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Al Jazeera
16 hours ago
- General
- Al Jazeera
Photos: Climate action clashes with tradition in Ireland's peat bogs
As wind turbines on the horizon churn out clean energy, John Smyth bends to stack damp peat – the cheap, smoky fuel he has harvested for half a century. The painstaking work of 'footing turf', as the process of drying peat for burning is known, is valued by people across rural Ireland as a source of low-cost energy that gives their homes a distinctive smell. But peat-harvesting has also destroyed precious wildlife habitats, and converted what should be natural stores for carbon dioxide into one of Ireland's biggest sources of planet-warming gas emissions. As the European Union seeks to make Dublin enforce the bloc's environmental law, peat has become a focus for opposition to policies that Smyth and others criticise as designed by wealthy urbanites with little knowledge of rural reality. 'The people that are coming up with plans to stop people from buying turf or from burning turf … They don't know what it's like to live in rural Ireland,' Smyth said. He describes himself as a dinosaur obstructing people who, he says, want to destroy rural Ireland. 'That's what we are. Dinosaurs. Tormenting them.' When the peat has dried, Smyth keeps his annual stock in a shed and tosses the sods, one at a time, into a metal stove used for cooking. The stove also heats radiators around his home. Turf, Smyth says, is for people who cannot afford what he labels 'extravagant fuels', such as gas or electricity. The average Irish household energy bill is almost double, according to Ireland's utility regulator, the 800 euros ($906) Smyth pays for turf for a year. Smyth, nevertheless, acknowledges that digging for peat could cease, regardless of politics, as the younger generation has little interest in keeping the tradition alive. 'They don't want to go to the bog. I don't blame them,' Smyth said. Peat has an ancient history. Over thousands of years, decaying plants in wetland areas formed the bogs. In drier, lowland parts of Ireland, dome-shaped raised bogs developed as peat accumulated in former glacial lakes. In upland and coastal areas, high rainfall and poor drainage created blanket bogs over large expanses. In the absence of coal and extensive forests, peat became an important source of fuel. By the second half of the 20th century, hand-cutting and drying had mostly given way to industrial-scale harvesting that reduced many bogs to barren wastelands. Ireland has lost more than 70 percent of its blanket bog and over 80 percent of its raised bogs, according to estimates published by the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and National Parks and Wildlife Service, respectively. Following pressure from environmentalists, in the 1990s, an EU directive on habitats listed blanket bogs and raised bogs as priority habitats. As the EU regulation added to the pressure for change, in 2015, semi-state peat harvesting firm Bord na Mona said it planned to end peat extraction and shift to renewable energy. In 2022, the sale of peat for burning was banned. An exception was made, however, for 'turbary rights', allowing people to dig turf for their personal use. Added to that, weak enforcement of complex regulations meant commercial-scale harvesting has continued across the country. The agency also said 350,000 tonnes of peat were exported, mostly for horticulture, in 2023. Data for 2024 has not yet been published. The European Commission, which lists more than 100 Irish bogs as Special Areas of Conservation, last year referred Ireland to the European Court of Justice for failing to protect them and taking insufficient action to restore the sites. The country also faces fines of billions of euros if it misses its 2030 carbon reduction target, according to Ireland's fiscal watchdog and climate groups. Degraded peatlands in Ireland emit 21.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, according to a 2022 United Nations report. Ireland's transport sector, by comparison, emitted 21.4 million tonnes in 2023, government statistics show. The Irish government says turf-cutting has ended on almost 80 percent of the raised bog special areas of conservation since 2011. It has tasked Bord na Mona with 'rewetting' the bogs, allowing natural ecosystems to recover, and eventually making the bogs once again carbon sinks. So far, Bord na Mona says it has restored approximately 20,000 hectares (49,421 acres) of its 80,000-hectare target.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
On Ireland's peat bogs, climate action clashes with tradition
By Clodagh Kilcoyne and Conor Humphries CLONBULLOGUE, Ireland (Reuters) -As wind turbines on the horizon churn out clean energy, John Smyth bends to stack damp peat - the cheap, smoky fuel he has harvested for half a century. The painstaking work of "footing turf," as the process of drying peat for burning is known, is valued by people across rural Ireland as a source of low-cost energy that gives their homes a distinctive smell. But peat-harvesting has also destroyed precious wildlife habitats, and converted what should be natural stores for carbon dioxide into one of Ireland's biggest emitters of planet-warming gases. As the European Union seeks to make Dublin enforce the bloc's environmental law, peat has become a focus for opposition to policies that Smyth and others criticise as designed by wealthy urbanites with little knowledge of rural reality. "The people that are coming up with