a four out of 10 score accounts for a time lag between planning and implementation, “we would expect emissions to begin to fall within the next year if the Government delivers on its climate commitments”, they added.
Though there was compromise on sectoral ceilings, “there was also consensus across most political parties on climate action — but long delays in establishing rules on climate governance are worrying”.
The current agrifood strategy is responsible for growing nutrient pollution and poor water quality, the assessment concluded. “Without policy changes, such trends will be locked in for the remainder of this Government. There has been little progress in the Government’s agri-environmental commitments this year apart from small agri-environmental schemes and soil monitoring.”
There are no significant supports for the transformation of agricultural enterprise. While some progress has been made in aspects of forestry, peatland rewetting, and the national land use review, overall, “there is poor delivery of commitments. A lack of clear, viable options for farmers in terms of land use remains with few alternatives to move away from environmentally damaging agricultural intensification.”
There was “low to medium follow-through in drinking water commitments with mixed progress on wastewater treatment plants and leak reduction”, the group concluded. Funding well upgrades and lead pipe removals have made some progress but lack of compliance with the EU Water Framework Directive “remains a serious concern, along with insufficient funding for infrastructure and lack of progress on safety standards and conservation measures”.
“Critical issues of nitrogen and phosphorus loads [in water] are not being addressed, and there is a lack of coherence between agencies in dealing with this matter,” they underlined.
