Holding the Line: Climate action in a time of crisis
Nearly 250 people joined the sixth annual conference organized by the DCU Institute for Climate and Society, which took place on 12 May 2026 on the St. Patrick’s Campus.
Our keynote speaker was the President of Ireland, Catherine Connolly. Her address did not shy away from the forthrightness President Connolly had shown even before her election, when she identified climate change and environmental destruction as defining social and moral challenges of our time, the effects of which are already being felt not just globally, but also across Ireland.
Hope was embodied by Sean Ronayne, an ornithologist, wildlife sound-recordist, and award-winning author, who challenged himself to record the voice of every bird that still inhabits this island. And, on the worst days, it is his daughter's willingness to wave to an ant that brings out the hope that’s necessary for him to hold the line against environmental destruction in Ireland.
Dr Diarmuid Torney, Director of the DCU Institute for Climate and Society
Dr Diarmuid Torney, Institute Director and Associate Professor in the School of Law and Government, welcomed everyone to the sixth annual conference. The theme this year was climate action in times of crisis. And this couldn’t be a more fitting theme, as Dr Torney began his address by reminding attendees of the climate urgency brought by the rising sea temperature, which reached a new record for the month of April, and the predicted havoc which might be brought by the super El Niño. In such gloomy times, this year’s conference invited participants to hold the line through innovative solutions, new farming paradigms, and, most importantly, through hope.
Mia DiChiaro, Institute's Dancer in Residence
Mia DiChiaro, Institute Dancer in Residence and co-organiser of the conference, introduced the dance components of the conference programme, including an eco-dance film screening that was on view throughout the day in a breakout room and dance performances by Alessandra Azeviche, Ailish Claffey, and Patrycja Kwiecień. Mia highlighted the role of the arts, creativity and joy in helping us to navigate a turbulent world.
Panel discussion: How did we get here?
The panel was moderated by Dr Jimmy O’Keeffe, Assistant Professor in Environmental Systems in DCU School of History and Geography.
Ali Sheridan, Chair of the Just Transition Commission
Ali Sheridan, Chair of the Just Transition Commission, an independent advisory body to the Irish Government, stressed that transition and climate action are never experienced equally. “We are trying to make our energy greener, but without addressing the energy insecurity experienced by so many families in Ireland,” Sheridan said, blaming the current image crisis surrounding climate transition measures on policymakers’ failure to embed equality from the beginning of the process. Most importantly, she argued that transition is more than a collection of necessary climate actions: “It is about systems, it is about power, it is about whose voices are heard and whose are not.” Sheridan’s solution for a truly just transition is to embed social dialogue within this process. “Communities are the critical infrastructure for a just transition,” Sheridan underlined.
Prof Claire Dupont, Department of Public Governance and Management, Ghent University
Professor Claire Dupont, a researcher in the Department of Public Governance and Management at Ghent University, argued that our current climate predicament has been brought about by political dishonesty, a lack of courage, and failures on the part of our elected representatives. However, Prof Dupont also stressed that there is hope, as statistics show that “an enormous majority of citizens globally want and are asking for more action on climate change”, while politicians with vested interests continue to ignore those demands. The solution, she argued, involves creating more opportunities for citizens to engage in democracy between elections. Prof Dupont believes this could be achieved through existing mechanisms such as citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgeting.
Laura Costello, Chief Communications Officer, Hometree
Laura Costello, Chief Communications Officer at environmental NGO Hometree, stated that we are currently living not only through climate breakdown, but also through the unravelling of any illusion we once had about the future. “We are more aware than ever of what is happening to our climate,” Costello said.
Although the future might seem bleak, Costello draws hope from the newly found climate awareness of many of her fellow citizens. Communicators and researchers must now find effective ways to engage with this newly climate-aware public. “We need to do this by reaching through the membrane that separates our present from the future, and showing people that there is something worth fighting for. We need to build the story of a future that you can fall in love with,” Costello underlined.
Shauna Corr, Freelance journalist
Shauna Corr, a freelance environmental journalist working across both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, blamed the current climate crisis on our much-celebrated economic system. “This is the result of capitalism, of consumerism, and of cutting ourselves off from the natural world,” Corr said. The political system is also at fault, she argued, because “the climate is currently being chipped away, bit by bit by bit” by politicians. Corr directed her criticism particularly at the short-termism of politics, with its focus on five-year election cycles. Instead, she argued, we need to ask longer-term, bigger-picture questions: “What is Ireland going to look like in 100 years’ time?” She also highlighted the role that newsrooms must play in addressing the climate crisis, calling for more training for journalists on climate-related issues. At the same time, she spoke about the responsibility each of us has to sit down at the kitchen table and have an uncomfortable conversation about climate with “that mad aunt who doesn’t believe in climate change”.
