Ireland is keeping its promises to scale up nature restoration and to protect its vulnerable ecosystems, while aligning this with efforts to reduce carbon emissions from land and to improve climate resilience, Minister for Nature and Heritage Malcolm Noonan has said.
Addressing the UN biodiversity conference of the parties (Cop16) in Cali, Columbia, Mr Noonan said: “We are rehabilitating over 20,000 hectares of peatland, and planning for an additional 44,000 by 2030 to stop carbon losses and enable sequestration, while creating valuable habitat.”
He said nature was being brought back to tens of thousands of farms by working with communities to reward positive outcomes for habitats and species. “We have expanded protected areas in our seas and oceans from 2.4 to almost 10 per cent, and we are committed to meeting our target of 30 by 2030,” he told Cop16, which is due to conclude next weekend.
The event is the first meeting of global leaders since the historic global biodiversity framework was agreed in Montreal in 2022, where it was agreed to conserve 30 per cent of the planet’s lands, waters and seas by 2030, and restore 30 per cent of all degraded ecosystems.
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Recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss and the Children and Young People’s Assembly greatly enhanced the latest iteration of Ireland’s biodiversity action plan, which Mr Noonan said was recently assessed by the World Wildlife Fund “as one of the strongest in the world”.
Its sister policy was a water action plan to restore freshwater and coastal ecosystems, while a national nature restoration plan, under the EU Nature Restoration Law, was progressing, he said.
Mr Noonan met with UN secretary general António Guterres and reaffirmed Ireland’s commitment to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and emphasised the importance of urgent resource mobilisation to unlock global biodiversity action. Ireland’s establishment of a €3.15 billion climate and nature fund would support this task, he said, and reiterated the importance of investing in integration of environmental action across nature, water and climate to restore the planet’s ecosystems.
A dedicated, long-term nature restoration fund should be set up to support the implementation of nature and biodiversity restoration in Ireland, according to a new report by the Irish Environmental Network (IEN) and Natural Capital Ireland published on Thursday. It was presented to Mr Noonan at Cop16.
It sets out a roadmap for funding nature and biodiversity restoration and conservation in Ireland. “Long-term thinking and sustained funding for projects is vital for nature restoration,” it finds. A diverse group of experts from academia, business, environmental NGOs, farming, government departments and semi-state bodies assembled to workshop solutions to support nature restoration.
Meanwhile Cop16 was told that while the world needs $700 billion a year to restore nature – no one knows where the money is going to come from, and anger is building about rich countries failing to pay their share. With representatives of nearly 200 countries gathered in Colombia the question of who will fund conservation and how those funds will be distributed is a key battleground – and frustration is growing at the lack of movement.
– additional reporting Guardian
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