Dr Mike Hynes of the Governance and Sustainable Development Research Cluster in the School of Political Science & Sociology at the University of Galway led a hybrid workshop of the GovERN research community at the L’institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement (INRAE) in Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux, France on Wednesday 18th October 2023. This workshop preceded a public conference organised by the GovERN the previous day titled The Natured-based Solutions We Want: Shifting Perspectives on Rural and Peri-urban Nature-based Solutions attended by academics, practitioners, government agencies, and civic organisations from across Europe and Canada. GovERN is an international research community that seeks to advance collaborative research on social challenges and emancipatory opportunities when governing rural and peri-urban Nature-based Solutions. Members of the collective represent academic, government, and civic organisations and institutions in France, the UK, Finland, Spain, Italy, Canada and Ireland and are actively engaged in collaborative research and writing, teaching, and research funding applications and opportunities.
Dr Mike Hynes leading the workshop and discussions on the application and implementation of Nature-based Solutions for the GovERN Research Community
As part of the Joint-Honours Bachelor of Arts Degree from the College of Arts at the National University of Ireland Galway, students in the first year undertake a series of lectures on Society and the Environment, part of the module SP159 taught by the School of Political Science and Sociology. Similar to last year, at the first of nine lectures this semester covering broad aspects of the topic including climate change, (over)consumption, environmental harm, policy initiatives and responses, and environmentalism, a brief unscientific experiment was carried out in class. At the beginning of the lecture, students were asked to reflect on the theme of Society and the Environment and to come up with a word that echoes their current thoughts on the issues. These were then correlated and a Wordle was produced, which is provided below:
After the series of nine lectures, students were again asked to reflect carefully on the nature of Society and the Environment and, once again, verbalise their thoughts on the subject with fellow students and record these as concisely as possible in a single word or phrase. These were again processed and a Wordle was produced, which is provided below. Although not scientific in nature, this was an interesting ‘snapshot’ of how students thought about the subject before and after the series of lectures.
As part of the Joint-Honours Bachelor of Arts Degree from the College of Arts at the National University of Ireland Galway, students in the first year undertake a stream of lectures on Society and the Environment, part of the module SP159 from the School of Political Science and Sociology. At the first of nine lectures this semester covering broad aspects of the topic including (over)consumption, policy initiatives and responses, and environmentalism, a brief unscientific experiment was carried out in class. At the beginning of the lecture, students were asked to reflect on the theme of Society and the Environment and to come up with a word that echoes their current thoughts on the issues. These were then correlated and a Wordle was produced, which is provided below:
After the series of nine lectures, students were again asked to reflect carefully on the nature of Society and the Environment and, once again, verbalise their thoughts on the subject with fellow students and record these as concisely as possible in a single word or phrase. These were again processed and a Wordle was produced, which is provided below. Although not scientific in nature, this was an interesting ‘snapshot’ of how students thought about the subject before and after the series of lectures.
As part of the completion process for the module on Environment and Society (SP420) for final year Arts students at the National University of Ireland Galway, a fieldtrip to Roundstone – at the foot of Errisbeg in Connemara – and its surrounds was undertaken by the class on Saturday 20th February 2016. Eleven students made the trip on what was a typical wet February morning but, nevertheless, an enjoyable day out was had by all to a location many students had not visited in the past.
The class smiling through the wet conditions at Gurteen Bay outside Roundstone Village
The location was chosen after we had covered in class Tim Robinson’s 1987 piece ‘The View from Errisbeg’ in the Frank Mitchell edited The Book of the Irish Countryside. We had chosen this particular article as an attempt to better understand the many interactions between landscape/nature and human inhabitants of such sites as geological history can provide certain clues about its potential appeal to human inhabitants. In Robinson’s writing he provides a detailed description of the landscape around Errisbeg in North-West Connemara using many place names as reference points and aids to understanding interactive patterns of land use:
As elsewhere, it is human activity that determines the texture of what appears at first glance to be untouched wilderness, a fact that complicates the conservationist case somewhat. However, the core of this area, which is becoming known as Roundstone bog, having been spared by forestry and turf-cutting so far, most certainly should be preserved as it is; apart from it ecological uniqueness, it harbours one of the rarest of resources, solitude (Robinson, 1987: 42).
