Ireland is failing Paris agreement climate test, campaigners to tell UN delegation

Ireland’s lack of progress in reducing climate pollution from energy, transport and buildings will be outlined to a UN delegation visiting Ireland by the Stop Climate Chaos (SCC) coalition on Wednesday.

SCC representatives will highlight “delays with implementation, poor policy coherence across Government, a growing dairy herd and a continued over-reliance on fossil fuels”.

Ireland’s dependence on imported fossil fuels including gas, oil and coal contribute more than 70 per cent of Ireland’s total final energy consumption “and leave the country extremely vulnerable to price shocks as well as contributing to climate change”, it will warn.

The Government’s 2023 climate plan is supposed to keep Ireland’s total carbon pollution within the limits set when the Dáil adopted two five-year carbon budgets for 2021-2025 and from 2026-30.

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SCC representatives are meeting a team of experts from the UN climate change secretariat (UNFCC) are reviewing the State’s progress under the 1992 Climate Change Convention and the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The delegation wants to give civil society organisations the opportunity to comment on how Ireland is performing against its commitments under international climate law, which cover emissions reporting; mitigation, adaptation, research, climate finance and loss and damage.

In advance of the meeting SCC coordinator Sadhbh O’ Neill said: “In 1992, Ireland ratified the convention and committed to bringing our national greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels as soon as possible, to avoid dangerous climate change. 30 years on and emissions are still higher than they were in 1990. In 2015 Ireland ratified the Paris Agreement and committed to doing our fair share of the global effort to hold global warming below 2 degrees and to pursue 1.5 degrees.”

“Despite the adoption of carbon budgets, we have yet to bend the emissions curve and there are still major gaps in the Government’s climate policies. As a member of the UN Ireland made these commitments to the international community in 1992 and 2015 but we have so far failed to deliver the action we promised,” Ms O’Neill said.

It is actions that ultimately matter – not rhetoric or plans, she underlined. “We are hopeful that this UNFCCC periodic review will recommend accelerated policy interventions to drive the phase out of fossil fuels, and tackle emissions from transport, agriculture and buildings so that we deliver what we promised well before 2030.”

SCC chair Siobhán Curran, head of policy and advocacy at Trócaire, said: “This is an important opportunity for the UNFCCC to evaluate Ireland’s progress with regard to fairness, equity, justice and human rights in climate action. Communities in the Global South who have done least to cause the climate crisis are bearing the devastating brunt of climate impacts, including crisis hunger, water stress, loss of homes and livelihoods and deepening poverty and inequality.”

“Richer countries like Ireland need to do more to ensure our climate action is rooted in climate justice and human rights, including through provision of our fair share of high quality climate finance, so that the poorest people in the world don’t continue to pay the price for global emissions.”