The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has signed up to a letter putting pressure on the European Commission not to scrap its climate funding programme.
The letter, which started in Italy, has been supported by more than 30 regions from across Europe, as well as more than 100 local councils.
It has also been signed by hundreds of businesses and NGOs including The National Centre for the Circular Economy in Ireland, the Rediscovery Centre, the Good Energies Alliance and the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly.
Since 1992, the EU’s Life programme has financed hundreds of projects aimed at improving the environment and fighting climate change.
The Rediscovery Centre received more than €1 million from the EU towards transforming the disused Boiler House in Ballymun in Dublin into a “novel 3D textbook and learning space” for educating about the reuse of waste.
The EU also provided more than €800,000 for LIFE EMERALD, a three-year programme to analyse air pollution in Ireland.
Since the Life Programme started 33 years ago, it has helped protect and restore biodiversity at more than 5,400 Natura 2000 sites, around 20 percent of the entire Natura 2000 network, according to a recent event celebrating the fund’s achievements.
But future funding now looks to be under threat.
In its proposals for the next seven-year €2 trillion EU budget, the European Commission has suggested closing down the Life programme.
WWF Europe, which also signed the letter of protest warned that Life as an “EU funding instrument dedicated exclusively to nature and climate, would be absorbed into two broader funds, with no earmarked financing”.
The European Commission insists that environmental spending would be a key part of the future budget. But local authorities and NGOs are concerned that that promise is not specific enough.
In the letter, they warn the the European Commission plans would “weaken European action on environmental policies[,]…subordinate environmental and climate objectives to competitiveness [and] compromise the predictability, stability, and continuity of funding, forcing LIFE projects
to compete with other priorities often considered more urgent, without adequate safeguards.”
The signatories urge the European institutions to maintain LIFE as a stand-alone funding programme, with a “dedicated and predictable budget” in the 2028-2034 period.
Beate Aikens, Senior Advocacy Officer at WWF’s European Policy Office said:
“Ending the LIFE programme and dropping the 10 percent biodiversity spending target in the next long-term EU budget is a profoundly damaging choice.
It guts the EU’s ability to protect and restore nature at the very moment when Europeans are facing escalating heatwaves, floods and wildfires. More than 800 signatories have made it clear: Europe cannot sideline nature in the next EU budget and dedicated funding for nature is essential to protect Europe’s future.”