And at Dogs Bay at the foot of Errisbeg
The hill is Errisbeg, which shelters the little fishing village of Roundstone from the west wind, in Connemara; the portion of the world’s surface visible from its summit comprises the suite of landscapes grouped around Galway Bay which it has been my wonderful and wearying privilege to explore in detail over the last fifteen years, the Burren uplands in County Clare, the Aran Islands, and Connemara itself (Robinson, 1987: 42)
The ‘Reception Committee’ just outside Roundstone Village
After a really pleasant (although wet) ramble from Roundstone village to the beaches some twenty minutes walk away, we returned to a somewhat deserted village deep in the slumber of ‘off season’. So we made our way to Ballynahinch Castle for some well-deserved warm soup and tea/coffee. Set in a private 450-acre estate of woodland, rivers and walks in Connemara, this Castle Hotel stands overlooking its famous salmon fishery, with a backdrop of the Twelve Bens Mountain range. The Castle was built in the 17th century for the Martyn family, one of whose better-known members was ‘Humanity Dick’ founder of the RSPCA, and was also home at one time to the Maharajah Ranjitsinhji. In 1924, the cricket legend Prince Ranjitsinhji, Maharajah of Nawanager, made a trip to Ireland and forged a link between India and Ireland that survives today.
An ‘inviting’ Ballinhinch Castle and stop for weary explorers
Student Reflection…
“Once you look past the beauty of the landscape you start to notice the effects humans have had on it. There was a noticeable amount of trash as well as coastal erosion on the dunes nearby. The encroach of holiday homes was clear as the trailers seemed to settle as close as they could. In people’s efforts to experience and appreciate the landscape, they often end up causing some damage along the way” (Rachele Carbutt)
“It was clear how big of an impact tourism has on the Roundstone area. I was surprised to see how dead the town was, it made me wonder how far the local residents have to travel for work and shopping/other needs when it isn’t tourist season” (Katherine Anderson)
“The field trip to Roundstone was an enlightening trip to see how the town and the two bays were affected by tourism” (Ashley Westbee)
“I found the fieldtrip very enjoyable. I found looking at man’s impact on the natural landscape particularly interesting. It was fascinating to see the construction of famine walls and cottages, and to observe how the area has transitioned from a small fishing community to one based on the income from tourism” (Kyle Moore)
“One thing I noticed during the visit to Roundstone was that there was a lot of trash around the town and the beaches. Almost as though the tourists don’t care about their surroundings” (Sarah Bryson)
“The fieldtrip was a great experience. It very much highlighted what we had been studying in class, the question of sustainable tourism and household planning. Is this a landscape worth preserving? Or does the household landscape ruin it or improve it? In terms of Dog’s Bay, I found the holiday homes could’ve used more planning and thought as to where the houses were built and what type of houses they could’ve used” (Bob Groome)
Some wild red berries struggle to survive the winter
Reference
Robinson, T. (1987) ‘The View from Errisbeg’, in Frank Mitchell (editor) The Book of the Irish Countryside. Belfast: Blackstaff, pp.42–52.
Ecosia is a social business dedicated to environmental sustainability via the donation of revenue to the world’s most effective rainforest protection programs. Their best-known service, the search engine mask at Ecosia.org, is powered by Bing and Yahoo. It lets an essential and routine task like searching the web double as an ecological contribution: not only are Ecosia search emissions offset, but every click on a sponsored ad within Ecosia translates into either cents for the environment, or cents for generating more cents for the environment. Cents may not sound like much, but they certainly add up. From its inception until December 2010, Ecosia was able to generate just under 125,000 Euros (164,000 USD) for its rainforest protection program with the WWF, and that in just the first year!
