FOE Newsletter Issue 29

Issue 29 Summer 2016 The Programme for Government What should be prioritised? CONTACTS Systematic failure Friends of Northern Ireland is failing its people A prime example of this is the and its environment. It is a systemic dualling of the A6. Although better the Earth failure that permeates every level of options were available, the selected government. So insidious is it that it route cuts through flood plain 7 Donegall Street Place causes people to defend it and act between Lough Neagh and Lough against their best interests. Beg. Not only is this precious wetland Belfast BT1 2FN an important feeding ground for Tel: 028 9023 3488 It begins with a political system swans, geese and other birds, it is Fax: 028 9024 7556 that is obsessed with economic also the landscape that inspired and Email: [email protected] development. This is despite the nurtured Séamus Heaney, arguably Website: www.foe.co.uk/ni mounting evidence that this the world’s most popular poet. obsession with economic growth is James Orr leading us towards disaster – climate To borrow from another Irish literary Director change, resource decline, biodiversity figure, to fail to regulate once may be collapse, poverty, inequality, ill-health, regarded as a misfortune, to fail to of iStock courtesy Photo Tel: 028 9023 3636 and unhappiness. We have lost touch regulate twice looks like carelessness, rules. What will happen at the site This will get worse unless we change Email: [email protected] with the things that are important to continue to fail to regulate looks now that the company is leaving direction. We urgently need to for us as social animals – family, like a wilful act. A continued failure to remains to be seen. Will the clean-up enable people everywhere to improve Declan Allison community, health, green spaces, a regulate is what we see. conditions be enforced? their well-being on a planet that Campaigner sense of place. can sustain us in the long term. Tel: 028 9089 7591 The Northern Ireland Executive’s From Cavanacaw goldmine to That means giving environmental Email: [email protected] This systemic failure is best failure to tackle climate change Mobuoy Road landfill site, Lough protection the consideration it exemplified by our environmental is exacerbated by its policies on Neagh sand dredging to giant deserves. After all, we rely on a protection regime. Across the board transport, waste management, chicken factories, time and time healthy environment to provide us Niall Bakewell we see short-term economic growth agriculture, housing, and energy. again we see environmental law with the air, water, food, and the Activism Co-ordinator elevated above protection of the Systemic failure is writ large in being ignored in favour of short-term sense of place we need. It also means Tel: 028 9089 7592 environment, heritage or social the case of the exploratory drill economic gain. Never underestimate giving communities the opportunity Email: [email protected] cohesion. Never mind sustainable at Woodburn Forest. Domestic the lengths the authorities will go to participate fully in decision making. development or future generations, and European law was ignored or to in order to avoid doing what they Colette Stewart profits now are all that matter. circumvented at every stage of the are legally required to do. The vote We owe it both to current and to Office Manager process, from issuing the exploratory to leave the EU adds further wiggle future generations. Tel: 028 9023 3488 licence, to failing to enforce planning room for those intent on downplaying environmental protection. What will Craig Bennett is the Chief Email: [email protected] the status be of environmental laws Executive Officer of Friends of derived from Europe? the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Local Groups The importance from human harm. In a movement Banbridge and Mourne found itself at the centre of enquiry across disciplines; in anthropology, searching for the universal, place was Friends of the Earth of place where I encountered it, but also from avoided for its often inward-seeming Bonnie Anley psychology to architecture, sociology perspective – an us-and-them Tel: 077 3040 1331 to public health. quality that is prone to producing Email: Growing up in the Irish midlands, green light of native woodland that reactionary politics like NIMBYism [email protected] I had the privilege of a bucolic comes to mind. The idea of place as a fixed, bounded and sectarian territoriality. But childhood. I played unconstrained entity, containing a homogenous there is a growing realisation that, Lagan Valley among the bogs, heather, and My study of environmental population is being challenged by in an interconnected world, the same unsustainable practices that Friends of the Earth woods. Despite the enchantment sustainability has taken me to this burgeoning