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The Cloughjordan Community Farm In association with the National Organic Training Skillnet (NOTS), The Soil Association (UK), Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association (IOFGA), URGENCI – Global Network of CSA’s, Cloughjordan Ecovillage, Cultivate, and FEASTA present “Growing Together”, an all-Ireland conference on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) 17th, 18th & 19th of February * Cloughjordan, Tipperary The aim of this weekend conference is to introduce the CSA concept to communities and growers on the island of Ireland. [...]
The Minister for the Environment, Community & Local Government, Phil Hogan, T.D., has published (31st January 2012) a plan for the implementation of the recommendations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Review Group. The independent Review Group, established in February 2010 to review the scope, mandate, structure and performance of the EPA, presented its report in May 2011. This report contains 58 recommendations across a number of different themes such as governance, resources and licensing. [...]
Young Europeans with a fresh vision of a sustainable future are invited to participate in a video competition, with the opportunity to win cash and a trip to Copenhagen. The contest asks participants to submit a video on their vision for sustainable living in 20 years’ time. It is open to Europeans born in 1991, 1992 or 1993. Competition “Generation ’92″ has been organised by the European Environment Agency (EEA). It has been launched in [...]
Simon Coveney TD, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, today launched a public consultation process on how to harness the potential of Ireland’s vast marine resource to tap into a Trillion Euro global market for marine products & services (including seafood, tourism, shipping, oil and gas, renewable ocean energy and new applications for health, medicine and technology). Launching the public consultation ‘Our Ocean Wealth’, Minister Coveney said, “We need to change the way we [...]
-Guidelines Will Help Job Creation and Economic Development- Mr. Phil Hogan, T.D., Minister of Environment, Community and Local Government, Ms. Jan O’Sullivan, T.D., Minister for Housing and Planning, together with Mr. Leo Varadkar, T.D., Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, and Mr. Alan Kelly, T.D., Minister of State with responsibility for Public and Commuter Transport today (31 January 2012) jointly published statutory planning guidelines for local authorities on Spatial Planning and National Roads. http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/DevelopmentandHousing/Planning/ The [...]
World Wetland Day events are planned for 2-5th Feb 2012. 2012 Thur Feb 2nd is the REAL Ramsar world wetland day and the days after that till Sunday 5th are added to facilitate the weekend wetland eventers. Ramsar people celebrate wetlands across the world. In Ireland we can celebrate that 1. We have such wealth of wetlands and 2. we have better wetland law than before . There is a new opportunity to change the [...]
‘The 22nd Irish Environmental Researchers’ Colloquium (ENVIRON 2012) will be held in University College Dublin (UCD) from Wednesday, March 7th- Friday March 9th, 2012. The ENVIRON colloquium is the largest annual gathering of environmental researchers in Ireland with over 250 researchers attending the event. The event continues to provide a wonderful platform for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to present their research to a wide audience. Since its establishment in 1990 one of the main [...]
Background The Programme for Government contains a commitment to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists, and rules concerning the practice of lobbying. The Public Service Reform Programme launched by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform on 17 November 2011 contains a commitment to prepare legislation to meet this objective in 2012. Context The Government Reform Unit in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has commenced a review of the international approaches to the [...]
Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) has written to the European Commission expressing concerns that Cork County Council is not addressing the full extent of the ongoing pollution from the abandoned steel works on Haulbowline Island. At a meeting on the island before Christmas with the European Commission, Cork County Council, and the Department of the Environment, FIE was told that the proposed licensce will be limited to the 9 hectares of the East Tip [...]
Friends of the Earth has welcomed the publication of a detailed “Roadmap for Climate Policy and Legislation” by Minister for the Environment, Phil Hogan, but criticised the unnecessarily slow timeline. The Irish Times has a summary of reactions today. Commenting, Friends of the Earth Director, Oisin Coghlan, said “The roadmap provides welcome clarity about the Government’s commitment to passing a climate law and outlines the opportunities for public participation in its development. It sets out [...]
