Robbins D., Torney D., Brereton P. (eds) Ireland and the Climate Crisis. Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication, 2020
Like climate action itself, it is fair to say the ‘just transition’ debate is in its infancy in I... more Like climate action itself, it is fair to say the ‘just transition’ debate is in its infancy in Ireland within public and policy discourse around addressing climate breakdown, the ecological/biodiversity crisis and the transition to a low-carbon, green economy. This chapter critically analyses policy proposals that safe, secure and well-paid green jobs can only be maintained by strong unions and that bargaining power through unionisation is a vital component to achieving a just transition from ‘actually existing unsustainability’ and the creation of a climate-resilient economy and society. It explores examples of ‘unjust transition’ in the Republic and Northern Ireland and the importance in both jurisdictions of an explicit focus on a ‘just transition for agriculture’. While the idea of a just transition most often applies to workers in the energy sector, in Ireland, the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions is the agricultural sector. The chapter also discusses the evolution of trades’ union engagement with both climate and energy decarbonisation and broader environmental politics across the island, noting that a ‘post-carbon’ just transition also raises challenges for unions embracing a ‘post-growth’ objective.
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Papers by Sinéad Mercier
In June 2022, Dublin City was removed from the new World Heritage Tentative List for Ireland under the 1972 World Heritage Convention (WHC). The process of removal was opaque, and appears to have occurred after an omission. In order to vindicate and fulfil the right to culture (including David Harvey's right to the city), I will argue in the following essay for Dublin to be re-added to Ireland's World Heritage Tentative List as a site of Outstanding Universal Value to humanity and a potential World Heritage Site in Danger.
On the 1st of October 2021, the property development company, Marron Estates, applied for planning permission for a nine storey, 114-bedroom hotel at 77-80 North King Street on the north edge of the Smithfield square in Dublin city.6On this site is the famous traditional music hub, the Cobblestone pub. It wasn't to be demolished by the development but incorporated into a hotel bar, with four new storeys on top. Though consent from all the registered landowners and landlords was part of the application, 7Thomas Mulligan, owner of the Cobblestone's lease 8had not been consulted before the development application was lodged.
The planned redevelopment of the Cobblestone became a lightning rod for long-simmering anger and resentment in the city of Dublin against loss of cultural spaces, speculative land investment, escalating homelessness, high rents, restrictions on public engagement in the planning process, the un-affordability of the city, over-tourism, as well as the destruction of built heritage. This myriad of demands over place and belonging was brought under the slogan of ‘Dublin is Dying’.
For our purposes, the important aspect of the Cobblestone is that there were no protections in law for what the campaigners called for: the safeguarding of the cultural space essential for taking part in cultural life, especially the practice of gathering, transmitting and playing traditional Irish music. The challenge against Marron Estate's plan was successful however. In November 2021, Dublin City Council (DCC) turned down the planning permission after large protests, a 35,000 strong petition and almost 700 objections from the public submitted through the third party submissions to the process-the most ever received by DCC. Campaigners praised DCC for turning down the application for cultural reasons. However, the proposal was primarily turned down on the basis that the proposed nine storey hotel would be “overbearing and significantly out of scale and character with the prevailing architectural context” and could potentially result in “substantial over-development of this highly sensitive site”.
The Cobblestone pub is in a series of buildings listed as a protected structure by Dublin City Council (77-80 King Street North) for reasons of minor aesthetic and architectural significance. While public pressure to turn down the development was expressly based on claims for a ‘right to culture’, DCC could only refer to culture as a fourth, ancillary reason, due to the lack of protections for vernacular and intangible culture in planning law and policy. In December 2021, Marron Estates submitted an appeal to Dublin City Council over their refusal. Marron Estates finally withdrew this appeal, and the original application, in May 2022 leading Dubliners to celebrate with the sardonic phrase “Dublin is Dying?...Dublin's not dead yet!''
An analysis of transitions away from fossil-fuel-based regional employment in Australia’s Latrobe Valley, Scotland’s Just Transition Commission and Germany’s Ruhr Valley and Lausitz/Lusatia finds that an inclusive, iterative, place-based, context-specific approach enabled by public investment provides the best outcomes, including the creation of low-carbon employment alternatives.
Just transition is a new and emerging topic. It should be kept in mind that we are examining transitions in progress, and that there are no ready-made templates of successful, completed, transitions to a zero-carbon economy. There is a wealth of literature on internationally agreed foundational principles, but few examples of transitions in practice and no example of a region that has completed its transition to an entirely non-fossil-fuel-based system. Most country-level examples of transition also focus overtly on regional transitions away from coal-based employment. The Scottish Just Transition Commission appears to be the only current example of an economy-wide transition being put into practice. Momentum, however, is building in global support for such an ‘all economy’ approach, as evidenced by increasing international discourse on a ‘Green New Deal’.
This lack of practical templates is an opportunity for Ireland to lead on an internationally regarded example of just transition in the Midlands. As other countries begin their transitions, Ireland can serve as an international example of a proactive, inclusive and place-based just transition to an economy that operates within environmental and social limits.
The following pages seek to show the inadequacy of environmental legislation in the area of UGEE exploitation and recommend a move away from this risky fossil fuel towards the promotion of clean renewables and good jobs.
Drafts by Sinéad Mercier
This is to be done through exploring youth engagement strategies in similar countries as well as in Ireland and hearing directly from trade union and non-union activists what issues are most important to young people and their recommendations for tackling falling youth membership.
The following report will detail why falling youth membership density is a pertinent issue for Irish trade unions, the research methodology used to explore issues most relevant to young workers in Ireland today and finally findings and analysis based on the research conducted.
