Constitution and biodiversity loss

Sir, – While the Government is puzzling over the meaning of “the family” for any amendments to the Constitution, perhaps it could instead take up the “overarching” recommendation of the world’s first Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss.

Noting that that the State had comprehensively failed to act on our Government’s 2019 declaration of a Biodiversity and Climate Emergency, in March 2023 it recommended that we incorporate protection for the environment into the Constitution to “to ensure that nature is protected enough to continue to provide people with necessary ecosystem services, such as food, clean freshwater and air, and to allow people to access and enjoy a clean, safe and healthy environment, both now and into the future”.

Ireland supported the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution recognising the right to a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” as a human right in October 2021. With more than 150 countries having incorporated this right into their national constitution, there should at least be little problem defining the word. – Yours, etc,

TONY LOWES,