Publications

Farmers Donie and Colette Reegan with Doug McMillan Project Manager Farm Carbon EIP at one of the new ponds on the wetland farm in Shinrone, Co Offaly.
Photograph: John D Kelly

In this article in The Irish Times on 22 July 2023, Sylvia Thompson examines an initiative involving 23 farmers aims to show how a balance between agriculture and the environment can be struck. She visits the farm of Donie and Colette Reegan with Doug McMillan, the project manager of Farm Carbon European Innovation Partnership. This initiative aims to develop and showcase new methods of farming peatlands while reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), enhancing biodiversity and improving water quality.

At a meeting in Germany between John Gormley (former Minister for the Environment) and Jan Philipp Albrecht (the incoming President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation), they discussed the possibility of collaboration with Green Foundation Ireland. The Heinrich Böll Foundation is a member of the Green European Foundation.

John suggested a visit to Ireland to re-establish the Irish connection with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and this took place from 12-15 September 2022, along with René Böll (the son of Heinrich) and GFI’s Tommy Simpson. Following on from this visit, a book Reconnecting with Böll – An Irish Journey, edited by John, was published in December 2022.

'5 in Five' is a new video showcase of Ireland's native plants and wild places delivered in 5 minute episodes by Trinity College Botany Department and Trinity College Botanic Garden. The idea was hatched by Head of Department Professor JENNIFER McELWAIN while out walking within her 5km radius of home during the COVID lockdown. The aim is to present 5 plant species in five minutes in an engaging way that showcases Ireland's plant diversity in their native habitats, whether a shingle beach, mountain bog or old city wall. Most of us suffer from a condition called 'plant blindness'. We simply...

Food Sovereignty, Climate Action and Local Resilience

This pamphlet on Food Sovereignty, Climate Action and Local Resilience follows on from A Question of SCALE: Imagining a co-operative, community-led approach to regional resilience, a framing paper in which we explored the potential of the Social and Solidarity Economy, Doughnut Economics, Just Transition, The Commons, Community Wealth Building, Federated Co-Ops as approaches to help us address the climate and ecological emergency.

“Challenging the global trade regime and the bilateral trade agreements which entrench trade relations and which negatively affect peasant farmers on both sides is a vital part of the picture of Food Sovereignty and the global conversation that needs to be had about how to protect, encourage and support biodiverse, agroecological and small scale production not just in our backyard, but across the world.”

Majority Voting as a Catalyst of Populism:
Preferential decision-making for an inclusive democracy

This timely book by Peter Emerson presents a critique of binary majority rule and provides insights into why, in many instances, the outcome of a two-option ballot does not accurately reflect the will of the people. Based on the author’s first-hand experience, majority-voting is argued to be a catalyst of populism and its divisive outcomes have prompted countless disputes throughout Europe and Asia. In like manner, simple majority rule is seen as a cause of conflict in war zones, and of dysfunction in so-called stable democracies.

An Fraughan Drummin Bog Project
This ebook has come from the An Fraughan ecosocial art wetlands project, which was the collaboration between South Carlow artists and the three primary schools adjacent to Drummin Bog. It is a visual snapshot of the young people’s time on the project and their engagement with the bog and their creative outputs, while also illustrating Drummin Bog itself.

A Question of SCALE: “Imagining a co-operative, community-led approach to regional resilience” (SCALE being the acronym for Supply Chains and Local Economies)

This position paper is published by the Green European Foundation, with the support of Green Foundation Ireland and Cultivate, and is part of GEF’s Climate Emergency Economy transnational project which includes Green House Think Tank in the UK and GroenLinks in the Netherlands.

Resilience Under Shock: Time for a Paradigm Shift, by Dirk Holemans, is published by Green European Journal.

Governments compete on the global market for medical equipment produced elsewhere. Squeezed public sectors are stretched beyond their limits and the social consequences of shutdowns reverberate across the world.

The coronavirus crisis has fundamentally questioned how society should be organised to ensure health and well-being for all. Faced with a systemic shock, the guiding principle for recovery should be resilience. Dirk Holemans sets out what it means in practice.

Unlocking the Job Potential of Zero Carbon is published by Green European Foundation as a result of the GEF transnational project “Strengthening Climate Targets, Creating Local Climate Jobs”, conducted with its partners Green House Think Tank (United Kingdom), Ecopolis (Hungary) and Green Foundation Ireland.

Meeting the challenge of climate change requires structural changes to the economy so that it is no longer dependent on fossil fuels: we need to reduce overall energy use and ensure that all the energy that we do use is from renewable sources. This will require the creation of a large number of new jobs.

