EPA - Ireland's Environment 2016 - An Assessment

88 / 234

Ireland’s Environment – An Assessment 2016 84
Seaweed Harvesting
The proposals for large-scale seaweed harvesting will
require careful scrutiny and regulation to prevent
damage to intertidal biodiversity, to maintain
sustainability and to protect the marine environment.
Current proposals for a review of the licensing of activities
on the foreshore have the potential to impact on the use
of coastal marine resources. Traditional seaweed harvesting
has generally fallen into a legal grey area, with the
rights of coastal landowners and the state’s claim to the
foreshore sometimes in conflict.23
A number of applications for large-scale seaweed
harvesting rights have brought these issues to the fore,
and a recent Oireachtais committee review suggested
that a thorough review of the licensing regime needs to
be undertaken (Oireachtas, 2015). Given the importance
of the intertidal seaweed communities for biodiversity
and coastal protection and as nursery grounds for a
wide variety of marine life, any future development in
this area needs to be well regulated to ensure maximum
sustainability and protection of the marine environment.
Catchment and Ecosystem Services
Raising awareness of the benefits and services to
society from water catchments will assist in their
management.
The benefits received by ecosystems and humans from
resources and processes which are supplied by water
catchments have been termed “catchment services”
(Daly, 2015). These include ecosystem services (the benefits
that are derived from ecosystems), geosystem services
(the values and services associated with geodiversity)
and human–social system services (social and cultural
services that contribute to the life environment). These
benefits include the provision of water for consumption
and agriculture use, the assimilation and purification of
pollutants, flood regulation and water based recreation
and tourism.24 Raising awareness of the services that
catchments and marine ecosystems provide for society
will assist in managing water catchments.
The ESManage25 project, which runs until 2018 and is
funded by the EPA, aims to harness the knowledge and
tools required to embed the ecosystem services approach
into policymaking and decision making for sustainable
management of water resources, as required by the WFD.
The Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Ruraland
Gaeltacht Affairs has commissioned ecosystem services
23
24
25
mapping and assessment for an initial suite of prioritised
ecosystem services in Ireland. This project is due for
completion in 2016. It is developing Irish indicators for
potential ecosystem services mapping, based on available
national data, using methods developed in the UK and the
EU. A follow-up project will look at how to operationalise
the ecosystem services concept in Ireland through policy
and legislation.
Economic Policy Instruments
Economic policy instruments can play a role in
achieving water policy goals.
There is growing appreciation globally of the importance
of natural capital, including catchment services, to our
economy (see Chapter 4) (CIMA, 2013). Recent research
suggests that people in Ireland do value water-related
ecosystem services and are willing to pay to achieve good
water quality in rivers (EPA, 2014a, 2014c).
Many of the environmental problems with water
ecosystems (e.g. pollution, overabstraction and physical
damage) stem from the fact that water in the environment
is an open access resource, and often there are few
restrictions on its use (e.g. abstractions and pollutant
discharges). Sectors often use water in the environment
without paying the full cost of environmental impact that
their activities cause.