Politics of division will not help us address climate crisis - Minister Ryan
The conference took place today on the DCU St. Patrick’s Campus in Drumcondra, focusing on the topic ‘Rewild & Renew’, discussing Ireland’s dual challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Opening the conference, DCU President Daire Keogh noted that “universities like DCU have much to contribute to turning the tide on climate change and biodiversity loss. The planet is on fire, and we can't be ignorant to that. We can't ignore our responsibilities."
The conference included a number of panel discussions, where guests heard from journalists, policy-makers, corporate leaders and academics on how Ireland can turn the tide on climate change and biodiversity loss.
Marc Aboud, Director, Sustainability Risk and Regulation Lead, Deloitte said “while the business community has recognised the need to take climate action, the journey must be accelerated and collaboration across sectors, industries and in broader society is essential to driving change. As the conversations about net-zero continue, they should go hand-in-hand with setting nature-positive targets, as the climate crisis cannot be addressed without nature and biodiversity.”
The morning’s keynote speaker, Eoghan Daltun, who has been rewilding his 73-acre farm in West Cork for more than a decade, warned that Ireland is “ecologically trashed”, and said that “to my mind, it's hard to think of anything in this time in which we find ourselves that's more important than rewilding. It's the solution to so many problems, in terms of the state of our home planet but also to so many things that ail us ourselves as people.”
Addressing the crowd of more than 300 attendees, Minister Eamon Ryan spoke of the importance of having conversations about climate change in the right way:
"We have to get the framing of this right. How we discuss it, how we present it... How we tell the story, how we listen to each other and share perspectives. How we need to be willing to admit mistakes, and go back and accelerate in the direction we need to go.” Earlier in the address, he said that addressing climate change “will not work if it's a politics of division, if it's a politics of rural Ireland versus urban Ireland, young versus old, left versus right."