Green European Foundation, with the support of Green House Think Tank, has developed a model to estimate the number of jobs that would be created in key sectors of the economy, to not only demonstrate that a transition is achievable but to also show where those jobs will be.

This model has been applied to the United Kingdom, as well as to Ireland (with the support of Green Foundation Ireland) and to Hungary (with the support of Ökopolisz Alaptivány). The methodology used in that work and its results are presented in this report.

Peter Emerson is the director of the de Borda Institute, which aims to promote the use of inclusive voting procedures on all contentious questions of social choice. This applies specifically to decision-making, be it for the electorate in regional/national polls, for their elected representatives in councils and parliaments, for members of a local community group, for members of a company board, for members of a co-operative. Peter has written ten books on voting systems and published several articles on democracy in peer reviewed journals. A vocal critic of the Majority Rule, he has helped design an app for multi-option voting.

This talk was given at a TEDx event in Vienna in October 2017 using the TED conference format but independently organised by a local community.

In many instances, a majority vote identifies not the will of the people, not even the will of the majority of them, but the will of those who wrote the question. Most political problems are complex; to reduce them to a win-or-lose binary vote, or even a series of such dichotomies, often turns what should be a discussion into an argument. Preferential voting in contrast can be win-win: indeed, a points system can identify that option which, if not the most popular, is at least the most generally acceptable.

The Cork Summer School held in June 2018 proposed policy changes not only in response to the Milan Urban Food Policy pact but also to the review of the EU Common Agricultural Policy which will take place in 2018. The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, signed by over one hundred cities across the globe, called for co-ordinated international food policies to tackle the pressing issues of food as a human right, the underlying systemic causes of food insecurity and the need to create sustainable and socially just ‘food systems’.

This article “Don’t Fear the Wind: Can community owned wind farms overcome the stigmas surrounding wind energy?” was written by CONOR McGOOKIN.

Connor is a PhD Researcher in the MaREI Centre, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork.

The MICRO RENEWABLE ENERGY FEDERATION (MREF) is a members based organisation representing the majority of companies and stakeholders engaged in developing, installing and/or supplying rooftop solar generation and battery storage in Ireland. MREF is also a voice for the thousands of households and businesses waiting for the long overdue delivery of the Government’s commitment to support micro energy generation.

ABOUT “Power to the People”
The policies of the Federation detailed in this document have already received support from community representative organisations and environmental groups. For example, the Irish Farmers’ Association is advocating that the Government change direction and allocate at least 20% of the PSO levy towards micro generation.

The recent UK election has thrown up a number of surprises. One is the monumental mistake that Theresa May made in thinking a snap election would see her gain a large majority and thus legitimacy for a ‘hard Brexit’.  The second, and related, is that her failure to secure enough MPs has left the Conservatives in need of securing support from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party for a minority Conservative government in London. This has ramifications not just for UK politics, but is an unexpected and potentially destabilising issue in the negotiations to form a power-sharing executive in Belfast which have been ongoing since March this year.

JOHN BARRY, Director of Green Foundation Ireland, has written an article on this topic which was published in the Green European Journal on 6 July 2017.

Brexit has been a shock. It wasn’t the European Union that smashed the trade unions, depleted Britain’s social housing stock and then went on an orgy of privatisation, but Brexit has handed complete, unregulated control over to those who did, and the potential consequences reach far beyond Britain’s borders.

NUALA AHERN, former Chair of Green Foundation Ireland, has written an article on this topic which was published in the Green European Journal on 11 August 2016.

DICK PELS is a Dutch sociologist and freelance political writer.

In his book “A Heart for Europe” he asserts that European civilisation is the never-ending quest for a more gentle, more relaxed, less dangerous society: a society in which people are no longer afraid of each other and themselves. But Europe currently faces a ‘perfect storm’ of populist nationalism, Russian revanchism, neoliberal financial havoc, religious terrorism and refugee chaos. Facing these violent challenges, we urgently need to rethink our ideals of peace, freedom, democracy, sustainability and the good life. In this book, Dick Pels makes a valiant attempt to regain the original passion behind the European project, and to rescue the idea of a civilised European patriotism from the politics of fear which is conducted by both right-wing and left-wing nationalists.

“Green Values: Religion and Secularism”

Six European Green foundations participated in conversations on religion, Green values and secularism with Green activists all over Europe.

Why did Green Foundation Ireland engage with this topic? It is distressing, for anyone with the eyes to see it, how completely human behaviour is destroying the earth and its creatures.