Prof Anne Sinnott, Deputy President of DCU
Prof Anne Sinnott, Deputy President of DCU, had the honour of introducing Ireland’s President, Catherine Connolly. She began by welcoming President Connolly in Irish, before noting the relevance of this year’s conference theme, in a world that seems to have left addressing the climate crisis on the back burner. Prof Sinnott noted that both the cost-of-living crisis and the current wars shouldn’t be taken as distractions for policymakers, as they are intrinsically linked to the climate crisis.
Keynote Address - Catherine Connolly, President of Ireland
President Catherine Connolly, who was elected in October 2025 for a seven-year term as President of Ireland, has long been outspoken about the immense societal and moral challenges posed by the climate crisis and environmental degradation. With this in mind, President Connolly opened her speech by recognising the importance of social scientists in understanding these challenges, as well as the central role played by the DCU Institute for Climate and Society, the first academic institution in Ireland to address the climate crisis from a humanities perspective.
She continued her address by outlining a series of stark climate realities before criticising the lack of genuinely transformative change in the seven years since Ireland became the first country in the world to declare a climate and biodiversity emergency in May 2019. In response to this lack of meaningful climate action, the President declared: “We cannot go on with business as usual.”
President Connolly also used her address to touch upon “the elephant in the room”: the normalisation of war. As she put it, there is an inextricable link between the more than 130 armed conflicts currently affecting the world and the compounding effects of the climate crisis. “The deafening silence around this connection should be called out by every one of us,” Connolly stated.
Just before concluding her address, she encouraged the students in attendance to remain engaged and continue “holding the line”. “You need to ask questions of those in power,” said the President, who reminded attendees of the important role played by local student climate strikers in lobbying their county council to declare a climate emergency, even before the declaration was adopted by the Irish Parliament in 2019.
Author Panel Discussion: Climate and farming
The panel was moderated by Dr Alice Brawley-Chesworth, postdoctoral researcher and member of the DCU Institute for Climate and Society.
Prof Pat Brereton, Emeritus Professor, DCU School of Communications, and author of Farming in Ireland: Crisis and Climate
Professor Pat Brereton, who has worked for 24 years in the DCU School of Communications and has authored an important book on farming in Ireland, stressed the importance of not blaming farmers for the climate crisis. “We are culpable ourselves, because we want cheap food and we go nuts for the special offers at Aldi and Lidl,” Prof Brereton said, underlining that the farmers he interviewed were not only aware of the climate crisis, but were also constantly thinking about solutions to reduce their CO2 emissions. “The issue is that they need solutions that are workable and driven by a justice narrative,” Prof Brereton stated. He also used the opportunity to warn about the country’s deteriorating food security, which he argued is also a consequence of how society has treated Irish farmers. “Farmers are being pushed to produce whatever will bring them enough profit to cover the immense costs resulting from the huge technological capitalisation of agriculture. And although we are famous for potatoes, our farmers can no longer plant them because they would end up bankrupt,” Prof Brereton said.
John Gibbons, Environmental journalist and activist, and author of The Lie of the Land - A Game Plan for Ireland in the Climate Crisis
John Gibbons, an environmental journalist, activist and author of The Lie of the Land: A Game Plan for Ireland in the Climate Crisis, stressed that although Ireland has a so-called “Goldilocks” climate, a mild climate often considered ideal during a climate crisis, its natural advantages are being undermined by its agricultural system. “We have plenty of land, but we are food insecure. That’s because our agriculture would collapse without the 100,000 tonnes of animal feed that arrive in Ireland every week. We build a house of cards,” Gibbons said. The environmental journalist and activist also warned that, because of the current farming paradigm, children born in Ireland today are likely to face hunger in their lifetime. “And, for a country that experienced famine, it is truly blatant how we can be so callous about the food insecurity of our children,” Gibbons added. For him, solutions for a self-sustainable agricultural system already exist, and Ireland simply needs to learn how to apply them. “We need to look at the Netherlands. They are providing climate-resilient seeds to the world and producing food that people actually eat in their greenhouses. We need to revive horticulture in Ireland,” Gibbons said.
Panel discussion: Where are we going?
The panel was moderated by Dr Ashling Bourke, Associate Professor in Psychology and Human Development at DCU Institute of Education.
Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, DCU School of STEM Education, Innovation and Global Studies
Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, Associate Professor in the DCU School of STEM Education, Innovation and Global Studies, drew attention to the fact that nature, the environment, and sustainability are overlooked in the primary education curriculum. “We need to treat curricula as policy documents, and use them to prepare pupils for the climate and biodiversity crisis they will be dealing with,” Dr Ní Shúilleabháin said. It is not just education that matters, but also kitchen table conversations. “We need to use all the available spaces to challenge the narrative,” Dr Ní Shúilleabháin concluded.
