Think of a small, wealthy country, population around 5 million people, with a successful agricultural export sector but weighty environmental problems.
These include too much pollution run-off to water bodies driven by high livestock numbers, high levels of greenhouse gas emissions from land use and farm animals, and too little space for nature.
It could be Ireland – but it is also Denmark.
The two countries have influential agricultural sectors that see themselves as world leaders in their endeavours but that are under scrutiny for the public costs associated with their success, particularly in the areas of environmental degradation and animal suffering.
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Ireland has failed to put in place a framework that would meet environmental goals when it comes to farming and land use, leading to a scattergun and frequently contradictory government response.
[ Wind energy: It’s not too late to learn from DenmarkOpens in new window ]
The lack of coherence leads not only to poor environmental outcomes but uncertainty in agriculture, forestry and fishing, and increasing anxiety among those for whom these sectors provide an income.
The failure of politics to deal with the environmental agenda is not unique to Ireland. In 2022, a court ruling around nitrates and habitat protection in the Netherlands bounced the government of that country into a rushed plan to take land out of agricultural production.
It led to protests, some of them violent; the rise of the populist Farmers’ Party, and ultimately a government led by the far right that promised to roll the plan back.
Nevertheless, the European Commission announced in December that the Netherlands would not get a nitrates derogation extension.
Following intense lobbying, Ireland was granted another three-year extension to its derogation from the Nitrates Directive (that sets limits on the land-spreading of animal manure) – in contradiction of EU laws on nature and water quality.
The Government could place its bets that a similar approach will work in 2028, or it could look to Denmark, which, in 2024, gave up its pursuit of a nitrates derogation and struck a grand bargain with farm organisations and environmental groups.
The Agreement on a Green Denmark, also referred to as the Green Tripartite Agreement, was approved with broad support in the Danish parliament and hailed as “the most ambitious environmental initiative in Danish history” by the government, securing “more nature, cleaner water and a sustainable transformation of Danish agriculture”.
It is backed by a new Ministry for the Green Transition and €5.8 billion to finance green initiatives, including land purchases.
The key elements include 250,000 hectares of new forest, the removal of 140,000 hectares from agricultural production to restore wetlands and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from land, and the creation of 21 new national parks.
The deal includes an increase in land area under nature protection from about 15 per cent today to 20 per cent by 2027.
There are also goals for reductions in losses of nitrogen. Denmark’s water quality is even worse than Ireland’s, with many coastal waters so overloaded with nutrients that oxygen is severely depleted.
Perhaps the most eye-catching elements, certainly from an Irish perspective, are the introduction of a carbon tax on agriculture from 2030 and official Government advice to promote more plant-based diets.
The first of these was a recommendation from Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on how Ireland could be a leader on tackling climate change back in 2018, while the second was recommended by the Citizens’ Assembly on biodiversity loss in 2023.
These suggestions went nowhere. Anyone who remembers the backlash from farm organisations when former president Mary Robinson or former taoiseach Leo Varadkar suggested eating less meat was good for the environment, or the ruckus when the Environmental Protection Agency published a tweet suggesting people might consider a meat-free Monday to reduce their carbon footprint, will appreciate why.
The Danish agreement has been criticised. It does not propose reducing livestock numbers while the entire proposal is voluntary, although the government has held out the prospect of regulation if targets are not met.
This, in turn, leaves it hostage to the willingness of future governments to implement it. The carbon tax is so low, €16 per tonne in 2030, rising to €40 in 2035 by one estimate, that it may be ineffective in promoting meaningful changes.
For comparison, Ireland’s carbon tax is currently €71 per tonne and set to increase to €100 by 2030.
Like Ireland, there is a reliance on unproven future technologies for meeting emissions reductions.
[ The Danish city that heats its homes with underground waterOpens in new window ]
The agreement has broad political backing from centrist parties but the Red-Green Alliance political grouping walked out of the negotiations.
One member, Pelle Dragsted, posted on social media that there remained a long way to go before the experts’ recommendations on nitrogen reductions would be met.
He slammed the carbon tax as “completely inadequate”, maintaining that Denmark’s model of intensive livestock rearing remained intact.
“It is simply not possible to maintain such intensive livestock production when we are going to be climate neutral in just a few years,” he said. Others, however, are more sanguine.
“We have been at war with the farmers’ organisations for decades” says Maria Reumert Gjerding, president of the Danish Society for Nature Conservation, one of the signatories to the final agreement.
Following her election in 2018 she forged a deal with the farmers’ organisation for the conversion of 100,000 hectares of farmland to nature, in particular wetlands and carbon-rich soils.
“That really was a huge thing in Denmark,” she says, and the government at the time was willing to stump up the money to make it happen.
“We still have a lot of things we disagree about” she says, “but we proved that we had the ability to talk and agree on something… this was the first step that led the government to think that [a wider agreement] could be an option”.
It meant that in 2023, when the government was grappling with the introduction of a carbon tax on agriculture, it went to the nature and the farming organisations for help in hammering out a deal.
The agreement is now over a year old and Reumert Gjerding says she is “really surprised that it’s going so well”.
Decisions on how the deal should be implemented have been delegated to local municipalities, with input from the nature side as well as the farmers. These groups are making decisions on where new forests should go or where wetlands should be restored.
“What’s come out of this is so ambitious… the groups are providing more than they need to for the nitrogen-reduction part and are proposing huge nature areas. It’s amazing.”
So far, only three out of 23 areas have proven to be problematic.
The money from the government, that is being added to by private donors, as well as growing realisation that environmental objectives can’t be put off forever, has helped to convince farmers, many of whom are nearing retirement age, to take the off-ramp. The fact that national farming organisations are supporting it means it is taken seriously on the ground.
Reumert Gjerding believes wins for nature will be substantial. “The goal of this plan is to take 140,000 hectares of cultivated peatland and restore these areas. We will see 100,000 hectares of new forests that are only for nature.”
Because wetland restoration will help reduce nitrogen run-off, she believes the status of coastal waters will also improve.
She believes that in 10-15 years, Denmark will be “a different country”.
Reumert Gjerding disagrees with criticisms from the Red-Green Alliance, asserting that the deal “delivers the agricultural sector’s contribution to greenhouse gas reductions as well as water quality objectives”.
She acknowledges the low rate of carbon tax was a compromise but says the alliance has “underestimated completely the possibilities in the agreement”.
The Danish deal represents a significant step forward in political action on the environment at a European level. Recent history, from the yellow vest protests in France in 2018 to nitrates in the Netherlands and the attempt to phase out fossil fuel boilers in Germany in 2023, shows what a minefield this area has become.
What is unspeakable in Ireland – a meat tax, promotion of plant-based diets and increasing the area of land for nature protection – are now part of an agreement with farm organisations in Denmark.
We have to hope there are politicians in Ireland who are following what is happening and thinking that a similar grand bargain could work here too.
