EPA - Ireland's Environment, An Integrated Assessment - 2020

Chapter 5: Land and Soil Landscape Ireland’s National Landscape Strategy sets out the principles for protecting and enhancing the landscape while positively managing changes. Our landscape has been shaped by long-running natural processes and human intervention throughout history. It forms an important part of our cultural and natural identity. It contributes to the wellbeing of our economy (e.g. the tourism industry), society and environment. How we value and protect our landscape plays an important role in where (and how) our settlements grow and where any supporting infrastructure should be placed. The European Landscape Convention aims to balance spatial planning, development and landscape protection. In Ireland, this is being provided for through the Planning and Development Act Regulations 2000- 2010 and Local Government Reform Act 2014. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has produced forestry-related landscape guidance since 2000. It also designates hedgerows, ditches and open drains as ‘landscape features’ to be protected under the Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition of cross-compliance. Archaeological sites and monuments are also recognised as important features to protect. Ireland’s National Landscape Strategy (DAHG, 2015b) sets out the principles for protecting and enhancing the landscape while positively managing changes. It recognises the need to establish a landscape policy framework approach to inform planning authorities’ decision-making. It includes an action requiring public authorities to prepare ‘State of the Landscape’ reports, which would then be summarised by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Although this was a positive commitment in 2015, to date it has not been implemented. The National Planning Framework similarly committed to preparing a national landscape character map as a specific objective; however, this has also not yet been implemented. The absence of a national landscape character map makes it more difficult to plan for important strategic infrastructure, such as windfarms, for example. The National Planning Framework also commits to developing guidance on local landscape character assessments (including historic landscape characterisation), to provide for a more consistent landscape character assessment approach across administrative boundaries. The Marine Institute has recently developed a Seascape Character Assessment 12 for the first time. This will help define the key characteristics of our coastal seascapes, at a regional level and should help inform planning decisions on land and in the marine environment. Regionally, the regional spatial and economic strategies will help coordinate local authority landscape character assessments. This should improve consistency between adjoining local authorities, in valuing, protecting and managing their shared landscape resources. 5. Research We need to continue supporting ongoing collaborative research to address environmental knowledge gaps covering land use, soils and spatial planning. Ongoing research will help inform national soil-related policies and interactions with wider environmental protection. The EPA research programme funds research to inform land and soil policy, implementation, enforcement and sustainable use. The range of projects funded includes desk and medium- scale studies, scholarships and fellowships. Some of these research projects are listed in Topic Box 5.7. 12 https://emff.marine.ie/blue-growth/project-13-definition-and- classification-ireland%E2%80%99s-seascapes 119