Environmental impacts of Brexit must not be ignored
Crucial cross-border cooperation to protect the environment across the island of Ireland must not be ‘ diluted’ by Brexit, a major conference in Dundalk on Friday last.
Examining the potential impacts on the Irish environment in a post-Brexit world, the event also explored opportunities for new ways of working together on cross-border issues.
The conference heard that potential weakening of legislative protection for nature was the single greatest environmental risk posed by Brexit.
The severity of this issue has been recognised at a European level, with the EU’s Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, recently highlighting the risk of environmental “dumping” if there is a divergence of standards between the UK and member states. There are currently over 650 pieces of EU legislation in force to protect the environment, habitats, air quality, waste, food safety and a myriad of other areas.
However, it is still unclear how environmental standards will be upheld in the future.
Opening the conference, Vice-President of the European Parliament, Mairead McGuinness emphasised that environmental standards “must not be diluted” by the UK’s exit from Europe.
‘Brexit poses many challenges but the threat to environmental progress, which the EU has championed, is one of the most significant,’ added the MEP for the Midlands-North-West.
‘For Ireland, it is important to have the same high standards North and South of the border and a divergence of standards would be bad for citizens and for business.’
Environmental Pillar Co-ordinator, Michael Ewing, added that it was of paramount importance to avoid a hard ‘environmental border’ which would undermine decades of progress. He also called for the island of Ireland to be recognised as a single bio-geographic unit and for the cross-border dimension of many environmental issues such as water quality, habitat and species loss to be addressed.