We decided to ask some of our elders here in Ireland, such as Seán McDonagh, Margaret MacCurtain, John Dillon and others not yet elders, such as Mary Condren and Dolores Whelan, all of whom are part of the Green movement or sympathetic to Green values, to give us their perspective on all of this. You can read their contributions, along with those from John Barry, Trevor Sargent and Mary White.

Edited by: NUALA AHERN (Green Foundation Ireland)
          and ERICA MEIJERS (Bureau de Helling)

Green Values, Religion and Secularism is a book published by Green European Foundation in 2015, in which Green activists from different European contexts reflect on the relationship between politics and religion, both in their own lives and in society.

Six European Green foundations participated in conversations on religion, Green values and secularism with Green activists from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, The Netherlands, Poland and Turkey.

During 2015, the Climate Gathering worked with Christian Aid, Ibec, Irish Congress of Trade Unions, The Environmental Pillar and Trócaire to stage a series of five conversations, lectures and debates with the theme “Bringing People Together for a New Understanding on Climate Change”.

In 1997 JOHN DILLON, who is a Director of Green Foundation Ireland, founded the Dublin Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition, based in Trinity College Dublin, of which he is still an active member. He is the author or editor of over 30 books in the area of ancient philosophy, as well as over 150 articles. His study of Plato has led him to develop strong views on the destruction of the environment endemic to modern civilisation, and the capitalist concept of incremental growth. He has now written an article entitled “Platonism and the World Crisis”.

ROSEMARIE ROWLEY, who is a Dublin-born poet and author, has published five books of poetry, and has four times won the Epic award in the Scottish International Poetry Competition.

She is very interested in green issues and has now published a review of “The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism” which is edited by Greg Garrard.

GEF has published a special print edition of the Green European Journal, which maps four debates key to the future of Europe. These four debates are gateways to penetrating the transnational complexity of the green debate, interconnecting national public spaces where debates on the fundamental issues for our future are still being carried out. The first print edition of the Green European Journal is an exciting development for this project that was launched 18 months ago. This edition focuses on four key debates the that Journal has identified as being crucial to the future of Europe: federalism, sustainability, solidarity and...

Sustainable Democratic Energy for Ireland and Europe A case for renewables and participation by Dan Boyle The EU has embarked on a significant reduction in CO₂ by 2020 and a switch to CO₂-free energy by 2050. This will require a massive expansion of Europe’s renewable energy infrastructure. Such infrastructure is potentially very invasive to local communities. Developing community support for such projects through participative democracy and community involvement is a major challenge that needs to be met if the switch to renewable energy is to take place.  

Rosemarie Rowley ROSEMARIE ROWLEY, who is a Dublin-born poet and author, has published five books of poetry, and has four times won the Epic award in the Scottish International Poetry Competition. She is very interested in green issues and has now published an essay entitled "THE TERRIBLE TWINS – how Freud and Marx legitimised our throwaway society". To read more about Rosemarie and her literary work, please visit her website at www.rosemarierowley.ie View the publication here. Download Now!

European Citizens’ Initiative Pocket Guide is published by the Green European Foundation

The Green European Foundation presents its new publication on the European Citizens’ Initiative, a complete user manual to this first transnational tool in modern direct democracy. The publication is authored by Bruno Kaufmann, president of Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe.

Following the success of the first edition of GEF's "Manual for Europe", we have launched our second, updated version which includes new chapters on Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Eurozone crisis and the European Court of Justice. The manual is available to download, or you can order your free copy by emailing info@gef.eu Copyright Creative Common: Niccolo Caranti Why a manual for Europe? GEF's mission is to foster greater involvement by citizens in the European Union's political system, and to create an active political space to discuss major issues confronting the Union. A barrier to this is the perception...

This publication, developed by the Green European Foundation with support of the Finnish Green Cultural and Educational Centre "Visio", is a first step by the two organisations in mapping the various problems Roma communities in Europe are facing and showcasing several initiatives that have successfully tackled the causes and effects of these problems. The book benefits from contributions of both renowned experts in the Roma rights field, as well as of prominent Green politicians and activists working on the topic. The book deals with questions related to Roma inclusion from a local, national and European perspective. In doing so, it...

As Europe, and much of the developed world, continues to grapple with the ongoing debt crisis, it must not be forgotten that the most pressing threat facing us is climate change. This report, by the think-tank ReDefine for the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament and now published by GEF for the Green Group, examines how we can make the necessary investment in a Green economy within the confines of the debt crisis. The need to invest in a Green New Deal, a transformation to a more equitable and sustainable economy, is now more clear than ever. The current economic...