Barry Peak, DCU Education for Sustainable Development Officer
Barry Peak, the DCU Education for Sustainable Development Officer, spoke about the role of education in instilling in young people the capacity to see the world through a lens of climate and sustainability. He discussed his work in promoting Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), noting that there have been positive developments in the curriculum, with previously fringe subjects such as climate justice and decolonisation becoming more central to DCU’s educational offering. “There is good work being done,” he said, although he argued that the institutional environment is increasingly challenging. The obstacles to sustainable development are diverse, ranging from the neoliberal model of university education to the busy schedules of teachers and the pressing issues faced by students in relation to housing and employment. Perhaps most pressingly, he highlighted AI as the biggest barrier to the progress of ESD: “Basically everything we’re trying to do is being undone by the prevalence and prominence of AI.”
Dr Rita Marcalo, Dancer, Choreographer and Artistic Director of Instant Dissidence
Dr Rita Marcalo, a dancer, choreographer, and artistic director of Instant Dissidence, reflected on how she uses art to address the challenges of the climate breakdown. “I try to use fun, play, and radical joy as tools in my work, because I find that at the end of a performance, people’s hearts are open and people are more ready to have difficult conversations,” Dr Marcalo said. Her strategy is not based simply on a love of joy, but rather on her observation that people respond very differently to bleak facts. Many of us freeze. So instead, she asks her dancers to move like an orchard to explore difficult subjects such as food waste. Dr Marcalo is not focused on hope, but on meaning. “If we are to collapse, how do we collapse?”
Dr Eoin Galavan, Climate activist and clinical psychologist
Dr Eoin Galavan, a clinical psychologist, climate activist, and clinical director at Kyrie Farm, proposed thinking more about “how we are going through this” rather than focusing on the anxiety-inducing question “where are we going”. He stressed the importance of our shared humanity in building mental resilience while dealing with the “messy and complex” issues brought about by climate change. “We need to deal with this together, because more is coming,” Dr Galavan stressed. He also encouraged individual climate action, noting that small changes are “acts of faith on behalf of the future you hope will occur”. And, although such actions may seem insignificant when we know global action is needed, they can help build hope. “If we do the right things, hope will come about,” Dr Galavan concluded.
Seán Ronayne, Ornithologist, Wildlife Sound-Recordist, and Award-Winning Author
Seán Ronayne, an ornithologist, wildlife sound recordist, and award-winning author, brought a combination of tears, laughter, desperation, and hope to the conference. His talk felt full of magic and wonder, with the sounds of nature, birds, and badgers filling the auditorium. And that was the intention, as Ronayne explained that he wants to cast a spell, to enchant people with the wonders that surround them.
“I believe that every one of us is born with an absolute grá for nature,” Ronayne said, and his task is to ensure we begin to rediscover our own lost sense of awe.
Yet Ronayne’s awe of nature has been met with its senseless destruction in the name of profit. In his native Cobh, an agricultural corporation recently ripped out over a kilometre of hedgerows during nesting season. Nature is magical and wonderful, as Ronayne’s talk suggested, but if we make it more familiar, perhaps it will not be so easy to destroy.
Closing reflection
Dr David Robbins, Co-Director of the Institute for Climate and Society and Associate Professor in the DCU School of Communications, summarised the conference, noting how this year’s theme, “holding the line”, was strongly reflected across each panel and keynote speech of the day. He joked that we might need “a flotilla of small boats” to hold the line on the climate crisis: “As long as we are roughly going in the same direction, it does not matter which boat we are in.” Finally, Dr Robbins sent attendees away on a note of encouragement: “Keep paddling in the boat you are in.”
Closing dance performance
The closing dance performance was not recorded and therefore won’t be made available online.
The dance performance was curated by Mia DiChiaro, the Institute’s Dancer in Residence.
The conference closed with two dance performances curated by Mia DiChiaro, the Institute’s Dancer in Residence. The first was a solo performance by Alessandra Azeviche, titled Terra. The piece used rhythm and movement to explore connections within the global diaspora. Rooted in Afro-Brazilian and ancient Yoruba traditions, the performance questioned territory, boundaries, migration, and the rigid structures that dominate our world, but which may ultimately be destabilised by the climate crisis. The performance was co-choreographed with Simone O’Toole, while live music was provided by Andre Antunes.
The second performance was directed by Ailish Claffey, who, together with dancer Patrycja Kwiecień, invited attendees to reflect on the question: “What does it cost us?” Titled We Stay With What It Costs, the performance explored how the body, understood as an ecological site, forms and reforms through its relationship with its surroundings. With their eyes closed, the dancers moved among the audience, adapting their movements in response to the obstacles they encountered. Viewed in the context of the climate crisis, the performance invited audience members to question what it means to live responsibly within larger systems.