plans to stop people from buying turf or from burning turf... They don't know what it's like to live in rural Ireland," Smyth said. He describes himself as a dinosaur obstructing people that, he says, want to destroy rural Ireland. "That's what we are. Dinosaurs. Tormenting them." When the peat has dried, Smyth keeps his annual stock in a shed and tosses the sods, one at a time, into a metal stove used for cooking. The stove also heats radiators around his home. Turf, Smyth says, is for people who cannot afford what he labels "extravagant fuels," such as gas or electricity. The average Irish household energy bill is almost double, according to Ireland's utility regulator, the 800 euros ($906) Smyth pays for turf for a year. Smyth nevertheless acknowledges digging for peat could cease, regardless of politics, as the younger generation has little interest in keeping the tradition alive. "They don't want to go to the bog. I don't blame them," Smyth said. INDUSTRIAL HARVESTING AND 'TURBARY RIGHTS' Peat has an ancient history. Over thousands of years, decaying plants in wetland areas formed the bogs. In drier, lowland parts of Ireland, dome-shaped raised bogs developed as peat accumulated in former glacial lakes. In upland and coastal areas, high rainfall and poor drainage created blanket bogs over large expanses. In the absence of coal and extensive forests, peat became an important source of fuel. By the second half of the 20th century, hand-cutting and drying had mostly given way to industrial-scale harvesting that reduced many bogs to barren wastelands. Ireland has lost over 70% of its blanket bog and over 80% of its raised bogs, according to estimates published by the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and National Parks and Wildlife Service, respectively. Following pressure from environmentalists, in the 1990s, an EU directive on habitats listed blanket bogs and raised bogs as priority habitats. As the EU regulation added to the pressure for change, in 2015, semi-state peat harvesting firm Bord na Mona said it planned to end peat extraction and shift to renewable energy. In 2022, the sale of peat for burning was banned. An exception was made, however, for "turbary rights," allowing people to dig turf for their personal use. Added to that, weak enforcement of complex regulations meant commercial-scale harvesting has continued across the country. Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency last year reported 38 large-scale illegal cutting sites, which it reported to local authorities responsible for preventing breaches of the regulation. The agency also said 350,000 metric tons of peat were exported, mostly for horticulture, in 2023. Data for 2024 has not yet been published. GREEN VISION Pippa Hackett, a former Green Party junior minister for agriculture, who runs a farm near to where Smyth lives, said progress was too slow. "I don't think it's likely that we'll see much action between now and the end of this decade," Hackett said. Her party's efforts to ensure bogs were restored drew aggression from activists in some turf-cutting areas, she said. "They see us as their arch enemy," she added. In an election last year, the party lost nine of the 10 seats it had in parliament and was replaced as the third leg of the centre-right coalition government by a group of mainly rural independent members of parliament. The European Commission, which lists over 100 Irish bogs as Special Areas of Conservation, last year referred Ireland to the European Court of Justice for failing to protect them and taking insufficient action to restore the sites. The country also faces fines of billions of euros if it misses its 2030 carbon reduction target, according to Ireland's fiscal watchdog and climate groups. Degraded peatlands in Ireland emit 21.6 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year, according to a 2022 United Nations report. Ireland's transport sector, by comparison, emitted 21.4 million tons in 2023, government statistics show. The Irish government says turf-cutting has ended on almost 80% of the raised bog special areas of conservation since 2011. It has tasked Bord na Mona with "rewetting" the bogs, allowing natural ecosystems to recover, and eventually making the bogs once again carbon sinks. So far, Bord na Mona says it has restored around 20,000 hectares of its 80,000 hectare target. On many bogs, scientists monitoring emissions have replaced the peat harvesters, while operators of mechanical diggers carve out the most damaged areas to be filled with water. Bord na Mona is also using the land to generate renewable energy, including wind and solar. Mark McCorry, ecology manager at Bord na Mona, said eventually the bogs would resume their status as carbon sinks. "But we have to be realistic that is going to take a long time," he said. ($1 = 0.8828 euros)
Reuters
4 days ago
- General
- Reuters
On Ireland's peat bogs, climate action clashes with tradition
