A Day in the Life - Sadhbh O'Neill

Sadhbh O’Neill is a researcher, lecturer, and advocate with over 30 years of experience in the fields of climate and environmental policy.

She is a member of the DCU Centre for Climate & Society, lecturing undergraduate and postgraduate students in climate change policy and politics. She has served as an Environmental Awareness Officer, worked as Policy Advisor on the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action 2018-20 and is a former Green Party councillor.

Sadhbh has worked for Friends of the Earth and Stop Climate Chaos, and as a campaign coordinator for Climate Case Ireland. 

Originally from Dublin, Sadhbh moved to Kilkenny in 2001, when she worked for Kilkenny Co Council as the Environmental Awareness Officer. Sadhbh was responsible for rolling out a campaign for waste management, recycling, and composting. This was at a time when the wheelie bins were introduced to Kilkenny.

On Savour Sunday (October 30) Sadhbh is organising a programme of talks and discussions for the Sustainable Hub.

The Sustainable Hub will host a series of talks, discussions and panels on what farming can do to support biodiversity and climate action. Presented by critics, farmers and activists.

Here is a glimpse into Sadhbh’s sustainable world…

It's great to have you curate the Sustainable Hub at Savour this year with huge names in the industry coming to Kilkenny. How did you get involved in our food festival?

To recap, during the summer, there was a big issue with climate policy when the Government was supposed to sign off on emission ceilings for the different sectors.

Agriculture is Ireland’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter. However, there was a lot of difficulty agreeing on a target and on a budget for the agricultural sector. There was a lot of lobbying and a very public debate for and against different levels of actions.  

Due to my background, I was very involved in it. I did a lot of media work and interviews and I think that Marian Flannery (Director of Savour Kilkenny) picked up on this.

The Savour Festival is great fun, and very much focused on food, cookery, and the diversity of ingredients as well as all the different products that producers are making.

This year they have decided to bring in the bigger debate on the food system: where food is coming from and what the environmental impacts are. So, I was invited to curate the Sustainable Hub schedule on the Sunday of Savour.

There are also a lot of other amazing talks on the Saturday too, organised in conjunction with the LEADER Partnership and the Acorn project in Kilkenny. So there will be an incredible variety of perspectives, who will be looking at the different food system as a whole.

The focus on Sunday will be on the planet and biodiversity and that’s where I come in and it's my pleasure to do it.   

Agricultural will be the hot topic of the day. Not surprising when that an UN report states that we have 60 more harvests left before our soil depletes. No soil means no food, no food means no people.

Soil fertility is just one of a number of alarming thresholds that we have to be careful not to cross. Climate change also has very significant effects on land use. We know that we are going to have more drought especially in the South and Southeast of the country.

More drought means importing more animal feed if the growing session is curtailed. So, when we claim to be a country of great green producers of animal products, we must be very careful that we can stand over this claim.

Also, there is the risk of extreme weather events like very heavy precipitation and flooding. It’s already happening, and all of this is likely to get worse. These are just a couple of indicators.

The other thing is that we are not resilient. We are using our land to produce high protein products that are developed for export, but we are importing most of the food that we eat. When you go to the supermarket and fill up your trolley, there’s a good chance that 70% to 80% of the fruit and veg that you are buying to eat on a daily basis are coming from outside of Ireland.

We have seen from the war in Ukraine how vulnerable food systems are to any supply shocks. Be it the increase in price in fertilizers, which are mostly produced in Russia, to the use of natural gas with dramatic price hikes.

Increased prices affect the food system as a whole and creates shocks in the system. It’s quite clear that some of the unrest in the Middle East over the last number of decades is related to dramatic increases in local food prices.

We might be able to absorb higher prices, but that doesn’t mean we are insulated from war and civic violence that might erupt somewhere else. In addition to that a lot of farmers are working very much on the margin. Increases in their input costs have a dramatic effect on their livelihoods.

Everything is interrelated, from how we manage the land and our investment in Ireland into the livestock sector, particularly in Kilkenny. We have invested heavily in expanding the dairy industry and farmers have gone into debt to do this.

It has increased our greenhouse gas emissions and has locked us into a production model, which is very difficult to back out of.

You have said that if the Government wants to do something about methane emissions, that it really comes down to reducing the herd.  

They can tinker around the edges with all fancy technologies, growing more hedgerows and different types of slurry spreading etc. These won’t make much of a difference, but what will is reducing the herd numbers.

That’s why its such a taboo topic amongst farmers because they have expanded their herds. It’s the only way to bring the emissions down and if we don’t other sectors will have to do more, which is unlikely too, because other industries are struggling to achieve the targets that have been set for them as it is.

The scientific community has been warning for nearly three decades that if we don't bring emissions down, we are heading into unchartered territory, possibly pushing the earth into a different state and that’s where we are at now.

They now describe the earth as being in a different geological era called the Anthropocene.

So, what are we looking at for earth?

The impact is at a global scale for example, flooding in Pakistan, major storms in the Philippines, a category five hurricane that is changing course in Florida. The impacts pop up in different ways in different countries.

The reality is that we are driving the earth system into a different state because we are pumping all this extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It's acting like a blanket and holding the heat in. As the earth warms, the global temperature is rising because of this blanket effect of carbon dioxide.

That’s changing the weather cycles and the climate. We now have more moisture in the atmosphere, so we have more frequent and violent storms, and possibly changing monsoon patterns.

Ireland is in a fortunate position in that we are a little bit insulated from some of the waste impacts by our position in the Atlantic. However, there is another factor - the North Atlantic Circulation System, which is sending warm water up from the Gulf of Mexico towards Ireland giving us that nice mild climate, this is weakening.

That can also be driven from the fact that we have so much cold water coming from melting glaciers and ice sheets being dumped into the Atlantic from the Arctic.

All the systems are interconnected. As the soil dries out because of drought and rising temperatures, we have heat stress around the world in major cities, experiencing temperatures as high as 48 to 50 degrees. This heat is unbearable, and people die in these conditions.

It’s not just humans that are suffering, with moisture defecate forests are more likely to catch fire. Even the Amazon has been eroded with deforestation and illegal agriculture. This is causing the Amazon to lose its resilience as it is supposed to be a massive water pump for the region.

In Ireland we are not insulted from anything that happens on planet earth because we live on it too.

We talked a lot about industry and agriculture, but what can we do better in our own homes as individuals when it comes to food.

On the food side, the first thing we can do is support local growers at the farmer’s market.

By buying directly from the local grower, we bypass the middleman, the big supermarket chains, the supply chain who take a cut and leave farmer’s short.

People can learn to cook with plant-based ingredients. Switching towards a more plant-based diet doesn’t mean you become strictly vegan or vegetarian. If you do eat meat, try having it as a treat occasionally.

Managing your food waste is also vital, as food waste contributes globally to global emissions. Buy what you are just going to eat. It does make a difference because you can’t have that stuff going into landfill.   

For more information on the Savour’s Sustainable Hub visit www.savourkilkenny.com/sustainablehub