Science is not confined to the lab, it is part of society as well, says Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) director of science for society Dr Ruth Freeman.
It’s an important point for the theme of this year’s Science Week which asks people to consider what it means to be human in today’s world, and how the decisions we make today will impact the people and world of the future, she explains.
“AI has been around for a long time but this year we became aware of AI and large language models and how they can be used as tools in our daily lives. It became mainstream. One of the main questions we want to ask is how we can live alongside and benefit from the technology. We need to ask what the future of humanity is. We live on a planet with limited resources, and we face an existential threat in the form of the climate crisis.”
Science Week is a way to allow conversations on those issues to take place, she adds. “In light of what we know about these things, how agriculture needs to change, how energy needs to change, what would we like scientists to be researching. These are tangible things we need to address.”
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Biodiversity is another important topic for conversation. “Over the last couple of years science has given us a lot more knowledge about other species on the planet. We still have so much to learn about ourselves as a species, but we may have dismissed other species as relatively unimportant until recently. Everything on the planet exists as a result of finely-tuned evolutionary balance and one species is upsetting that.”
She points to some of the research taking place in Ireland which is contributing to the battle against climate change. This includes work on biodiversity, energy systems, and agricultural practices.
Yvonne Buckley is professor of zoology at Trinity College Dublin. She is co-chair of the all-island climate and biodiversity research network and a member of the national carbon budgets working group.
She explains how biodiversity is part of the earth’s system that regulates climate. “The first thing to understand is that plants and animals and fungi are connected and they control the flow of energy on the planet,” she says. “They create the atmosphere. Without plants we would have no oxygen to breath. They create the conditions for life. They regulate our climate, and they pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Algae in the oceans do the same thing. The earth would be a lot hotter without them. If the climate is changing that will have an impact on life, and that in turn will have an impact on climate. Climate change is happening and is negatively impacting bogs and oceans and their ability, in turn, to control climate.”
Interestingly, Buckley points out that climate change is not the biggest threat to biodiversity at present. “Pesticides, deforestation, nutrients in rivers are bigger threats,” she says. “Biodiversity is like a blanket with lots of threads in it. If you keep pulling the threads, it will eventually fall apart.”
But we can do something about it. “We need to reduce nutrients flowing into water bodies like Lough Neagh. We need to use less fertiliser, less pesticides, and grow more species in pastures - not just one single species of grass requiring lots of fertiliser. We can employ nature-based solutions that are good for humans, good for the economy, and good for biodiversity. For example, restoring natural woodlands can offer very significant benefits. They support multiple ecosystems, pull carbon out of the atmosphere, help regulate water flows, and filter our water. They offer economic benefits through the use of sensitively harvested timber, not clear felling. There is also ecotourism with forest bathing becoming a growing activity. But when we talk about climate action and biodiversity action, we need fairness to be part of it. It involves a big transition in land use, and we need to think about the social and economic consequences.”
Professor Brian Ó Gallachóir is associate vice president of sustainability at University College Cork and director of MaREI, the SFI research centre for energy, climate and marine, which is co-ordinated by the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) at UCC.
He points to a number of areas where MaREI research is having a positive societal impact. “A lot of our research is co-produced with our partners, including over 100 companies,” he says. “One way we work with them is on decision support and strategies to reduce their emissions. We did collaborative research with the pharma industry in Ringaskiddy on how to become more energy efficient. We followed that up with research on renewable energy supply projects including on site wind energy generation. At a conservative estimate, MedTech and pharma companies in Ringaskiddy have invested €40 million over the past 10 years in intelligent energy efficiency and in renewable energy supply.”
MaREI has also did collaborative research with Midleton Distillery that underpinned a €50 million plan to become carbon-neutral by 2026.
Researchers from MaREI are also actively researching the rural energy transition as part of the Dingle Peninsula 2030 partnership. This novel, multi-award-winning, collaborative initiative has increased societal capacity and employment in climate action on the Dingle peninsula and has resulted in the emergence of many new sustainability initiatives and activities.
“We saw the accelerated deployment of low carbon energy technologies, including solar photovoltaics and this was followed by the inclusion of climate action into local and regional stakeholders’ development plans,” Ó Gallachóir points out. “We were really excited to see other unexpected benefits that also emerged. Farmers came together to set up a sustainable energy community and tourism operators did the same. The team also worked with Local Link on improved public transport services and the switch to EVs. It was wonderful to see that additional societal benefit.”
Teagasc head of food biosciences Professor Paul Cotter, who is also a principal investigator with the SFI Centres APC Microbiome Ireland and Vista Milk, coordinated the €11 million EU Master project which involved 29 partners from across Europe in the application of microbiology research to the food chain with the aim of developing new food products with high commercial potential and which may also have benefits for consumer health.
The linkage with climate is clear with one area of the study looking at fermented food products. “You can take a short shelf-life project like milk and turn it into a long-life product like kefir which also has health benefits,” he points out. “This reduces food waste.”
Another research area with strong waste reduction potential looked at microbiological testing of foods like milk and processing lines. “The traditional approach to detecting disease-causing bacteria is using agar plates to grow cultures,” Cotter explains. “We looked at a potentially revolutionary change using DNA sequencing to detect these micro-organisms. This can improve the quality and safety of foods. It will also help to reduce waste by identify appropriate uses for different foods. For example, there are levels of microorganisms that are acceptable in some foods but not in others like infant formula.”
Other areas of research included the use of cider industry waste to produce a prebiotic to help improve the balance of microorganisms in the human gut, reducing fertiliser use by introducing certain microorganisms into the soil, and methane mitigation through the development of new cattle feeds.
“Science impacts us in so many aspects of our daily lives - the technologies we use, how we get around, our healthcare and so on,” says Freeman. “We also need science to come up with solutions to the challenges like climate change we face now and in the future. Science Week is an opportunity for anyone who wants to get involved in the conversation about science to tell us what they think Irish researchers should be looking at.”
Taking place from Sunday, November 12th to Sunday, November 19th, Science Week offers hundreds of events to be held around the country and includes 15 free to attend festivals including Space Fest 2023, Circus Science by the Sea Festival, Kerry Science Festival 2023, and the C’mere Till I Tell Ye Dublin STEM Festival and much more. Visit ScienceWeek.ie to find out more