Sustainability

UN Climate Action Summit 2019 - what commitments will Ireland make?

Monday, 23 September 2019

The UN Climate Action Summit 2019 begins in New York today. The purpose of the summit is for countries who signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 to bring concrete, realistic and effective plans to meet 2020 targets and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent in the next ten years. What plan does Ireland have to fully transform the economy in line with the sustainable development goals?

Subsidising our own destruction

Friday, 20 September 2019

It's time for Governments to put an end to policies that subsidise and encourage the extraction and use of fossil fuels. Without such a move, Ireland will continue to be a laggard in terms of our climate action goals and obligations.

Billions lost in potentially environmentally damaging subsidies while Ireland waits for a Just Transition

Monday, 2 September 2019

Ireland has signed up to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and is committed to legally binding climate commitments in 2020 and 2030. We have a national commitment to be carbon neutral by 2050 yet we spend up to €4 billion every year on potentially environmentally damaging subsidies.

National Social Monitor - Sustainability Edition

Monday, 2 September 2019

In the Sustainability edition of our National Social Monitor, we assess whether current policy on sustainability encompasses the three pillars of environment, society and economy and make proposals on how to transition towards a sustainable future.

Does Ireland need a sustainable land use strategy?

Wednesday, 28 August 2019

The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report on Climate Change and Land raises some significant issues for Ireland, and in particular our policies on food production and land management.

Will Budget 2020 deliver on Retrofitting?

Monday, 26 August 2019

The ongoing confusion regarding the funding of applications to the SEAI Deep Retrofitting pilot is disappointing, particularly as one of the headline policies in the Climate Action Plan 2019 to ensure Ireland transitions to a low carbon future is increased retrofitting. Will Budget 2020 deliver the resources required to establish a comprehensive and ambitious retrofitting programme?

Renewable Economies – The potential for circular and bio-economies in Ireland

Friday, 23 August 2019

A sustainable economy would involve transformative change and policies. The ‘circular economy’ theory is based on the understanding that it is the reuse of vast amounts of material reclaimed from end of life products, rather than the extraction of new resources, that is the foundation of economic growth. In July 2019, the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation launched its paper – Realising the opportunities for enterprise in the bioeconomy and circular economy in Ireland, which considers the impact of transitioning to more sustainable practices to provide solutions to ‘issues ranging from climate change, to pollution, to economic and regional development’.

Budget 2020 must put sustainability at the top of the agenda

Monday, 19 August 2019

Budget 2020 is an opportunity for government to implement a number of policies which would assist Ireland in meeting its environmental targets. Social Justice Ireland's budget submission contains a number of proposals that would help meet Ireland's targets while also incentivising better behaviour by our citizens and raising hundreds of millions of euros in revenue.

Launch of the SDG Hub to track Ireland’s progress towards the SDGs

Wednesday, 31 July 2019

The Government has just launched a new initiative to track Ireland’s progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the SDG Hub. The SDG Hub is a Geosite – a website developed in collaboration with Ordinance Survey Ireland, the Central Statistics Office and Esri Ireland – and contains a lot of useful data and information on the SDGs and how Ireland is measuring them. This work complements the Sustainable Progress Index produced each year by Social Justice Ireland, and the call for open source data to fill the gaps which remain in creating a full picture of the SDGs echoes our call to the Minister last year.

UN Report outlines the stark impact climate change will have on people in poverty

Friday, 28 June 2019

Climate change will have the greatest impact on those living in poverty, who have the least capacity to protect themselves. Yet they are responsible for just a fraction of global emissions.