Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

452 Chapter 16: Environmental Policy Implementation and Performance Ireland’s performance on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals In 2015, all 193 United Nations Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At its core are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that cover the three dimensions of sustainable development: integrating economic growth, social well-being and environmental protection. Ireland’s second National Implementation Plan for the SDGs for the period 2022- 2024 was published in 2022 (DECC, 2022a). Eurostat’s most recent progress report on the SDGs (Eurostat, 2024), illustrated in Figure 16.4, shows that Ireland is performing well on the SDGs associated with macroeconomic stability (SDGs 8 and 16) and fairness (SDGs 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) but, concerningly, is moving away from a number of SDGs related to environmental sustainability, including SDG 15 Life on land, SDG 11 Sustainable cities and communities and SDG 6 Clean water and sanitation. 5 While progress is being made on SDG 13 Climate action, Ireland ranks well below the EU average due to its high net greenhouse gas emissions per capita, particularly in the LULUCF sector. On SDG 12 Responsible consumption and production, Ireland’s circular material use rate has increased marginally, from 1.7% in 2017 to 1.8% in 2022, but remains significantly lower than the EU average (11.5% in 2022). Overall, Ireland’s underperformance across many of the environmental SDGs is a serious cause for concern. 5 The move away from SDG 15, Life on land, reflects the decrease in Ireland’s forested area, from 22.4% in 2015 to 19.0% in 2018, which is significantly below the EU average of 43.5%. The move away from SDG 11, Sustainable cities and communities, reflects an increase in the severe housing deprivation rate and a higher percentage of the population reporting crime, violence or vandalism. The move away from SDG 6, Clean water and sanitation, reflects Ireland’s relatively low percentage of the population connected to at least secondary waste water treatment (62.3% compared with an EU average of 80.9% in 2021). Comparing Ireland’s performance with that of other EU Member States Building on the European Green Deal, the EU’s Eighth Environment Action Programme (8th EAP) sets out 28 headline indicators to measure progress on achieving the EU’s environment and climate goals. The first stocktake undertaken by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in 2023 found that, for most indicators, the prospect of the EU achieving the relevant 2030 targets is either uncertain or very unlikely (Figure 16.5). The indicators for ‘Enabling conditions’ were the best performing, indicating that progress is being made on putting in place the supporting conditions to meet the priority objectives of the 8th EAP. With the exception of fossil fuel subsidies, all other ‘Enabling conditions’ indicators (environmental taxes, environmental protection expenditure, green bonds, an eco-innovation index) are moving towards meeting the 2030 targets. The EEA notes that the European Green Deal is a key driver of these positive developments but that, nevertheless, these do not seem to be enough at present to produce the desired results in environmental protection and climate change. Overall, the EEA concluded that strengthening the implementation of existing legislation, bringing forward additional policies and measures when necessary, and mainstreaming environment and climate change-related policies into other policy areas is urgently needed. The report concludes that there may also be a need for a deeper reflection on the dynamics at play and why, despite existing legislation, the EU still faces challenges in meeting many of its environmental and climate change- related objectives. The outer circle in Figure 16.5 presents a comparison of how well Ireland is performing on the various 8th EAP indicators relative to other EU Member States. While it is acknowledged that directly comparing individual indicators for countries can be problematic due to differences in how the underlying data are collected and reported, looking across the suite of indicators provides an overall sense of where Ireland is performing well (and less well) relative to other EU countries.