CLONBULLOGUE, Ireland, June 6 (Reuters) - As wind turbines on the horizon churn out clean energy, John Smyth bends to stack damp peat - the cheap, smoky fuel he has harvested for half a century. The painstaking work of "footing turf," as the process of drying peat for burning is known, is valued by people across rural Ireland as a source of low-cost energy that gives their homes a distinctive smell. But peat-harvesting has also destroyed precious wildlife habitats, and converted what should be natural stores for carbon dioxide into one of Ireland's biggest emitters of planet-warming gases. As the European Union seeks to make Dublin enforce the bloc's environmental law, peat has become a focus for opposition to policies that Smyth and others criticise as designed by wealthy urbanites with little knowledge of rural reality. "The people that are coming up with plans to stop people from buying turf or from burning turf... They don't know what it's like to live in rural Ireland," Smyth said. He describes himself as a dinosaur obstructing people that, he says, want to destroy rural Ireland. "That's what we are. Dinosaurs. Tormenting them." When the peat has dried, Smyth keeps his annual stock in a shed and tosses the sods, one at a time, into a metal stove used for cooking. The stove also heats radiators around his home. Turf, Smyth says, is for people who cannot afford what he labels "extravagant fuels," such as gas or electricity. The average Irish household energy bill is almost double, according to Ireland's utility regulator, the 800 euros ($906) Smyth pays for turf for a year. Smyth nevertheless acknowledges digging for peat could cease, regardless of politics, as the younger generation has little interest in keeping the tradition alive. "They don't want to go to the bog. I don't blame them," Smyth said. Peat has an ancient history. Over thousands of years, decaying plants in wetland areas formed the bogs. In drier, lowland parts of Ireland, dome-shaped raised bogs developed as peat accumulated in former glacial lakes. In upland and coastal areas, high rainfall and poor drainage created blanket bogs over large expanses. In the absence of coal and extensive forests, peat became an important source of fuel. By the second half of the 20th century, hand-cutting and drying had mostly given way to industrial-scale harvesting that reduced many bogs to barren wastelands. Ireland has lost over 70% of its blanket bog and over 80% of its raised bogs, according to estimates published by the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and National Parks and Wildlife Service, respectively. Following pressure from environmentalists, in the 1990s, an EU directive on habitats listed blanket bogs and raised bogs as priority habitats. As the EU regulation added to the pressure for change, in 2015, semi-state peat harvesting firm Bord na Mona said it planned to end peat extraction and shift to renewable energy. In 2022, the sale of peat for burning was banned. An exception was made, however, for "turbary rights," allowing people to dig turf for their personal use. Added to that, weak enforcement of complex regulations meant commercial-scale harvesting has continued across the country. Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency last year reported 38 large-scale illegal cutting sites, which it reported to local authorities responsible for preventing breaches of the regulation. The agency also said 350,000 metric tons of peat were exported, mostly for horticulture, in 2023. Data for 2024 has not yet been published. Pippa Hackett, a former Green Party junior minister for agriculture, who runs a farm near to where Smyth lives, said progress was too slow. "I don't think it's likely that we'll see much action between now and the end of this decade," Hackett said. Her party's efforts to ensure bogs were restored drew aggression from activists in some turf-cutting areas, she said. "They see us as their arch enemy," she added. In an election last year, the party lost nine of the 10 seats it had in parliament and was replaced as the third leg of the centre-right coalition government by a group of mainly rural independent members of parliament. The European Commission, which lists over 100 Irish bogs as Special Areas of Conservation, last year referred Ireland to the European Court of Justice for failing to protect them and taking insufficient action to restore the sites. The country also faces fines of billions of euros if it misses its 2030 carbon reduction target, according to Ireland's fiscal watchdog and climate groups. Degraded peatlands in Ireland emit 21.6 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year, according to a 2022 United Nations report. Ireland's transport sector, by comparison, emitted 21.4 million tons in 2023, government statistics show. The Irish government says turf-cutting has ended on almost 80% of the raised bog special areas of conservation since 2011. It has tasked Bord na Mona with "rewetting" the bogs, allowing natural ecosystems to recover, and eventually making the bogs once again carbon sinks. So far, Bord na Mona says it has restored around 20,000 hectares of its 80,000 hectare target. On many bogs, scientists monitoring emissions have replaced the peat harvesters, while operators of mechanical diggers carve out the most damaged areas to be filled with water. Bord na Mona is also using the land to generate renewable energy, including wind and solar. Mark McCorry, ecology manager at Bord na Mona, said eventually the bogs would resume their status as carbon sinks. "But we have to be realistic that is going to take a long time," he said. ($1 = 0.8828 euros)
Irish Times
31-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Ireland's remaining bogs can have a second tale - of creation rather than extraction
