Reconciling Tradition and Sustainability in Ireland
In response to the climate crisis, governments worldwide have enacted measures aimed at limiting the power and discretion of fossil-fuel producers, with varying success. Though many recognize the need for an overhaul of the global energy market, the specific steps to be taken in pursuit of this goal are much more contentious. In the case of Ireland, this debate helps to highlight the widening economic and political gaps between central and peripheral regions.
The transition between energy sources has long been a pariah among rural communities around the world, many of which have felt first-hand the sting of economic loss provoked by the closure of a coal mine or the drying-up of an oil well. It is the complex task of world leaders to ensure the expedient shift to sustainable energy sources while preserving the wellbeing of those who will be hit hardest by it.
To see this phenomenon plainly, we can look to rural Ireland, where environmental policy has in recent years shaken up not only the energy market, but cultural discourse as well. Since as early as the Neolithic Age of human development, the harvest and consumption of peat, or turf, from the country’s boglands has provided an important source of heat and energy to the people of Ireland, to the extent that the fuel has become almost synonymous with the island’s rugged countryside and heartland culture. In the twentieth century however, as industrialists increasingly turned towards this potent energy source, the development of large-scale harvesting and industrial use exposed the harms of overreliance on it.
The harvest itself generates considerable strain on the environment: boglands, the most potent natural carbon sinks, are degraded to net emitters as the moisture is drained out of them by machine harvesters, allowing carbon dioxide to ‘leak’ out of the bog. Then, as the peat is burned, it becomes the most environmentally harmful fuel source publicly available. As such, at every stage of production and use, the effect of the peat harvest on the Irish environment is devastating. In response, the government has effectively shuttered the harvesting operations of Bord na Móna (the semi-public body with oversight over most of Ireland’s productive peatlands), and enacted legislation to reduce the private consumption of peat-fuel.
While these changes may have been necessary, like many such policies, they were not received without dissent, and in the end Ireland’s case offers a mixed bag of policy effectiveness. On the one hand, since the winddown of Bord na Móna’s peat harvest, the domestic production and sale of sod-peat for fuel purposes has been almost completely eliminated. Noted as an integral step for Ireland in its journey towards carbon neutrality, emissions and biodiversity-loss have declined in recent years as a direct result of policy initiatives. On the other hand, emergent cracks in the government’s broad-stroke approach to legislation presently threaten to widen an already significant gap between the economic realities and political ambitions of Ireland’s rural dwellers and the ‘elite’ in Dublin.
For the majority of Ireland’s population, the burning of turf for home heating and domestic energy purposes is long obsolete, and replaced by cheaper and more efficient ‘conventional’ methods of energy supply. However, tens of thousands of Irish households, primarily those well-detached from the cities, remain dependent on peat to supply heat to their homes, and in the case of harvesters, for their livelihoods. These households, while not necessarily ignorant of the environmental harms of the peat harvest, nor strictly opposed to change, are presented with little alternative to peat, especially in the midst of an ongoing crisis of energy prices.
For their part, the Irish government has promised that the small-scale, intra neighbourhood harvest and sale of turf among rural communities will be uninterrupted for the time being, this remaining to be such an integral practice within villages, but those on the front line of the energy transition are sceptical as to whether this will remain the case in years and decades to come. Moreover, with the decline of retail sale of the fuel and large-scale production, for those rural dwellers who themselves do not live on bogland but rely on the fuel nevertheless, there is little recourse against rising energy costs.
Broadly, the growing sentiment in Ireland’s small towns and villages is that the climate agenda of the rich and powerful in the capital is being imposed upon those out in the country, disrupting the rural economy and restricting a tradition which dates back millennia, without offering much in the way of compensation. Familiarly, voice has been given to these concerns by emergent populist political parties. Though this emergence lacks a defining left-right cleavage, with parties both left-leaning, as Sinn Féin, and right-leaning, as Aontú capitalising on the outrage, the political unity which has long favoured the Republic of Ireland has degraded in the face of a growing feeling of ‘left-behindness’ within rural communities.
This feeling is agitated by what rural residents see as hypocrisy in government policy: While the retail sale of domestically harvested peat-fuel has been banned, the production and use of peat for horticultural purposes (often as a fertiliser or a base for fungal growth) remains legal. Due to declining domestic production levels as industrial harvesting phases out and small-scale harvesting becomes less feasible, a portion of the moss-peat used by Irish farmers for horticultural purposes is now imported from abroad, the irony of which is certainly not lost on former peat-harvesters, who feel that the government is effectively endorsing the catastrophic environmental effects of bog degradation and maritime shipping while strangling small domestic business.
Pundits tend to latch onto such talking points and blow them out of proportion, but the message is still resonating among Ireland’s ‘left-behind.’ In short, while the environmental benefits of the move away from peat-fuel have already become clear, the local peat harvester who has seen their operations ground to a standstill, and their niche filled by a larger, foreign business, will have a tough time viewing that big picture. This begs the question: how might Ireland remedy this predicament?
A first step would be in better understanding, or at least better reflecting, that the heavy burden placed on rural communities by the energy transition is one which must eventually be felt by all, if net-zero targets are to be achieved. Among the member states of the European Union, Ireland’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions rank second highest, a position that has not been achieved solely on the backs of peat-burning country folk. The country’s massive dependence on automobiles and enormous agricultural sector have remain the largest sources of emissions. The share occupied by residential emissions has greatly declined, largely as a result of decreased usage of peat and coal. Implementing measures to more drastically cut down on agricultural and transport emissions will not only be a necessary measure in the long run but would help signal to those disaffected by recent anti-peat burning protocol that they are not being singled out as a minority and unfairly targeted by government officials.
Furthermore, a stronger commitment to preserving the cultural significance of the peat harvest in rural Ireland would help to dispel increasingly widespread feelings that the Dublin elite are slowly chipping away at the foundation of Irish culture and tradition. ‘Turbary,’ or the entitlement of landowners to harvest owned bogland, has an ancient and revered status in Ireland, though has been rolled back considerably in recent years as part of the broader set of reforms. Setting a realistic, permanent standard for the small-scale harvest, and communicating this to affected constituents would give at least some semblance of security to those whose finances depend heavily on it.
Critically, if the government is to avoid ostracizing rural communities, more steps must be taken to ease not only the move away from peat-fuel, but emergent climate-related transitions in transport, employment, agriculture, and the broader energy market, all of which will affect the heartland differently than they will Dublin or Cork. While some rural-specific measures are in place, there is a looming atmosphere of dissatisfaction with the current government’s approach, and upcoming elections are sure to bring that dissatisfaction to a head.
Ireland’s divisions are clearly a microcosm of a broader, global phenomenon. Pragmatic leaders around the world must understand the genuine concerns underlying the political beliefs of all voters. They must work with those interests in mind to craft effective, intuitive policies that will address 21st century crises without leaving voters feeling disillusioned or disenfranchised. Growing political divisions across the developed world are only reflective of this growing need for an overhaul of public policy, and an inspection of the state of rural affairs today perfectly highlights why.
