Tag: climate change

CEJ Report: Constitutionalising Environmental Rights – Practical Insights Into the Irish Context

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Ireland, like all countries, is facing the interrelated crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. While Ireland has a wide-ranging environmental governance regime, implementation and enforcement issues continue to undermine the effectiveness of its environmental laws and policies.

Environmental rights are a potentially valuable tool to address this issue and to enhance environmental ambitions within policy and legislation. Such rights are gradually increasing in presence internationally including within treaties, resolutions and national constitutions.

Currently in Ireland, there are no express constitutional environmental rights. In April 2023, the Citizens Assembly on Biodiversity Loss recommended that a referendum be held on inserting environmental human rights and Rights of Nature into the Constitution.

This report, ‘Constitutionalising Environmental Rights – Practical Insights into the Irish Context‘ examines if, and how, Ireland should constitutionalise environmental rights. The project was undertaken by Dr Orla Kelleher and Dr Mary Dobbs of the School of Law and Criminology in Maynooth University and commissioned by Community Law & Mediation with funding from Lifes2Good Foundation and support from Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute.

With the potential of environmental rights to address the triple planetary crisis a live issue, the urgency of which is only likely to grow, the report provides valuable insights into constitutionalising environmental rights in Ireland and contains recommendations for policymakers, legislators, civil society and academia. 

Read the full report below.

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New Health, Home and Your Environment Free Information and Advice Clinic – The Centre for Environmental Justice

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Are harmful environmental issues impacting the health and safety of you, your home or community?

As the person experiencing an environmental harm, you are best placed to diagnose the issue.  

Pollution in the environment or climate-related events can have an impact on our health. Health impacts of environmental stressors include cardiovascular diseases, respiratory illnesses, and cancers. In contrast, living in a safe and healthy home and having access to green spaces contributes to our physical and mental wellbeing. 

Community Law & Mediation, your local community law centre, is running a free information and advice clinic on how to address environmental harms and protect biodiversity.   

This clinic is for your concerns about: 

  • The quality of the air you breathe inside your home and outdoors 
  • Water quality in your home  
  • Water pollution in your local area (rivers, lakes, groundwater, and the coast) 
  • Biodiversity loss in your local area and access to green space  
  • Illegal dumping  
  • The impacts of climate change affecting you and your community  

Our new Health, Home and Your Environment free information and advice clinic aims to empower you with the information needed to act for a just solution that ensures the health of you, your home, and your community.  

Book into the clinic by filling out this online booking form. 

(Ensure your place! – Please mention our new environmental clinic within the booking form)

Air and Water Quality 

Our clinic could be helpful if: 

  • Your local area has bad outdoor air quality from traffic, solid fuel burning, or industrial burning 
  • Your home has poor indoor air quality 
  • You have been advised not to drink your tap water without first boiling the water 
  • You are concerned that local groundwater, rivers, lakes, or coastal waters are polluted 
  • There is illegal dumping in your neighbourhood 

Energy Costs and Dampness

Our clinic could be helpful if: 

  • You are concerned about climate change  
  • There is biodiversity loss in your local area, and you want to protect nature.  
  • You want to ensure that your community has access to green space, and that such areas are protected. 
  • You have experienced the effects of climate change in the form of storms, flooding, erosion, or other damage to your home or property 

Climate and Biodiversity  

Our clinic could be helpful if: 

  • You are concerned about climate change  
  • There is biodiversity loss in your local area, and you want to protect nature.  
  • You want to ensure that your community has access to green space, and that such areas are protected. 
  • You have experienced the effects of climate change in the form of storms, flooding, erosion, or other damage to your home or property 

Book into the clinic by filling out this online booking form. 

(Ensure your place! – Please mention our new environmental clinic within the booking form)

If you would like to help us spread the word about this new clinic, you can download and share the flyer below, or share our social media posts! 

You can help us spread the word by sharing our LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Bluesky or Instagram posts.

Town Hall Meeting on the Planning and Development Bill 2023 and Proposed changes to Judicial Review (Online)

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Calling all citizens, residents’ associations, community and environmental groups!

Join us to find out more about how changes to judicial review will impact you!

Community Law & Mediation invites you to an online Town Hall meeting on the Planning and Development Bill 2023 on Tuesday 6th February 7.30-8.30pm.

