September 2024
When the new role started at the beginning of January, the focus for the first couple of months was to get round and meet with each of the member organisations to get an understanding of their challenges and issues. This resulted in a report created for the members and a list of 16 proposals that were subsequently agreed and ranked by the members.
The highest priority tasks included the creation of a “Manifesto” for landscapes in N. Ireland and to develop guidance and information on the changes needed to strategy, policy and legislation on landscapes.
A working group was established and a manifesto for landscapes with 10 key asks has been developed and will be launched at a high level event in the Long Gallery at Stormont on 23rd October 2024 aligned to both International Day of Landscapes on Sunday 20th October and the NI Environment Week which will also be the week beginning 20th October. We are delighted that the Minister for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs will attend the event and provide a key-note address.
This event will be really important as we hope it will lead to the development of a new Landscape Strategy for N. Ireland.
One of the other aspects of the work has been to develop training and networking opportunities for the staff on the ground within the member organisations and to date 4 training events have happened:
- Tree nursery and seed collection management
- Grasslands ecology and species ID
- Rocky shores ecology and species ID
- Woodland and freshwater ecology
The feedback from these courses has been very positive with average scores out of 10 for four key questions as follows:
So far we have had over 30 people involved in the training events and there are another 5 training events planned for September / October.
Another element of the work that we are doing is to look at the carbon impact of the project and as such we have used the UK Government Green House Gas Conversion Factors (2022)[1] to calculate the impacts. To date the project has generated almost 3.5 tonnes of carbon. This is broken down by 5 key areas of work as per the graph on the CO2e (Kg).
The member network meetings have thus far created the greatest impacts along with officer travel to other meetings and events. We are encouraging the members to use public transport and to car share to attend these events and already are seeing a change in attitudes especially towards car sharing which is positive.
The network meetings and events, however, are crucial to building relationships and sharing knowledge and understanding and so it is essential that they continue but that we seek to minimise the carbon impacts of these events.
Finally we plan to launch the new Landscapes NI website in mid September and for this we have secured the domain www.landscapesni.org so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime you can follow us on Facebook or LinkedIn
Mike McClure, Landscapes NI Development Manager
This work has been made possible through the kind support and funding from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Action Renewables.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2022
📸Cover photo courtesy of Joseph Cullen