Every four years the Environmental Protection Agency produce an integrated assessment report on the Irish environment. The report published this week covers the past four years, and presents the most recent integrated information on the quality of Ireland’s environment. Outlining the current state of our environment at a strategic level, it also provides an update on the environmental challenges that we face, nationally and globally.
The report finds that a fundamental shift is necessary in the national policy position on the environment, to allow for long-term planning and ensure that the environment is prioritised consistently across decades. Essentially, we must do better. Our policy responses to date have been insufficient to halt the decline in our environment. We have made progress in some areas, but the scale and speed are not adequate to meet the environmental needs.
The report identifies five key essential areas we must prioritise to deliver the impact we need:
- We urgently need a national policy position on the environment.
- We must rigorously implement existing environmental plans and programmes to achieve the benefits that they were developed to deliver.
- We need to transform our energy, transport, food and industrial sectors.
- We need to scale up investment in water, energy, transport and waste management infrastructure.
- We need to understand that protecting our environment is protecting our health – harm one and we harm the other.
“We know what we have to do” Ms Burke Director General of the EPA added. “Our energy, transport, food and industrial sectors are the core of where this transformation can, must, and will happen. We must harness all of our resources to meet this challenge. Not acting now only postpones inevitable change that will be much more difficult, and more costly, later on.”
Ireland’s State of the Environment Report 2024 (epa.ie)