Seminar organized by the Marine Group of the Environmental Pillar, hosted by the European Parliament offices in Ireland Nov 18th 2011; 9.30 – 4 pm; EP Offices Molesworth Street Dublin...
Full text of letter to An Taoiseach Ref: Proposed incorporation of the Heritage Council with the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht cc. Minister Phil Hogan, Minister Jimmy Deenihan ...
The Environmental Pillar of Social Partnership expressed disappointment at today’s announcement by the Minister for the Environment, Phil Hogan, that a Climate Change Bill is not a priority. This represents...
Download: Budget submission 2012 Summary The Environmental Pillar, which is a coalition of 27 national environmental NGOs, was established as a National Social Partner by Government in April 2009. In...
Rio+20 seminar View more presentations from Irish Environmental Network / Environmental Pillar of Social Partnership
There are two fundamental principles that need to be emphasised in developing this action plan in order for it to be both effective and transformative: It should be Sustainable Public...
Environmental Pillar criticises the abolition of Comhar, the National Sustianable Development Council. The Environmental Pillar of Social Partnership has expressed disappointment and concern at yesterday’s decision by the minister for the...
The Environmental Pillar of Social Partnership welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the development of an understanding of Ireland’s contribution to the Rio +20 Conference on sustainable development. The major...
View more presentations from Environmental Pillar Download the Document Participatory Democracy – the story of a Trojan horse
PDF of Letter to Minister Hogan re Levy on Incinerators – with appendices Full text of letter to Minister Hogan Ref: Levy on Incineration Dear Minister Hogan, It must be...
Ronan Lyons’ report on Site Value Tax in Ireland is available for download. The report assesses the obstacles to implementing SVT in Ireland and how these can be overcome. It also assesses the revenue potential of the tax and the distribution of land values in Ireland. Click here to download. You can also see Ronan’s [...]
By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland. Cross posted in Naked Capitalism In 2008 profits in the US economy crashed out. But they soon bounced back. This bounce was largely due to the profits being reaped in the financial sector – which sickened many given that 2008 was in large measure [...]
Ann Pettifor is depressing reading in her blog ‘Debtonation’. She was right before and sadly, likely to be so again. …We, and many others, expect the banks of all the major OECD economies to collapse over the next few months. This will drag the UK, Eurozone and US down. In other words, and to be [...]
Quoting from John Grail in the Guardian Bill Mitchell in Billyblog elaborates why exactly the Euro is not and never was a success in any of the ways that matter. ….So for 30 years or more, the European governments, in particular the Eurozone member states have been deliberately deflating their economies in search of their [...]
Good post by Cian O’Callaghan describing the frustrating size of the task before us – and the Occupy movement in the irelandafternama blog. Lately, I find myself having a recurring conversation. The people and the places change but the basic premise stays the same. I meet friends whom I haven’t seen in some time, I [...]
Writing in the Asian Times, Chris Cooks gives a very useful and to my mind accurate description of the evolution of our current money system. He predicts a crash in oil and other commodity prices in the first quarter of 2012. He ws also bold enough to predict the form of the new economy to emerge post the mayhem of this crash. Here I think he strays a little into wishful thinking. His preference is for Peer to Peer and Peer to Assets forms of credit creation. No doubt these will emerge but what unit of account will be used? Chris suggests that the universal unit of account will be a unit of energy. Certainly that is a distinct possibility and energy units will play an important part in an energy constrained world. But its universality goes against the story that he so masterfully set out in his introduction where two kinds of money/credit evolved together - the first a form of barter where real things are exchanged, the second a simple tally or record of a promise that is backed by unreal things such as trust and reputation and sometimes physical force. This second kind of money is that described and promoted by modern money theorists (MMT) - government money backed by the requirement to use it to pay taxes. There are very many positive reasons for this kind of money to persist not least as it carries with it a sense of social understanding that allows for debt forgiveness when the economy or political climate requires it. Energy units are likely to be just as unforgiving as gold.
The Papers today is provide by Friends of the Irish Environment - click on an item for further details. Click here for the Friends of the Irish Environment Site. An Taisce would like to thank the Friends of the Irish Environment for providing this service.