Conference with a conscience: Environmental policy makers, local authority personnel and business people from the Republic and Northern Ireland will gather in the Burlington Hotel, Dublin on Monday and Tuesday for Environment Ireland 2006.
Organised by the Environmental Protection Agency with the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, the conference will look at climate change, sustainable development, transport, environmental regulation and waste, water and energy management.
See www.epa.ie for full details.
Celebrating a broad vision
A broadleaf tree planting scheme, initiated 13 years ago by non-governmental organisation Crann, will be celebrated in an exhibition, film and seminar in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim next weekend. With the aim of linking local timber users with locally grown timber and so begin a sustainable forestry culture, the project was ambitious and visionary. Sixteen landowners grew a variety of hardwood species and the first thinning of those forests are now taking place.
Jan Alexander, founder of Crann, says: "We have achieved our aim of putting broadleaf trees back on the forestry agenda here, but we have not yet succeeded in reaching the general public on the related issue of hardwood timber imports into Ireland. Most people are not aware that their choice in the furniture shop is a political one." A film of the Leitrim project, made by artist Cathy Fitzgerald, will be shown on Friday at 6.30pm in the Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon. Admission free. An exhibition of the project runs in the same venue from September 9th to 23rd, Monday to Saturday. A seminar, discussion and field trip to the young broadleaf forests goes ahead on Saturday next from 10am to noon.
Tel: 01-6275075 for more details. See also www.crann.ie
Son of the soil
"There are millions of people out there who sense there is something profoundly wrong with farming. If you describe the consequences of industrial agriculture and the benefits of sustainable, organic farming, you are tapping into a knowledge field that they've not yet articulated, but which they sense is right."
So says Patrick Holden, director of the British Soil Association, whose gift for popularising organic farming is well recognised. His next big task is to turn the Soil Association into a mass membership movement, like the National Trust in Britain and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. With 70,000 visits a month to its website and 30,000 requests for its booklet about pesticide residues in popular foods last year, it's certainly on its way. See www.soilassociation.org for information on Organic Fortnight in Britain, which begins today.
Still open for heritage
While Heritage Week draws to a close this weekend in the Republic, Northern Ireland will celebrate European Heritage Open Days next weekend with free open days in many public and private buildings. See www.ehsni.gov.uk for details. See www.heritagedays.net for events in England, Scotland and Wales, and www.heritageweek.ie for events in the Republic today.