Talks by Sinéad Mercier
If you listen, the dominant climate change narrative sounds not only Abrahamic, but suspiciously similar to the words of our own Brian Lenihan after the 2008 crash. The then finance Minister infamously telling the country, " we all partied " , therefore we all must pay. Climate change is similarly presented as being caused by human folly, obscuring what is the direct result of a structural economic system built to see social and environmental harm as " unforeseen negative externalities ". From the enclosure movement, the slave trade, colonisation and the subjugation of the poor into dangerous and underpaid work, the Industrial Revolution was built on unaccounted for human and environmental cost. There is no better way to see this history than following the strange entwining of fossil fuels, from our clothing to our toothpaste, with all aspects of our modern world.
In June 2022, Dublin City was removed from the new World Heritage Tentative List for Ireland under the 1972 World Heritage Convention (WHC). The process of removal was opaque, and appears to have occurred after an omission. In order to vindicate and fulfil the right to culture (including David Harvey's right to the city), I will argue in the following essay for Dublin to be re-added to Ireland's World Heritage Tentative List as a site of Outstanding Universal Value to humanity and a potential World Heritage Site in Danger.
On the 1st of October 2021, the property development company, Marron Estates, applied for planning permission for a nine storey, 114-bedroom hotel at 77-80 North King Street on the north edge of the Smithfield square in Dublin city.6On this site is the famous traditional music hub, the Cobblestone pub. It wasn't to be demolished by the development but incorporated into a hotel bar, with four new storeys on top. Though consent from all the registered landowners and landlords was part of the application, 7Thomas Mulligan, owner of the Cobblestone's lease 8had not been consulted before the development application was lodged.
The planned redevelopment of the Cobblestone became a lightning rod for long-simmering anger and resentment in the city of Dublin against loss of cultural spaces, speculative land investment, escalating homelessness, high rents, restrictions on public engagement in the planning process, the un-affordability of the city, over-tourism, as well as the destruction of built heritage. This myriad of demands over place and belonging was brought under the slogan of ‘Dublin is Dying’.
For our purposes, the important aspect of the Cobblestone is that there were no protections in law for what the campaigners called for: the safeguarding of the cultural space essential for taking part in cultural life, especially the practice of gathering, transmitting and playing traditional Irish music. The challenge against Marron Estate's plan was successful however. In November 2021, Dublin City Council (DCC) turned down the planning permission after large protests, a 35,000 strong petition and almost 700 objections from the public submitted through the third party submissions to the process-the most ever received by DCC. Campaigners praised DCC for turning down the application for cultural reasons. However, the proposal was primarily turned down on the basis that the proposed nine storey hotel would be “overbearing and significantly out of scale and character with the prevailing architectural context” and could potentially result in “substantial over-development of this highly sensitive site”.
The Cobblestone pub is in a series of buildings listed as a protected structure by Dublin City Council (77-80 King Street North) for reasons of minor aesthetic and architectural significance. While public pressure to turn down the development was expressly based on claims for a ‘right to culture’, DCC could only refer to culture as a fourth, ancillary reason, due to the lack of protections for vernacular and intangible culture in planning law and policy. In December 2021, Marron Estates submitted an appeal to Dublin City Council over their refusal. Marron Estates finally withdrew this appeal, and the original application, in May 2022 leading Dubliners to celebrate with the sardonic phrase “Dublin is Dying?...Dublin's not dead yet!''
An analysis of transitions away from fossil-fuel-based regional employment in Australia’s Latrobe Valley, Scotland’s Just Transition Commission and Germany’s Ruhr Valley and Lausitz/Lusatia finds that an inclusive, iterative, place-based, context-specific approach enabled by public investment provides the best outcomes, including the creation of low-carbon employment alternatives.
Just transition is a new and emerging topic. It should be kept in mind that we are examining transitions in progress, and that there are no ready-made templates of successful, completed, transitions to a zero-carbon economy. There is a wealth of literature on internationally agreed foundational principles, but few examples of transitions in practice and no example of a region that has completed its transition to an entirely non-fossil-fuel-based system. Most country-level examples of transition also focus overtly on regional transitions away from coal-based employment. The Scottish Just Transition Commission appears to be the only current example of an economy-wide transition being put into practice. Momentum, however, is building in global support for such an ‘all economy’ approach, as evidenced by increasing international discourse on a ‘Green New Deal’.
This lack of practical templates is an opportunity for Ireland to lead on an internationally regarded example of just transition in the Midlands. As other countries begin their transitions, Ireland can serve as an international example of a proactive, inclusive and place-based just transition to an economy that operates within environmental and social limits.
The following pages seek to show the inadequacy of environmental legislation in the area of UGEE exploitation and recommend a move away from this risky fossil fuel towards the promotion of clean renewables and good jobs.
This is to be done through exploring youth engagement strategies in similar countries as well as in Ireland and hearing directly from trade union and non-union activists what issues are most important to young people and their recommendations for tackling falling youth membership.
The following report will detail why falling youth membership density is a pertinent issue for Irish trade unions, the research methodology used to explore issues most relevant to young workers in Ireland today and finally findings and analysis based on the research conducted.
If you listen, the dominant climate change narrative sounds not only Abrahamic, but suspiciously similar to the words of our own Brian Lenihan after the 2008 crash. The then finance Minister infamously telling the country, " we all partied " , therefore we all must pay. Climate change is similarly presented as being caused by human folly, obscuring what is the direct result of a structural economic system built to see social and environmental harm as " unforeseen negative externalities ". From the enclosure movement, the slave trade, colonisation and the subjugation of the poor into dangerous and underpaid work, the Industrial Revolution was built on unaccounted for human and environmental cost. There is no better way to see this history than following the strange entwining of fossil fuels, from our clothing to our toothpaste, with all aspects of our modern world.