Analysis: Government wants it both ways on climate change

At the plenary session of the UN climate change talks last November, Taoiseach Enda Kenny delivered a speech outlining Ireland’s approach to climate change.

He touched a lot of bases in terms of the challenges to be faced and the leadership required, stating unambiguously that Ireland was "determined to play its part".

Hours later at a press conference, and in markedly different tone, he assured domestic interests that Irish agriculture wouldn’t be thrown under the bus of stringent emissions targets.

“We do not want to see a situation where we are limited in what we can produce with the abolition of [milk]quotas,” he said.

The mixed message reflects a realpolitik that would be naive to dismiss. His volte-face riled environmental groups, which accused him of using the world stage to peddling the tactics of Ireland’s powerful agriculture and food processing industry lobby.

The Department of Agricultural, together with farming agency group Teagasc, has been at the forefront of developing emissions inventory systems, which capture the improvement in carbon efficiencies on farms and elsewhere.

There is also Bord Bia’s Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme and its Origin Green strategy, both of which are recognised internationally.

However, the overriding sense is that Ireland remains entrenched in defending its own sectoral interests when it comes to climate change.

Its negotiations with Brussels have centred on securing a special accommodation for Irish agriculture and ultimately a less strict emissions target for Ireland.

Hence the possibility of Ireland becoming a global pioneer in smart-agriculture, as advocated in today’s climate-smart agriculture report by the Institute of International and European Affairs and the RDS, would appear somewhat remote, not least because our stance has been one of resistance.

As early as next week, the European Commission will announce the relative contributions to be made by each member state to the EU's overall target of cutting emissions by 40 per cent by 2030.

Either way, the farming and food industry here, which underpins directly and indirectly more than 170,000 jobs - dwarfing both the pharma and IT sectors combined, must accommodate itself to the new paradigm.

As the report notes repeatedly, tough targets make innovation necessary. In addition, food companies and farmers trade on the country’s image as a wild, green pasture, untainted by centuries of dirty European industry.

The report lays down a number of big policy measures that will need to be undertaken if this image is to be maintained.

One involves a major expansion of our forestry targets. The Government’s long-term objective is to achieve 18 per cent forestry cover by 2046, up from the current 11 per cent level.

The report notes that Ireland's unique land use pattern, a legacy of our colonial past which levelled most of the indigenous forests, is way out of kilter with Europe, which has average forestry cover of 42 per cent.

The report implies Ireland has too much land in pasture, much devoted to loss-making beef enterprises.

Forestry can boost and diversify farm income, it says, building greater resilience to commodity price shocks while reducing emissions and preventing flooding, likely to be an increasingly regular feature of global warming.

Another objective is to promote more combined dairy/beef farms which are more carbon efficient. According to Teagasc, emissions from combined dairy-beef systems are almost 50 per cent lower than solely beef suckler enterprises.

The planned expansion of dairy in the wake of the lifting of milk quotas will see an additional 400,000 calves become available for beef production, the report noted.

New technologies, such as sexed semen, also open opportunities for dairy farmers to supply the necessary numbers of dairy-beef crosses.

Another big area covered by the report is renewable energy. It said that less than 1 per cent of the wind energy projects in Ireland are owned by rural communities, while in Denmark the figure is above 50 per cent.

Greater local involvement and ownership would economically benefit farmers and “rural-proof climate policy” by building more acceptability of the low carbon transition.

The report makes no bones about the scale of the transformation required comparing it to the Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century, which upended centuries of established practice.

While it presents a number of obvious policy initiatives, it remains to seen if the political will to navigate the various sectoral interests is there.