The 70-page report was 14 months late, yet still lacks ambition, imagination or urgency
The ‘stark’ environmental challenges our environment minister admits we face are a million miles from being tackled in any meaningful way in Northern Ireland’s first and long overdue Environmental Improvement Plan.
Like the thousands of you hoping the penny will finally drop with politicians that we need a healthy environment so we can live healthy fulfilled lives, the EIP shows at least some of the politicians sitting around the Executive table still haven’t grasped how much trouble we are in when it comes to the environment.But all it really delivers is a raft of consultations, reviews and plans to develop plans on this or that, with many of the deadlines years off.
Apparently this will happen through 15 schemes and the Civil Engineering Environmental Quality Assessment self-assessment process where trained assessors evaluate a project on issues including water, energy and land use; impacts on climate, ecology, landscape, neighbours, archaeology and waste. Natural Capital refers to the world’s stock of natural resources and includes geology, soils, air, water and all living organisms. And here we are again reducing the living world to what we can glean from it.
By 2030 they say at least 30% of land and freshwater will be protected, connected and managed for nature. How does that happen when our nature recovery strategy isn’t coming until 2032, we’re paying lip service to aligning development with ecology, our peatlands won’t be conserved until 2040 and our marine strategy isn’t due until 2030?
Oh and there’s better labelling to help people make informed choices - so more tinkering around the edges. By 2050, however, they say we will have reduced our annual material footprint to 8 tonnes per person - according to the Circularity Gap Report it’s at about 16.6 tonnes per person now.
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