Analysis: Breaking the link between economic growth and environmental degradation is the real challenge facing Ireland, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
The buzz phrase in the Environmental Protection Agency's report, Environment in Focus 2002, is "eco-efficiency" - in other words, finding cleaner and more efficient methods of production to reduce pressures on the environment and the use of natural resources.
Eco-efficiency aims at breaking the link between economic growth, on the one hand, and environmental degradation on the other. Projected onto a national scale it becomes "a useful tool in assessing overall progress towards sustainable development", as the EPA says.
Two years ago the agency found that record economic growth had accelerated pressures on the environment - pollution of inland waters, growing waste mountains, the impact of traffic in urban areas, soaring greenhouse gas emissions and exploitation of natural resources.
In its latest report, published yesterday, the EPA has selected 50 indicators to evaluate Ireland's progress in confronting these five key environmental challenges and to assess the impacts on the environment of industry, transport, energy and agriculture.
The overall trend of pressures on the environment, increasing at varying rates with economic growth, is delicately described as "a cause for concern".
In particular, the challenge of decoupling waste generation from economic growth is seen as "formidable".
For most indicators, the rate of increase of the environmental pressure has been slower than the rate of growth in GDP.
Only in the case of sulphur dioxide, where there has been a decrease in the amount of emissions, has there been an "absolute decoupling".
This is largely due to a switch by industry to sulphur-free and low-sulphur fuels. And even though industrial production doubled between 1995 and 2001, the EPA's Integrated Pollution Control licensing regime has had an impact in terms of energy efficiency and cleaner production.
Similarly in the energy sector the rate of growth in demand was less than the rate of economic growth.
Greenhouse gas emissions from power plants have also not risen quite so fast because of increasing use of more efficient natural gas, rather than oil, for electricity generation.
But the positive stuff pretty well ends there. By the end of 2000 Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions were already 24 per cent higher than in 1990, and bringing them down to +13 per cent by 2010 is probably the most serious environmental challenge we now face.
The transport sector leads in fuelling this substantial increase in emissions. Though vehicle numbers and emissions of nitrogen oxides have risen less rapidly than GDP, they constitute a growing problem in terms of pollution and congestion.
"Increased urbanisation, the number of households, changing agricultural practices and increased waste generation have also significantly added to the pressures being placed on the environment," the EPA says, adding that "significant challenges lie ahead".
The residential sector is the one that shows least eco-efficiency according to the report, with waste generation and private vehicle numbers rising considerably faster than the rate of increase in population, mainly because of a trend towards smaller household size.
There can be no doubt either that land resources in Ireland, however unlimited they may appear, are coming under increasing pressure as a result of urban sprawl and that both the landscape itself and the habitats it supports are being degraded by the current rural housing boom.
Intensive agriculture also remains a major source of pressure on the environment. Indeed, it is "the sector where the need to balance the three dimensions of sustainable development - economy, environment and society - is most evident," as the EPA report puts it.
Overall the pressures on Ireland's environment are increasing at significantly faster rates than in most other European countries, due to the rapid economic growth since 1995, and this presents us with problems in terms of meeting our international obligations.
"Ireland urgently requires a modern waste management infrastructure and an integrated, efficient public transport system to address the crisis situations both in the transport sector and in waste management," says the EPA.
Who but the motorway builders could disagree?