Taking Ireland's ecological temperature

One hundred speakers, five packed days of plenary sessions, keynote papers, studies of the methane emissions from Ireland's cattle-farts, the ranching of baby lobsters, the recovery of energy from spent mushroom-compost, and so on and on . . . The range and complexity of next week's major environment conference at University College Dublin is really quite awe-inspiring.

The aim is to see how far we have come in the decade since the Rio summit, when 130 nations confronted the Earth's ecological crisis and signed conventions on global warming, sustainable development, and the protection of biodiversity. Much of our progress, predictably, is only on paper, and even some of that is still missing.

The National Biodiversity Plan, for example, due to be published three years ago, has yet to appear - a fact sure to command comment on the opening day of the conference, when UCD's John Feehan gives an overview of Ireland's performance in protecting the island's plant and animal species.

There could be two kinds of reason for the long delay. The obvious one is that the Rio convention caught our research on the hop. We had failed to develop a national biological records centre, and a lot of D·chas-sponsored research was diverted to ad hoc concerns and pressures, not least from Europe.

As late as 2000, the Environment Protection Agency was blunt about its inability to assess Ireland's biodiversity in more than general terms, in its Millennium Report, when it said: "We do not know precisely what it entails."

The UK, meanwhile, with immensely richer research and a more focused approach, was able to produce costed action plans to protect more than 100 of its most threatened species as early as 1995. In that year, too, the Ulster Museum set up a records centre for the North (CeDAR, the Centre for Environmental Data and Research), with which D·chas is now eagerly collaborating.

A second reason for delay may be more subtle, and not necessarily culpable, except in the general way of bureaucratic power-play. The National Biodiversity Plan has been drafted within the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands. But the Convention on Biodiversity put considerable emphasis on the integration of "green" concerns into the policies and programmes of all departments, not just the one charged with nature conservation.

Thus, from the word go, an inter-departmental steering group has been trying to raise the ecological awareness of public service planners and policy-makers, and to negotiate their responsibilities for species conservation. The small print of this may, in due course, make fascinating reading, but meanwhile its potentially enormous scope is echoed in the programme for next week's conference.

In the 10 years since Rio, the most significant practical steps in protecting and enriching the biodiversity of Ireland's countryside have come from recruiting small farmers to REPS (the Rural Environment Protection Scheme) and its extension to promote organic farming. The cleaning up of farm waste has helped protect the life of rivers and lakes. But the ecological damage of intensive farming remains, and its high energy inputs help to spread Ireland's "ecological footprint" across the planet.

Farming that is sustainable in terms of energy resources is also likely to be better for natural ecosystems.

Sustainability and biodiversity now loom large in the plans and codes of practice of Irish forestry, though Coillte has had an uphill battle to persuade some conservationists of its integrity. The emergence of the "multi-functional forest", serving nature conservation and recreation as well as sustainable logging, is the topic of the first keynote paper at the conference.

The newest area of concern for biodiversity is the ocean around Ireland, as everything from aquaculture and fishing to oil and gas exploration and plumes of polluted water swirling out from our estuaries impinge on marine species in a severely under-researched environment.

No fewer than eight of next week's speakers come from the Marine Institute, which has a brief of sustainable development that will not be easy to carry out. The conference will hear, for example, of its conservationist approach to EU fish stocks, while at the same time the institute helps to pioneer the deep-sea trawling of new species, the ecology of which is virtually unknown. Similarly, a paper promises to look after marine ecosystems which could be damaged by dredging of sand and gravel.

Whether from choice or necessity, little lectern space at the conference is accorded to conservation NGOs (non-governmental organisations), some of which might be expected to express strong views on official biodiversity policies.

Karen Dubsky of Coastwatch will report on the state of our beaches and Simon Berrow of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group will talk on protection of cetaceans in our coastal waters. But of An Taisce's Shirley Clerkin, a notably confident critic of the Department of the Arts, there is no sign; nor of BirdWatch Ireland or the Irish Peatland Conservation Council, which have sometimes joined An Taisce in a militant triumvirate of reproach.

One recognisable subversive, however, does seem to have slipped in. On Thursday at noon, Richard Douthwaite gets half an hour just ahead of the speaker from IBEC. Douthwaite, based in Co Mayo, is the "alternative" economist whose books, The Growth Illusion and Short Circuit, have joined the handbooks of ecological radicalism. Mild of manner, his view of our "sustainable" progress since Rio may prove more original than most.

viney@anu.ie