This is a submission on behalf of the Environmental Pillar in response to the call for submissions to
the Citizens Assembly on Biodiversity Loss. The Environmental Pillar is an organisation that works to
represent the views of 32 of Ireland’s leading environmental NGOs. We work to promote
environmental sustainability and the protection of our natural environment. In May 2019, Dáil
Eireann declared a climate and biodiversity emergency1 making Ireland only the second country to
do so, after the UK. Since then we have been awaiting an emergency response commensurate with
the scale of the crisis we face. While some notable actions have been taken such as the Review of
the National Parks and Wildlife Service, we have not seen biodiversity loss given the attention it
deserves. Despite a multitude of government commitments, targets and timelines we continue to
see the health of the environment deteriorate and even once common species edge towards
national extinction. This is all the more frustrating because we know that when conservationists,
farmers and communities are given the tools we need we can restore biodiversity. It is our hope that
Citizens Assembly can help to focus minds, bringing public attention and political leadership and a
renewed determination to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.
In this submission we will outline the scale of the crisis humanity has unleashed on Nature and make
some recommendations on how we as a nation can turn the tide of biodiversity loss.
Read the full submission here: Environmental Pillar (2022) Submission to the Citizens Assembly on Biodiversity Loss