field, with a growing that imbued my early years, those places very different from where recognition that social, economic and threaten our wild spaces and their Jaimie McFarland places were unremarkable to the I grew up – to the South Bronx technological shifts are changing populations also affect people, falling Email: outside world. The boglands of in New York and to East Belfast, ideas of the specificity of place; of disproportionately at the feet of our [email protected] County Longford, far from pristine, are the field sites in which my PhD is what, and where, we understand poorest communities, both rural and essentially industrial space, worked based. However, connection to place to be. Place is not simply a urban. Craigavon Friends of the Earth by Bórd Na Mona for milled peat, but place and the community produced location, a point on a map. It is a Maggie McDonald to me it was a magical landscape. by it has remained central to my process of shared meaning, identity A new, place-focused Email: [email protected] Though I have been gone from there understanding of what a socially just and history, a connection between environmentalism is progressive longer than not, when I conjure an environmentalism entails. Sense of people in relationship with each other because it confronts the image of ‘the environment’ it is the place is an immensely, deceptively, and with the rest of the world. Not interconnectedness, rather than Queen’s University, Belfast expansive black of the bog and the complex subject that has increasingly only is place a major determinant of the separateness of these things, Niall Callaghan access to education, employment, including a concern for the conditions Email: health care, and social interaction it of human as well as non-human life. [email protected] is also crucial to our understanding It allows for a folding in of issues of how people experience and relate of social equity, distributive justice, Downpatrick Friends of the Earth to the world. It is this that makes and economic fairness with more Imelda Hynds it significant for the goals of 21st traditionally ‘green’ concerns. When the environment ceases to be an Tel: 028 4461 2260 century environmentalism. Place is the point of intersection between the abstract idea, and is seen, instead as Email: [email protected] environment and human society. the place where we live, the processes that sustain us, the storehouse of our East Antrim Friends of the Earth Historically, environmentalism has memories, and the common interest Niall Bakewell had a difficult relationship with place. we share, protecting it becomes less Tel: 028 9089 7592 It valorised the natural as separate a fringe activity and more an act of Email: [email protected] from the human, drawing on the keeping our homes, our livelihoods, sublime grandeur of wild landscapes our relationships, and ourselves alive. advocating a conservationist impulse to protect these spaces, Rebekah McCabe is the Creative along with their flora and fauna, producer at PLACE. Friends of the Earth Friends Editor: Declan Allison Contributors: Craig Bennett, Rebekah McCabe, Chris Murphy, John Sweeney, Fiona Joyce, Ruth McAreavey, Eamonn McCann and Haf Elgar. The views expressed are not necessarily those of Friends of the Earth. Designed by: Dogtag Creative. Printed on paper made from 100 per cent post-consumer waste. For more than 40 years we’ve seen that the wellbeing of people and planet go hand in hand – and it’s been the inspiration for our campaigns. Together with thousands of people like you we’ve secured safer food and water, defended wildlife and natural habitats, championed the move to clean energy and acted to keep our climate stable. Be a Friend of the Earth – see things differently. Friends of the Earth is a collective name for Friends of the Earth Trust, registered charity 281681, company number 1533942, and Friends of the Earth Limited, company number 1012357, both of which may use the above information. In both cases the registered office is at 26-28 Underwood Street, London N1 7JQ Tel: 020 7490 1555 Fax: 020 7490 0881 Email: [email protected] Website: www.foe.co.uk , company number 1012357 © Friends of the Earth 2016. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means nor translated into a machine language without written permission. Friends of the Earth would like to keep you up to date on our work and what you are helping us to achieve. If you would prefer not to receive any further communication from us please contact: [email protected] or call 028 9023 3488 with your contact details. Lough Beg, Time to an Uncut Walk the Jewel of Thinkstock courtesy Photo Walk Before recently planted trees began to block the view, the swans of Lough Beg made an impressive On the 17th December last the northern tip of sight from the A6 west of Toomebridge.

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