Check out more about this great and interesting idea by visiting them HERE and see the Ecosia search engine HERE.
Travel and mobility must be a fundamental consideration in the promotion of sustainable development, production and consumption in Ireland. Governmental policy over the past number of decades has focussed almost exclusively on road building and the infrastructure required to accommodate the automobile and other road-based travel (see Transport 21), often neglecting the social and spatial consequences of these decisions. This has exacerbated issues of congestion, pollution, and social exclusion in our towns and cities, and indeed rural areas. Furthermore, private cars currently use vast amounts of fossil fuel for propulsion and recent green initiatives simply seek to change this to a viable alternative such as electricity or biofuel options. I would argue that without some essential reconsideration of car usage itself what we’re effectively doing is changing one source of energy consumption (one that is causing serious environmental damage such as greenhouse gas emissions and pollution) to a possibly cleaner alternative but we’re still consuming energy at an unacceptable and unsustainable level and turning over our cities and town to traffic. Rather than merely changing the energy source what we should be doing is encouraging people to use the car less and adopt healthier and sustainable modes of transportation such as walking or cycling, where this is possible, and utilising public transport more often. This will help strengthen our communities and bring life and vigour back to our streets rather than traffic, congestion, pollution and danger.
There is no doubt that this view will meet some hostility and such a transformation will not happen overnight. Much of our current urban design philosophy is car-centric and this is reinforced by political decision-making that favour automobile transport. What do I mean by this? Well, try taking Public Transport to any out-of-town shopping centre or Retail Park. Try cycling to any of these facilities and if you do make it there see if you can find a sheltered safe bike shed. In my experience, you are not encouraged to take Public Transport, cycle, or indeed walk to these centres and the additional rationale of free car parking appears to strengthen this observation. While car travel can be very rewarding in terms of mobility freedom, car dependency is often the opposite of such independence. It can be temporally and economically negative in terms of the personal time and money wasted. It can also be damaging in terms of personal health, in addition to its environmental impacts and consequences. So before you drive your car through the computer screen in rage, let me make this final point. I’m not anti-car. I own and drive one myself and would be lost at times without such mobility freedom. What does worry me, however, is how the automobile shapes so much of our lives, both seen and unseen. We build roads through Historic sites to facilitate cars (the M3 through the ancient Hall of Tara), we demonise Public Transport for the money it receives but seldom question how much we spend on road construction and maintenance, and we exclude people from activities who don’t have access to a private car. I’m simply trying to broaden the debate, a debate that should not be exclusively determined by the (over)use of the private automobile.
David Engwicht is an Australian social innovator and a significant international leader in efforts to reduce the negative impacts of private cars on our cities and towns. He is considered the father of traffic calming and is the inventor of the walking bus, Street reclamation, and the Universal Anchoring Device. He is the author of several books including three broadly available ones; Reclaiming Our Cities and Towns: Better living through less traffic (1993), Street Reclaiming: Creating liveable streets and vibrant communities (1999), and Mental Speed Bumps: The smarter way to tame traffic (2005).
On Monday 24th May 2010, on a gloriously sunny day in Galway, David gave a very interesting and thought-provoking presentation at the City Museum, as a guest of the Galway Transportation Unit and as part of the county’s Smarter Travel Area bid. He challenged the audience to question their own personal travel behaviours and to view our traffic problems not merely as issues for engineers to fix but as a general social concern of design and how we envision our shared futures. Designing for the car does not have to be the centre of our mobilities universe and if we visualise urban movement without the automobile what would this be like? Walking and cycling may be slower but also more rewarding in terms of stimulation and social interactions. So, what do we want our cities to be, he inquired, a space for cars to get from A to B travelling at speed or a centre for fulfilling our shared human experience? The uncomfortable answer may very well be in our urban design and development and our current preoccupation with building more roads in, around, and through cities may not bode well for the future of alternatives to car travel.
A podcast of his talk is available by clicking HERE thanks to the free source website Internet Archive, a non-profit organisation set up to build an Internet library.
