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

Chapter 15: Environmental Performance, Policy and Implementation The ongoing revolution in data and knowledge, sometimes referred to as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, is another key driver at European level. Emerging data sources, such as Earth observation and Earth systems models, can now be combined with socioeconomic data and contextual analysis to enable better informed policy decisions towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and environmental agreements (EEA, 2019a). ‘Big data’ generated through artificial intelligence and technological analytics can be used to generate new environmental knowledge to inform environmental assessment processes and advance better decision-making. Future sensor technology should allow disaggregation of spatial and demographic information at a detailed level. A combination of satellites and airborne and ground-based networks can be used to monitor developments (e.g. land use change, deforestation, drainage) and associated impacts at the local, regional and global levels in near real time, enabling rapid responses to changing circumstances. In addition, citizen science can enable the timely, cost- effective collation of in situ data from dispersed sources. All these new data collection, mapping and assessment advances will generate new insights and knowledge about the state of the environment, which in turn will inform policy responses to deal with the issues identified. Ireland and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Ireland has committed to the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to fully achieving the SDGs by 2030. The UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its SDGs are becoming a major influence and driver in environmental policy. 6 For example, the Commission’s Green Deal (EC, 2019a) is an integral part of its strategy to implement the UN’s 2030 Agenda and the SDGs. This puts the ‘sustainable development goals at the heart of the EU’s policymaking and action’. The importance of the SDGs for environment policy is also highlighted in the recent state of the environment report from the EEA (2019a). In Ireland, the Sustainable Development Goals National Implementation Plan 2018-2020 , published by the DCCAE in 2018, provides for a whole-of-government approach to implementing the UN SDGs (DCCAE, 2018). The plan provides an ‘SDG Matrix’ that identifies the government departments responsible for each of the 169 SDG targets. According to the DCCAE, the plan identifies four strategic priorities to guide implementation: awareness, participation, support and policy alignment. 6 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld Another important national SDG policy document is Ireland’s Voluntary National Review report. This is Ireland’s report to the UN High-level Political Forum (Government of Ireland, 2018). The report looks at Ireland’s performance against each of the 17 SDGs, mainly using a range of Eurostat indicators developed for the SDGs. In Ireland, the task of gathering statistics on all of the SDG goals, targets and indicators, including the environmental indicators, has been given to the Central Statistics Office (CSO). 7 The CSO, in collaboration with Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI), has developed the Geohive public platform ‘for exploring, downloading and combining publicly available data relating to the UN and the European Union (EU) Sustainable Development Goals’. 8 The Geohive also provides spatial data and includes ‘story maps and videos that provide a narrative to the SDGs and enable non-technical users to visualise the data’. 5. Improving Environmental Performance and Policy Implementation Coherent Governance Structures are Key to Effective Implementation of Environmental Legislation and Policy With the ever-expanding range and complexity of environmental policy and legislation, plans and programmes in place across different departments and regulatory bodies – which increasingly require cross-sectoral action – a review of national environmental governance in Ireland is timely. This review could consider the governance structures that would allow better coordination and integration of environmental protection work, and that would support the full implementation and enforcement of environmental legislation and policies. It could examine how to be more effective at providing information on the substantial range of work that is already carried out on the protection of Ireland’s environment. In its 2019 EIR of Ireland, the Commission identified specific priority actions for Ireland to strengthen environmental governance, which are outlined in Topic Box 15.7. 7 https://www.cso.ie/en/unsdgs/ 8 https://irelandsdg.geohive.ie/ 403