Earlier this week a family friend shared a newspaper article from the early 1980s by the late UK gardening correspondent Graham Rose. In it he wrote about Ireland's 10,000-year-old bogs, many with a carpet of peat 30ft deep. Over 100 sq miles, the bog was all he could see; a vast, 'horizon-to-horizon emptiness' that held a 'strange, eerie beauty'. Rose didn't dwell on the bog's splendour . Instead, he said it was a hostile, lifeless expanse. 'An undrained bog is 95 per cent water, a hazardous place for large animals and for man.' His words reflected the narrative of the time, which I remember as a primary school kid in the late 1980s. The story of Irish bogs was one of dull, empty wastelands: bleak and sodden places with a menacing edge. If you wandered too far in, the bog might swallow you whole. Rose described the 'peasant farmers' who, for generations, had cut peat as a vital fuel source. Then, in 1946, the establishment of Bord na Móna marked the beginning of the industrial-scale extraction of peat to power Ireland's electricity stations. When European gardeners discovered that peat was a 'wondrous new horticultural elixir', Rose wrote, a new market was created. In 1965, Bord na Móna opened a moss peat factory at Cúil na Móna bog in Laois to produce horticultural peat. By the 1980s, when Rose visited, British gardeners were buying more than a million bales each year. Rose gives an unflinching description of how a virgin-raised bog is drained. 'The attack is mounted by giant ditch-cutting machines and – more dangerously – by dynamiting and digging.' The bog is left to dry and shrink for five years, after which it's ready for removal. Mechanical cutters with 'steel teeth' carve blocks of peat, which are then lifted by '375ft arms suspended by hawsers from 60ft steel towers'. The peat is then 'simply torn apart' before being compressed into bales and sold. READ MORE A Cúil na Móna Laois peat factory manager told Rose that peat extraction would cease after 30 to 40 years, after which the 'fine new' land would be reclaimed for agriculture. 'At farms and nurseries on recently-reclaimed bog, magnificent beef cattle are fattening on knee-high grass, vegetables are flourishing, and hybrid rhododendrons and azaleas are growing more rapidly than anywhere else in the British Isles.' For decades, bogs offered locals opportunities, and peat shaped their lives. In the peak production years (the 1950s to the 1980s), employment in the peat industry spared thousands of workers an otherwise inevitable fate of emigration. They worked hard, earned a decent living and brought economic vitality to towns and villages. These workers contributed an immense amount to their communities and Ireland's energy needs at the time. When Rose wrote his piece, the term ' biodiversity ' had yet to be coined. At that time, voices urging us to understand and cherish the bogs, like those of film-makers Éamon de Buitléar and Gerrit van Gelderen, were too few and easy to ignore; in later years, even legal threats from the European Commission didn't stop the Irish government in its tracks. The dominant narrative endured: bogs were places to be drained and their sods sold for profit. We now understand the greater cost. Home to unique species of spiders, insect-eating plants and birds on the brink of extinction, such as the curlew , industrial peat extraction has left bogs – what David Attenborough calls 'cradles of biodiversity' – stripped bare and emptied of life. Bogs act as industrial-sized natural sponges, soaking up water and shielding lowland areas from floods. Unlike trees, a living, healthy bog will capture carbon indefinitely, with no time limit; they'll soak up more carbon per square metre than almost any other ecosystem on Earth. [ Loving our Irish bogs: 'Once you conserve the habitat, the biodiversity will right itself' Opens in new window ] The language of extraction, drain blocking and industrial peat production is quickly fading, replaced by a new vocabulary centred on creation – of restoration, rehabilitation and rewetting. This shift has occurred at pace; for many people in the midlands, peat was more than just a fuel for their homes or a source of income – it became woven into their cultural heritage. Their stories must not be forgotten or left unheard. The midland counties are now included in the EU's €392 billion Just Transition Fund, which supports regions across Europe historically dependent on coal, oil shale, peat and other fossil fuels. Ireland's allocation totals €169 million, co-funded by the Irish Government. In Abbeyleix last week, at a gathering for the €12 million Tóchar Wetlands Restoration Project, funded by the Just Transition initiative, Offaly geologist, botanist and writer John Feehan recalled his time spent on the bogs in the 1950s. Back then, he said, the bogs stretched on forever – places so vast you'd need a compass if you got lost. In today's world, it's hard to fathom the 'immense silence' offered by such great stretches of wilderness. Under the three-year Tóchar project, a select group of degraded bogs will be put on the path to restoration. Bringing a bog back to life is a gradual process that will unfold over a timescale way beyond our own lifetimes. Feehan describes it as a recovery 'not easily hurried'; one that, over centuries, will see these habitats become 'richer as time goes by, as nature re-establishes its green hold over the bog'. [ 'Thanks to the bogs, life will continue. Just not ours': The Irish bog and our national psyche Opens in new window ] Bogs have offered us so much, and many are now lost forever. For the small fragments that remain, it's a blessing that we can at least attempt to bring them, in Feehan's words, 'back to the local embrace'. Their story – one of abundance and life – will continue; all they need is for us to step back and allow time to do its work.