Hear from legal experts, resident’s associations and environmental groups on the proposed changes to judicial review (in Part 9 of the Bill), and the impact that they will have on how citizens, residents’ associations, community and environmental groups engage with the planning system and challenge planning decisions which affect their communities and the environment.

The Bill is currently progressing through the Oireachtas, with Committee Stage expected to commence in February.

We hope you can attend, and we look forward to hearing your views!

Agenda

  • Introduction: What is Part 9 of the Planning and Development Bill, and how does it impact you? Gavin Elliott, Environmental Justice Lawyer at Community Law & Mediation.

  • Residents’ associations and environmental groups: Why the judicial review process is important, experiences of taking a judicial review, and the impact of the proposed changes: Robin Mandal, Chairperson of the Dublin Democratic Planning Alliance. Mary O’Leary, Chairperson of Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment.

  • Conclusion: A call to action Rose Wall, CEO of Community Law & Mediation.

Please click here to register for this event.

We would be most grateful if you could share the below post, and others shared on social media in coming days with your networks.

Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / Instagram

Who are we?

Community Law & Mediation is an independent community law centre and charity, working since 1975 with communities impacted by social exclusion, disadvantage and inequality, through the provision of free legal, mediation and education services.

In 2021, we opened the Centre for Environmental Justice, which works to ensure climate change and other environmental harms do not disproportionately affect those who have contributed least to the problem, and that the State’s response to environmental challenges addresses inequality and protects the rights of present and future generations.

Latest IPCC report must be met with action, not words

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Latest IPCC Report published today

Today the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Synthesis Report. This report provides an up-to-date understanding of climate change, its impacts, future risks and options for addressing it.

The IPCC report distils more than 10,000 pages of climate science from work carried out between 2018 and 2022.

It reflects an undeniable scientific consensus about the urgency of the climate crisis, its primary causes, and the catastrophic and irreversible harm that will occur if warming surpasses 1.5°C.

This report must be met with action, not words.

The window to remain within 1.5C is rapidly narrowing

Two years into Ireland’s first legally-binding carbon budget (2021-2025), Ireland’s emissions remain among the highest in the EU. Worryingly, the Annex of Actions to Ireland’s 2023 Climate Action Plan fails to clarify what level of emissions reductions the Plan will achieve in 2023 and beyond.

Further delay on transformative climate action risks an abrupt, forceful, and disorderly transition.

So, we call on the Government to:

  • Clarify whether the Climate Action Plan 2023 and Annex of Actions comply with Ireland’s 2021-2025 legally-binding carbon budget.
  • Accelerate the full implementation of the Climate Action Plan 2023.
  • Incorporate Land Use Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) and the “Unallocated Emissions Reductions” into Ireland’s carbon budget programme.
  • Publish the Long-Term Climate Action Strategy, which is now more than three years overdue to the European Commission.

“Rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes” must be socially just and protect and promote human rights

The IPCC report is clear: our house is on fire. There is no safe level of global warming. The impacts of the climate crisis at just over 1°C have already been devastating,  particularly within communities that have contributed least to the problem.[1]

In Ireland, responsibility for emissions is deeply uneven. The top 10% of the population contributed about a third of Ireland’s cumulative carbon emissions between 1990 and 2015. The cost of climate mitigation and adaptation measures must not fall on those who are least responsible.

It is essential that Ireland’s transition is underpinned by the principles of a Just Transition and the protection and promotion of human rights.

We call on the Government to:

  • Poverty-proof and equality-proof all climate policies to ensure that the cost of climate mitigation and adaptation measures do not fall on marginalised and vulnerable groups
  • Scale up the ambition of Ireland’s National Retrofit Plan to include all social housing and groups most at risk of energy poverty. Deliver free and reliable public transport across Ireland.
  • Halt new fossil fuel infrastructure, withdraw existing licenses from fossil fuel companies, and introduce a moratorium on new data centres.
  • Ensure a Just Transition by accelerating the establishment of a Just Transition Commission and embed the Just Transition guidelines across all government.

Above all, the IPCC report clearly demonstrates that solutions to the climate crisis are economically and technologically feasible. Amidst an abundance of alarming information and scientific warnings, what is needed is political will to mobilise Ireland’s just transition to a fossil-free future.

Find out more about CLM’s Centre for Environmental Justice and how we can help you here.

[1] Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N22/438/51/PDF/N2243851.pdf?OpenElement

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