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

Ireland’s Environment – An Integrated Assessment 2020 Forestry With regard to forestry, there needs to be a focus on increasing the level of forest cover, supporting further broadleaf planting and species diversification and maximising sustainable forest management practices (such as the right tree in the right place). We also need to better understand the barriers to uptake of forestry by landowners, to help increase the amount of planting of native woodlands, agroforestry and forestry for fibre. Spatial Planning We must ensure that our cities, towns, villages and rural areas are developed in an environmentally sustainable way. Active steps will be needed by many stakeholders, including government, local authorities, infrastructure bodies and local communities, to implement alternatives to urban sprawl and the suburbanisation of Ireland’s countryside. These aims are well outlined in the National Planning Framework and include planned town and village development, measured controls on sporadic housing development in rural areas near cities, towns and major road corridors, implementing brownfield regeneration and delivering affordable town and village self-build housing options close to employment, services and amenities. The importance of our green and blue spaces for our health and wellbeing, for providing quiet areas and for local biodiversity is now widely recognised. We should aim to protect existing natural green infrastructure and increase levels of green and blue infrastructure in towns and cities through county- and local-level land use planning. In terms of wider planning and land management considerations, we should, where possible, aim to incorporate nature-based and natural water retention measures as solutions in flood risk management planning. For old industrial and waste areas, there is still a need to develop a national policy to remediate contaminated and degraded land and soil, as this is a gap at present. Landscape Regarding landscape protection, there has been little progress in achieving the aims of the National Landscape Strategy to date. We need to deliver on the commitments of the National Landscape Strategy and the National Planning Framework, as well as to prepare a national landscape character map. This will help us provide for planned economic and social development while also ensuring that we protect, enhance and manage changes in our landscapes in a coherent manner. Such strategies and frameworks will also help us understand and take account of the interactions between environmental and landscape sensitivities in our sectoral and land use planning activities. Research There is need to continue supporting collaborative research to address environmental knowledge gaps. Outputs of environmental research help inform policymaking to address the many environmental challenges facing us. Good examples of applied research include the Environmental Sensitivity Mapping Webtool, which is helping local authorities to prepare land use plans and related environmental assessments and the Soil Navigator, which helps farmers capture the trade-off and synergies between different soil functions. Agriculture With regard to agriculture, we need to continue improving our knowledge of soils and the functions and services they provide. This includes looking at how to maximise the potential for soils in Ireland to be carbon sinks. We must continue to carefully manage soil enrichment and land management activities, to avoid or minimise greenhouse gas emissions into the air or nutrient and sediment losses into our water catchments. The consequences of nutrient loss for Ireland’s water quality are outlined in Chapters 7 and 8. We should also continue to support high nature value farming and environmentally sustainable farming practices, for the many environmental benefits they provide. 122