Despite the dismay at DUP environmental policy, few in northern politics have the stomach for the issues, writes FIONNUALA O'CONNOR
LAND, AND the emotion it arouses, is famously near the centre of the North's tensions. But "the environment" is a modern invention in many minds, not the same thing at all as the tilled field, bottomless bog, lonely hills, or long redbrick streets into their third century of intensive, varied use. Environmental concern has no special appeal to one or other main community. Instincts cross all the traditional divides. You might well be proud of the fields: you might also have less than a grain of interest in hedges full of wildflowers where a wire fence would be easier to maintain.
Or so it seems to a swathe of the new northern policy-makers, some more frank than others. Just as the British government makes plans for "achievable, renewable energy" to cut oil dependency and counter the depredations of carbon emissions, the new Northern Ireland environment minister, the DUP's combative Sammy Wilson, dismisses much argument about the damage caused as "hysterical". Environmental campaigners - who to Wilson's mind "sometimes can be described as green fanatics" - went public with their dismay at his appointment. In private some are as sceptical about other parties, who know the issues have suddenly become more touchy and mind their manners.
To be a "flat earther," as the SDLP called Wilson, is no insult in the DUP world. Wilson has advocated a northern nuclear plant for years, not entirely seriously but glad to have a subject made for winding up "bearded, sandal-wearing, Guardian-reading, muesli-eating" environmentalists. He might well revive it, especially if he thought it would rile anti-nuclear campaigners and generally annoy opinion in the Republic - a nice big Sellafield lookalike along the northern side of Carlingford Lough, perhaps.
Being pro-nuclear was another way to get at the political correctness many unionists interpret as no more than a cover for anti-unionism and nationalist/republican self-advancement. A bright man, Sammy Wilson moved a few years ago to rural, conservative, farming east Antrim while gearing up to be its MP, and the little streets of east Belfast are his birthplace. His dismissiveness about "hysteria" has been tweaked to a more cautious questioning of the "evidence to show that all climate change is due to CO2 emissions". He notes the latest shifts in global consciousness, tacks a little, but knows where the hearts of his heartland lie. The DUP not only revels in thumbing noses at liberal causes in general, it also holds farming and business concerns dear - as, of course, do the more politically correct SDLP, Ulster Unionists and Sinn Féin.
Wilson's predecessor Arlene Foster rejected the idea of an independent protection agency for the environment, leaving the North the only region without one in Ireland or the UK, as almost her last act in office. She also said she would seek legal advice about the accusation by the sole Green Party Assembly member (Brian Wilson, no relation) that she was "giving in to vested interests".
On the same day, one of the biggest alleged polluters was indicted when a cow fell into a river full of sewage in Co Armagh, and died. An official of the Ulster Farmers Union supported the farmer's claim that Northern Ireland Water was to blame for leaking sewage into the river (named the Closet, as it happens). NI Water is, of course, government-owned and up to its neck in outrage about polluting incidents, wasteful expenditure and mooted bonuses to its board - now not to be paid. It must have felt an extra twinge of embarrassment a fortnight ago when one of the great north Antrim beaches, Portrush's East Strand, lost its Blue Flag cleanliness status. Sewage in the offshore water, said the local council, NI Water's responsibility. The European Court of Justice last year found the North has failed to provide proper sewage treatment.
Sammy Wilson will now oversee Foster's proposed substitute for an independent protection agency, a revamp of the existing Environment and Heritage Service (EHS), which the other Assembly parties condemned. The Green MLA Brian Wilson voiced the underwhelmed feeling of many when he used Foster's own account to the Assembly to lambast the EHS record: almost 6,000 illegal activities investigated, 299 convictions, average fine £2,000.
The new Minister has a full in-tray, which the Friends of the Earth group obligingly prioritised while declaring his appointment a mistake. They listed planning reform and the controversial PPS14 regulation restricting new house-building in the countryside straight after measures to tackle climate change. The PPS14 had nationalists as het up as unionists. The number of farmers and business-people on Stormont's monitoring committees suggest environmental protection will always be tightly costed, if not harried. For all their protestations, few in the other main parties have the stomach to tackle planning any more energetically than the DUP. It would be good to think that behind closed doors the occasional tremor enters dismissive voices.