The launch of Trinity College Dublin's monthly webinar series, "Balanced Solutions for a Better World," began with a packed virtual audience, setting a bold tone for addressing the interconnected global challenges of environment, engineering, and technology. The opening session, facilitated by globally recognised ecologist Professor Yvonne Buckley, put forward a persuasive, authoritative case for why the climate and biodiversity crises must be dealt with as one issue, particularly in an Irish setting.
Trinity's E3 Initiative: A Focus on Sustainability
Trinity's E3: Engineering, Environment, and Emerging Technologies, online webinar session began punctually at 1 pm. Ruth Clinton, Industry Engagement and Partnerships Manager at E3, provided a warm welcome and introduced the initiative as being a bold, creative, and collaborative space at Trinity College Dublin, squarely focused on sustainability.
E3 stands for Engineering, Environment, and Emerging Technologies. It serves as a distinctive, multidisciplinary interface for the Schools of Engineering, Natural Science, and Computer Science and Statistics. It is intended to fuel pioneering research and education to address grand global challenges.
The central mission of the initiative is based on three pillars:
• Sustainability: Educating students with the knowledge and skills to build a sustainable and equitable future.
• Education and Growth: Enlarging STEM education at Trinity, aiming to grow student numbers by more than a third in the decade ahead.
• Leading Research: Supporting next-generation facilities and technologies to fuel scientific and technological advances.
Through these activities, Trinity is solidifying Ireland's place as a world leader in STEM, developing the next generation of critical leaders and thinkers.
Professor Yvonne Buckley: A Force for Policy and Science
Following the introduction, Ms. Clinton introduced the principal speaker, Professor Yvonne Buckley. Characterised as a world-class ecologist, a dedicated leader in sustainability, and a genuine power in environmental policy, Professor Buckley is the Professor of Zoology at Trinity College Dublin.
Professor Buckley's quantitative ecology research seeks to understand the underlying drivers of animal and plant populations in the rapidly changing world. Her research provides crucial scientific support for biodiversity conservation decisions, management of invasive species, habitat restoration, and climate change decision-making.
Her influence reaches far into Ireland's policy space through her lead roles:
• Co-director of the Climate Biodiversity and Water Co-Centre (Climate Plus), connecting 14 Irish, Northern Irish, and UK institutions.
• A critical member of Ireland's Climate Change Advisory Council.
• Director of the new AIB Trinity Climate Hub.
• Director for both Dublin Zoo and Ireland's National Biodiversity Data Centre.
The Crises are Interlinked: Climate, Biodiversity, and Water
Professor Buckley made no hesitation in making the case for action in unison, focusing on how the climate, biodiversity, and water crises are linked and must be tackled collectively. She visualised the imperative with two primary graphics:
• Ed Hawkins' climate stripes, depicting Ireland's mean temperature rise (grading from blue to red) since 1850.
• The biodiversity stripes, displaying a worldwide loss of biodiversity (grading from green to grey) by 73% between 1970 and 2020.
This data makes the changing world "personal and tangible." While the Irish Climate Act commits Ireland to being "biodiversity rich by 2050," the reality is startling:
• 85% of Natura 2000 protected habitats are in unfavourable and declining status.
• Nearly half (48%) of Ireland's surface waters are in unsatisfactory ecological condition.
• Populations of birds, bees, and butterflies have declined.
Professor Buckley drew upon joint IPBES-IPCC work, pointing to the shared drivers of the crises—from pollution and invasive species to land and sea use change. She also outlined the crucial feedback between them: Healthy ecosystems (like peat bogs) regulate climate by sequestering CO2, but rapid climate change (like drought) destroys those ecosystems, reducing their ability to regulate climate in return.
Navigating Trade-offs: The Challenge of Implementation
Professor Buckley proceeded to the necessary but challenging balancing act involved in implementing solutions, examining three fundamental areas:
1. Forestry: The Peatland Problem
o Sitka spruce absorbs CO2 and the carbon is securely stored if the wood is used to produce long-lasting goods and the site is replanted.
o However, the cultivation of deep peat soils requires drainage, which releases greenhouse gases (CO2 and methane) from the peat. This release can counter or offset the carbon taken up by the trees, turning a planned climate solution into an emitter.
