EPA - Ireland's Environment 2016 - An Assessment

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Ireland’s Environment – An Assessment 2016 20
Our understanding of Ireland’s environment is constantly
changing with ongoing monitoring programmes, research and
the implementation of polices and legislation. To complement
this report the EPA has developed the “Ireland’s Environment”
section on the EPA website. This site supports the State
of the Environment report by providing up-to-date online
information that includes environmental indicator data.
Ireland’s economy is beginning to grow again and we must
balance our focus on growth with an emphasis on becoming
more sustainable and reducing emissions. The adoption of
the New York Agreement on Sustainable Development Goals
and the Paris Agreement on climate change, both in 2015,
provide ambitious, legally binding frameworks for global
action on sustainability and climate change. In addition,
Ireland has taken a national policy position that commits us
to reducing 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 80%
by 2050 across the electricity generation, built environment
and transport sectors while achieving carbon neutrality in the
agriculture and land use sectors.
However, EPA projections indicate that we face
considerable challenges to becoming a low-carbon
economy. Ireland must follow a pathway to decarbonise
energy, transport and heating. We must break our
dependence on fossil energy infrastructures. In addition,
the agriculture, forestry and land use sectors should achieve
effective greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) neutrality by
2050. In effect, GHG emissions neutrality is the same
amount of emissions being emitted as being sequestered
or captured. So it effectively means net-zero emissions2.
This will take planning, investment and time but can be
achieved in the overall framework of national, EU and
global commitments.
We need to mobilise the four and a half million people
living in Ireland to place the environment at the heart of
their decisions and actions every single day; only by doing
this can we build a sustainable future. A sustainable Ireland
is an Ireland with a vibrant economy that offers a decent
livelihood for all its citizens; people and communities that
help and respect each another; and, underpinning this, a
2
protected environment that allows us to live more healthy
lives. To become sustainable we all need to change the
way we act as consumers, in our homes, our businesses
and our public bodies. Our challenge is to do this within
the planet’s capacity and ecological limits.
The environment and our health and wellbeing are
inextricably linked. A thriving, clean environment provides
the very basis of good lifestyles and we need to look
beyond simply protecting people from threats in their
environment to considering how the environment can
deliver a much wider range of health benefits.
References
EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), 2012. Ireland’s
Environment – an Assessment . EPA, Wexford, Ireland.
Available online:
(accessed 8 August 2016.)
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), 2016.
April and May 2016 continue record-setting heat. Available
online:
. (accessed 8 August 2016.)
UN (United Nations), 2015. UN Framework on Climate
Change 2015 Paris Climate Conference. UN, Paris, France.
Available online: (accessed
8 August 2016.)
WMO (World Meteorological Organization), 2015.
Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Hit Yet Another Record.
The World Meteorological Organisation’s Greenhouse
Gas Bulletin. Available online:
(accessed 8 August 2016.)
Blunden, J. and Arndt, D.S. (eds.), 2016. State of the
climate in 2015. Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society, 97: S1–S275. BAMS State of the Climate:
International report confirms 2015 was Earth’s warmest
year on record. Available online: