Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

480 Chapter 17: Conclusions The role of land use in making the necessary transitions is key. Delivering climate neutrality (in the agriculture and land use sector) would need diversification, restoration of degraded peatlands and water table management across many thousands of hectares of organic soils under grassland, together with planting extremely large amounts of new forest (Styles et al. , 2024). The EU Biodiversity Strategy, the CAP Strategic Plan (including the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme), EU Nature Restoration Law (Regulation (EU) 2024/1991) and Food Vision 2030 all set targets for space for nature within agricultural land. There are many plans and programmes in place, with positive action being implemented on farm, but there is no clear evidence that the current measures will achieve the scale of environmental outcomes that is needed. Land will also be required to accommodate the increasing population’s need for housing and services and the ongoing drive to provide renewable wind and solar power. While land-related policies and targets are often set at the national level, their implementation depends on the local scale: different locations are suited to different land use options. The development of mechanisms to allocate national targets at more granular levels is needed. The approach to allocation of renewable energy targets contained in the draft National Planning Framework may be an exemplar for such allocations, but clearly there is a need to develop extensive dialogue with private landowners who own the majority of land in Ireland. Achieving transformation of our energy, mobility and food systems will require leadership and engagement across all parts of society, as it will require changes in how we work, travel and enjoy our lives. Consequently, there is a critical need to engage citizens, communities and businesses to work with the state. We need to lock into trajectories that will achieve sustainability across the core systems of our society. Once that has been achieved, Ireland stands to gain significantly by avoiding harm to nature and society and from the economic and social opportunities that sustainability creates. Scaling up investment in infrastructure Investment in water, energy, transport and waste management infrastructure is essential to protect the environment now and into the future. The latest population projections undertaken by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) indicate that Ireland’s population will reach 5.7 million by 2030. The population is projected to grow further to between 6.5 million and 7 million by 2057 in medium- and high- growth scenarios, respectively (CSO, 2024). Against this backdrop of a growing population, the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council has pointed out that persistent deficits in our energy, water and waste water infrastructure risk future demand from enterprises outstripping supply, representing a significant reputational risk for Ireland (NCPC, 2024). Water. From an environmental perspective, Ireland has still not met all its obligations under the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive some 30 years after the country was required to comply with the directive. Waste water continues to reduce the quality of our rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters, and the EPA has highlighted that it will take a multi-billion-euro investment and at least two decades to bring all waste water treatment systems up to standard (EPA, 2023). Similarly, many drinking water supplies still lack robust