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Our Woods, Our trees, Our Lives & Local Agenda 21
national |
environment |
opinion/analysis
Wednesday October 26, 2005 13:48 by Niall Harnett
The Natural Environment can't be saved by law alone. It's protectors must be the citizens themselves
The greater the diversity of life in a woodland, the greater the health of the woodland as a whole and the greater the health of all the individuals in the wood.
Nature takes care of itself and will generate balance. The 'Woodsman' or the 'Hand in the Woods', to translate correctly, can help nature, can concertina time to a certain extent and can create a symbiosis with nature, with an ecosystem, with a woodland.
Or the hand of man can destroy nature and destroy itself.
The leaves on the trees are turning to their true colours now before they fall. The acorns fall among their own leaves, this years leaves and generations of leaves. The trees make their own soil, and they love to grow in it. The Oak tree is the true king of Ireland and all of Ireland was once an Oak forest. Not just Oak, but Ash and Hazel, Holly and Yew, Alder and Willow, Fruit trees and Thorny trees, Pine and Birch etc. The Birch is called the sentinel tree, because it guards the edge of the forest and colonises new ground, sweetening any soil for the other trees to move into. The trees clean our air, they draw and clean our water and they make our earth. We make fire with trees and we make shelter with trees to protect our fires and ourselves from the elements. Woodlands and Forests sustain all life happily. "A house is just something you build around to protect your fire", Del says.
So it makes sense to cut them down doesn't it. It makes sense to put pipelines through them, roads through them, superdumps on top of them, or to make a sterile monoculture out of them by growing only Sitka Spruce in them, like Coillte are doing. It makes sense to pretend to protect them and then to secretly sell them to private companies and developers for refineries, incinerators and hotel & apartment developments.
It actually did make a lot of sense to hold the World Conference in Rio in 1992 on the 'Environment' and 'Sustainability'. Recognising that economic interests were destroying our environment and ultimately our ability to survive, we decided to move into a new era of 'Sustainable Development', defined in the Rio Declaration 1992 and planned in Agenda 21.
Agenda 21 is 'the blueprint for Sustainability' and gives ordinary people, citizens, local people and communites, the right to have a say in how our environment is managed and protected. It gives meaning to the terms 'local democracy' and 'local government' .To quote from our own Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government's 'Sustainable Development, A Strategy for Ireland', published in 1997:
"Local Agenda 21 is a process which facilitates sustainable development at community level. It is an approach, based on participation which respects the social, cultural, economic and environmental needs of the present and future citizens of a community in all its diversity and which relates that community and its future to the regional, national and international community of which it is a part.
- It will take into account the well being and quality of life of the entire community in the long term
- It will include a high level of participation at local level, giving particular attention to participation by minority or under-represented groups, and
- While it may focus on a particular social, economic, cultural or environmental issue it will present an integrated vision of how the other aspects of community life will be affected."
Although this State and our Government are signed up to Agenda 21, we know that they have no intention to live up to it and are fighting citizens who are actively trying to use it to protect their environment. They are determined to drive this country into the dust, and concrete dust at that. We the people, encouraged nowadays by a survival instinct to a large extent I think, are learning about our rights and the laws that protect those rights. We're finding a will and a strategy to fight against this State and the destruction it wants to impose on us. 'The thief cometh not but for to steal, to kill and to destroy'.
"The Natural Environment cannot be saved by law and the courts alone. It's protectors must be the citizens themselves"... is a quote from 'The Law of Sustainable Development, Local Agenda 21the 12th principle"', by Michael Decleris, pdf linked below, a very important document and a tool we should all familiarise ourselves with.
The trees are threatened and constantly under attack, yet they persevere steadfastly in throwing out their seeds, looking always to germinate, striving to grow, in spite of all that's put in their path. They know their potential, they know what they can do, they look forward to the life they can sustain.
We're like the trees, let's be like the trees.
Okay let's not get tree huggy about it, let's get real about it, let's make a real choice to make sacrifices in our lives to work to fight against these fuckers who are trying to destroy us. Let's work hard at trying to create something better together. And let's spend more time in the woods.
All pics taken around Clare and Galway this summer.
Into the woods.
By the lake.
A young Oak by a fence.
Oak, Ash & Holly leaves reach for the light.
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Comments (6 of 6)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6... and a few gnarly oaks.
... at home in his woods.
"A house is just a shelter you build around your fire."
The greatest threat to the land which sustains ALL of us is from tragically shortsighted and self-serving corporate development (in blatant cooperation with government authority...needless to say) and in no way from 'mass immigration' as is here termed the necessary influx of labour to our current economy. Please reread the eloquent and righteously idignant article from the woodland league (to which I am not a member I may add - I am merely on their mailing list) and you will see how irrational it is to make the association between immigration as experienced in the Ireland of today and environmental destruction. If you look at the situation closely, where corporate 'progress' is fed by cheap labour (i.e. abuse of migrant rights) its clear to me that supporting immigrant rights is in fact linked to environmental protection. A just labour market will curtail the enthusiasm of the corporate world to devour our resources and destroy our land (yes skinhead, this land is special...as is every inch of this fragile earth), stabilizing the system, giving rise not to the capitalist holy grail of economic "progress" but rather economic "sustainability" - real progress! When the economy can no longer sustain an influx of immagrants the influx will lessen; it is only natural so relax, look around you and see how our nation is being transformed by far by the better by its emmigrant population. If you're true to your own culture you won't fail to see how enriched it can be by all others that seek a better life on our shores. In terms of the issue of housing alluded to when the Phoenix Park is mentioned, look at the damage caused by unchecked ribbon development in the country side, predominantly the cause of an insensitive Irish middle class building their "MacMansions" sanctioned by politicians concerned only with retaining power. So please leave such distracting xenophobic tendancies aside and concentrate on the true issues at hand.
It seems the comments I was refering to have been removed (unnecessary xenophobhic remarks from someone called 'skinhead') so I'm sorry if my comment above is also distracting and sounds out of place; its not really relevant anymore so you might as well delete these too! Thanks.
(Beautiful photos by the way)
it always saddened me how little native forest was left in ireland. walking through trees always gives me a deep sense of clarity and calm. these spaces are life-giving and spiritually renewing and as we race to accumulate and consume the products of alienated labour, we are in danger of obliterating these areas forever. i think it's important that children are made aware of how little woodland we have, how special it is and what steps we can take to preserve it.
keep up the good work!
resolved to plant at least 20 native trees during their lifetime the situation would be transformed within a few generations. A lot of people are obsessed with cutting down trees. How often do you witness the spectacle of the newly built bungalow plonked garishly on a hillside where noone can avoid its lurid yellow colour, with every tree, hedge or natural growth of any kind stripped forensically away? In almost every case it has been replaced by an idiotic looking 'lawn' of practically plastic 'perfection'. The whole effect is as unsympathetic and hideous as possible. Question: if people want to build houses that would look at home in a city suburb (and even that is questionable - why shouldnt cities have lots and lots of trees) why do they insist on seeking out beautiful, unspoiled locations to impose their urban nightmares on? Wretched planners.