A total of €300-600m in funding could be required to implement the Nature Restoration Programme (NRP) over the next six years. That equates to €100m a year up to 2032.
Income foregone from farmers and other land owners will form a significant element of the total proposed cost, the Independent Advisory Committee on Nature Restoration has been told.
However, the socio-economic benefits from the NRP will substantially exceed the costs, analysts have claimed.
The details were included in the minutes of a recent Independent Advisory Committee on Nature Restoration meeting in January.
The 14 January meeting was told that estimates of the overall investment needed up to 2050 range from €1 billion to €2.5 billion, with the costs incurred for the period 2020 to 2024 amounting to €40-50m.
The funding costs to date have been provided by a mix of corporate and social responsibility (CSR) financing, philanthropy and pilot projects.
The costings on implementing the NRP were presented by Lisa Sheenan of UCD and Climate+ as part of an evaluation of how private funding can be mobilised to support the programme.
“The need to mobilise finance to compensate those individuals who will bear the costs of this overall societal gain was stressed in the discussions of the committee,” the minutes state.
“Income foregone, from farmers and other land owners, will form a significant element of the total proposed cost,” the committee was told.
State actors, such as Bord na Móna, will also be eligible for compensation as a result of income losses.
“Teagasc have done some work in the area of marginal farmers who will be likely be disproportionately affected by measures, and [Teagasc] could be asked to do more focused research in this area,” the minutes point out.
Benefits
In terms of potential benefits, the committee was told that these will have to be analysed at habitat level then be aggregated up to national level.
“Benefits are classed into multiple categories, such as carbon sequestration and ecosystem services and have been calculated on a hectare level,” the document added.
“These take into account a degree of uncertainty, and the fact that benefits will increase over time and yield a series of ranges to take into account uncertainty etc,” it added.
While an exact figure was not put on the value of benefits generated by the NRP, the meeting was told that they would substantially exceed the costs under every model of financing biodiversity assessed.
Given that the costs up to 2032 are put at €300-600m, this equates to a range of €365/ha to €730/ha for the 820,000ha of largely upland and natura ground.
The benefits accruing from the NRP will be significantly higher than the €365-730/ha range, the minutes said.
Difficult to balance flood risk and restoration
Managing flood risk while applying nature restoration to the country’s rivers will be a difficult balancing act, a recent meeting of the Independent Advisory Committee on Nature Restoration was told.
“If we aim to restore habitats, we need to restore how the habitat is created/maintained. The ethos regarding river restoration is to do as little as possible and give rivers the space to recover,” Trinity College scientist Dr Kate de Smeth told the meeting.
There are over 34 arterial drainage schemes in place across the country, covering an area of nearly 20% of the land mass. The Office of Public Works (OPW) is required to maintain these channels, de Smeth explained.
“The [arterial drainage] story and the need for nature restoration cannot be separated from wider conversations about the way we want to use our land and how we manage flood risk. This is why river restoration is so difficult,” de Smeth is quoted in the minutes as saying.
De Smeth proposed that river restoration pilot projects needed to be put in place as a first step towards a national approach.
“There is a need to move to the space where we conduct pilot projects and work from there,” de Smeth maintained.
She said this was the only way to achieve river restoration at scale.
Restoration proposals due next month
The Independent Advisory Committee on Nature Restoration is to agree its recommendations over the next month, the Irish Farmers Journal has learned.
These recommendations will form the basis of its report to Christopher O’Sullivan, the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and feed into a national plan on how Ireland achieves its commitments under the Nature Restoration Law.
The first draft of a template of actions which Ireland will undertake to meet its requirements under the law is to be sent to the European Commission by September.
A number of technical working groups across a raft of Government departments are feeding into this document.
The Commission has six months to respond to Ireland’s submission. A final set of actions must then be agreed by Ireland and lodged with the Commission by autumn 2027.
How Ireland implements the various actions as set out in the final template will form the basis of the country’s national nature restoration plan.
“The finished plan will be completed within 12 to 18 months. However, we will not be waiting for a finished plan to get going on actions,” a spokesperson for Minister O’Sullivan said.
“There are already actions being taken on public lands and by farmers in such schemes as ACRES and the various LIFE and EIP programmes,” the spokesperson added.
SHARING OPTIONS