2. Sustainable Food Systems: More People on Less Land
• Planting beans, peas, and lentils on a piece of ground can feed many more people than raising animals on the same land.
• A broader conversion to plant food systems would greatly reduce the amount of land used for food production and thereby create space for nature in our landscapes—a secondary benefit to biodiversity.
3. Renewable Energy: Sensitivity is Key
• Moving away from fossil fuels has risks to biodiversity (e.g., direct impact on birds and bats, harm to wildlife during installation, and land impact).
• The solution is not to halt development, but to make installations effective, sensitive in placement, and managed to promote biodiversity.
• She underscored that the impacts of continued fossil fuel emissions would be "far, far worse for biodiversity" than any impacts of renewable energy.
Land Use is as Powerful as Climate
Impelling evidence from her lab, Professor Buckley demonstrated a shocking discovery: human land use is as powerful as climate as an influence on global plant occurrence.
• The difference in the occurrence of plant life forms between a primary forest and agriculture is as large as the difference between the tropics and the temperate zone.
This finding has a significant policy consequence: the implications of land use change due to attempted climate change mitigation (e.g., building solar farms or planting monoculture forests) can have more influence on biodiversity in the short to medium term than the implications of climate change itself. Thus, "climate action that degrades biodiversity is not a sustainable option."
Integrated Action
Professor Buckley identified research conducted on behalf of the Climate Change Advisory Council, which determined that rebuilding carbon-intensive ecosystems is essential:
• Peatlands are the "superheroes" of the carbon world, but up to 80% are degraded. Restoration must make them wetter to lock in their vast carbon store.
• Incorporating solar into the built environment (car parks, roofs) to minimise the land footprint of large-scale solar farms.
• Mixed-species native woodlands and agroforestry to allow for carbon capture to be married with ecological value.
Crucially, she legitimised her stance in advising the Oireachtas, which resulted in the National Climate Objective being enshrined in the Climate Action Low Carbon Development Act 2021—firmly placing biodiversity on the climate agenda.
Her key point was that whilst Ireland needs massive land-use change to reach its carbon budgets (Agriculture is 38% of emissions), there is not sufficient land space available to accommodate them singly. Therefore, the country has to stack land uses—biodiversity, food production, renewable energy—so they are mutually beneficial.
Scaling Up Nature-Based Solutions
Nature-based Solutions (NbS), defined as interventions that harness ecosystems to solve for societal issues and deliver human well-being and biodiversity outcomes—are the template for this stacking. Professor Buckley legitimised those 81 instances of NbS (e.g., The Burren Life Project, integrated constructed wetlands) are already operational around Ireland.
These solutions offer multiple services simultaneously: flood attenuation, coastal defence, carbon sequestration, natural pest control, and enhanced pollination.
The underlying problem is scale. "The technology's there. We know what works," but solutions are not being rolled out quickly enough or widely enough. The path forward requires:
• Spatial Planning: A national policy to guide land use, protecting places, restoring them, and including biodiversity actions in productive lands.
• Policy Clarity: Publishing the National Land Use Review and accepting agreed definitions of key terms.
• Political Will and Public Action: A "bravery" to transform.
Q&A: Every Action Counts
In the Q&A, Professor Buckley made clear calls to action:
On 1.5: "Every degree, every fraction of a degree matters." Giving up is not an option; every action counts, making the effects of climate change "much less severe."
On Measuring Biodiversity: New technology based on AI, machine learning, and sensors already improves real-time monitoring. She also called on citizens to get involved in citizen science projects.
On Personal Lifestyle: The most effective personal measures are switching to more plant-based food (reducing land footprint) and reducing air travel.
On Civic Engagement: The most vital action is to talk to politicians. They need to be reminded by voters that climate and biodiversity are important issues at the doorstep. Individuals need to "vote on the issues you care about and ask them."
The session concluded on a very strong call for action, reminding participants that the pursuit of a "climate-resilient, biodiversity-rich, environmentally sustainable" future requires real commitment from all sectors.