Critical Ecologies

In this podcast, John Bohan asks: who are the polluters, the big energy consumers, the tax dodging tech giants, the water devourers in our communities? Why do I see the Intel logo all about North Kildare? What’s the craic with that factory by the river? When the benevolent corporate presence in my community says they’re committed to maintaining “environmental stewardship” and “provide jobs and investment in the community, what do they mean by that?

We need to talk about Intel.

We live on an island overrun by tax dodging and resource ravenous multinationals, with a state dedicated to their profit at any cost. Saving our planet and climate systems is going to mean more than just “taxing the polluters”, but if we’re to win in any form of struggle it will have to happen on, and be organised at, a community level. We need to understand what a corporation like Intel does at an everyday level - how they are tangibly placed within our communities and what they do with the power and influence they have built for themselves. There’s a sleeping antagonism in the community here, between the needs of a profit driven multinational like Intel and the needs of the community.

This podcast with Rúadhán Clerkin looks at an environmental injustice issue (Green Gentrification) that is becoming an increasingly more prominent urban phenomenon. Countries all over the world are putting forward new and more radical greening policies and objectives to tackle climate change. However, the outcome of these greening polices can sometimes lead to green gentrification. This podcast takes a lot at what green gentrification is and where it is happening. This podcast also discusses the greening policies and objectives taking place in the Dublin City Region, most particularly those that were put forward by Dublin City Council in their Dublin Development Plan 2016-2022. The podcast then takes a look at who is benefiting from these greening polices, focusing on the greening polices in the Liberties in Dublin 8 as an example. Finally, this podcast looks at the ‘Just Green Enough’ strategy which offers a possible solution to the phenomena of green gentrification from taking place.

In this podcast, Sophie Thiessen discusses feminist political ecology and poetic dwelling in relation to forestry in Ireland, focussing on County Leitrim. Sophie describes the history of forestry in Ireland and how forestry policy has developed in the present day in relation to climate change. Situating our discussion in Leitrim we talk about how forestry in Leitrim has been and continues to be contested and resisted by locals, through pre-existing complaint channels, pickets, and protests, with a focus on the Save Leitrim Action Group. More broadly, we discuss how individuals have found alternative ways to practice forestry that are more sustainable and permanent. Sophie talks about the examples of Sioned Jones in County Cork who took direct action against sitke spruce forestry, and Cathy Fitzgerald in County Carlow who formed a slow art practice around transforming a plantation forest into a close-to-nature forest.

This podcast with Rob Keogh examines the role the state has played in creating enabling environmental and material conditions for inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in Ireland from the 1950s onwards, by focusing on a particular case study. The initial investment, and subsequent expansion, of Pfizer in Cork Harbour in the 1970s is examined, with a focus on water resources and infrastructures. While Ireland’s success in attracting FDI is conventionally attributed to policies such as the low corporation tax and generous financial grants, as well as factors such as access to EU markets and an educated, English-speaking workforce (all of which are certainly important), environmental factors have generally been overlooked. This case study suggests, however, that water resources have been an important material condition for enabling FDI in Ireland. While the future is uncertain, the existence of an extractivist logic that values Ireland’s water resources as a “competitive advantage” in a world of climate crisis might lead to the further targeting of water-intensive industry as an opportunity for FDI in Ireland. Attention to the material conditions for FDI,  and the state’s role in creating these conditions, raises important questions of environmental and social justice that should be central to any discussion of Ireland’s economic policy.

This podcast with Laure Detymowski offers a brief insight on how housing quality and environmental justice have been linked both in the literature and in social and environmental justice campaigns, mostly in the US and Irish contexts. In this discussion, the issue of housing quality is extended to encompass physically and mentally harmful living conditions that may have received less attention than toxic exposure so far such as overcrowding, pest infestation, dampness and other forms of material hazard. While green, climate and other environmental policy is increasingly being implemented along with innovative eco-housing concepts, this generalised green turn has also been criticised as mostly disconnected from existing social inequities. In a context of growing risk of extreme weather event and pandemics, it appears more important than ever to ensure that everyone is included in discussions around what constitutes a safe, healthy, quality home. Failure to secure inclusiveness in these discussions may lead to historically-marginalised social groups continuing to bear the burden of health-damaging, life-threatening housing conditions in the face of existing as well as future hazards and their cumulative effects.

The Irish government plans to produce 70% of its electricity from domestic renewable energy by 2030. Onshore wind production is the cornerstone of these targets, with projects developing across the country that seeks to reassemble the energy system. New pressures and tensions are emerging at different scales between private networks, the state, and the communities enrolled in these new renewable energy regimes. In this podcast, Conchúr Ó Mhaonaigh describes developments within the Finn Valley region of Donegal, Ireland, paying particular attention to the Meenbog wind farm. Using secondary analysis of state documents, newspaper articles, and social media posts, Conchúr explores the relationship between Meenbog Wind Farm’s political-economic configurations and the agency and knowledge expressed through the anti-wind politics found in the Finn Valley region. We discuss the politics of scale that is playing out in Meenbog and Finn Valley’s onshore wind developments, opening up useful questions for future scholarship and activism on renewable energy and decarbonization.