Climate Justice

Climate justice

• In 2019/20 students worked with John McElligott of the voluntary activist group, ‘Safety Before LNG’, to research, legally analyse and produce public education resources regarding the campaign to prohibit the importation of fracked gas into Ireland, and the related campaign to prevent the development of a proposed liquified natural gas terminal on the Shannon estuary known as ‘Shannon LNG’.
  • The group published an episode of the ICHR’s Human Rights Podcast based on their research, which featured interviews with numerous environmental campaigners in Ireland and abroad.
  • They created a twitter and email campaign to encourage General Election candidates to pledge their support for prohibiting the importation of fracked gas. These efforts contributed to achieving a Programme for Government commitment to develop a policy statement establishing that ‘as Ireland moves towards carbon neutrality, it does not make sense to develop LNG projects importing fracked gas.’
  • Most significantly, the students produced a detailed legal opinion regarding the compatibility with EU and WTO trade law of legislation to prohibit the importation to Ireland of fracked gas. This legal opinion was the basis for a November 2020 joint submission by ICHR staff and postgraduate students and several NGOs to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action, proposing a legislative ban on importing fracked gas by way of amendments to the Petroleum and Other Minerals Development Act 1960 (according to draft legislation written by Gerry Liston of the Global Legal Action Network). Resulting from the submission,the Joint Committee on Climate Action recommended in its December 2020 report on pre-legislative scrutiny of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2020 ‘that the Minister address in the Bill and/or revert to the Committee with a comprehensive plan to ban the importation of fracked gas and specifically to ban LNG terminals in Ireland within the year 2021’. In May 2021, the Government issued the Policy Statement promised in the Programme for Government—which, while not committing to a legislative ban on importing fracked gas, commits to not allowing the development of LNG terminals in Ireland, to working with European States to allow the importation of fracked gas to be restricted, and to working with international partners ‘to promote the phasing out of fracking at an international level within the wider context of the phasing out of fossil fuel extraction.’

• In 2020/21 students worked with community groups North and South of the Irish border, and internationally, to further raise public awareness of the human rights harms arising from fracking and to facilitate human rights research-based advocacy for: (i) a ban on fracking in Northern Ireland (to match the existing legislative ban on fracking in the Republic of Ireland), and (ii) Irish government support for a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a global ban on fracking.
  • The group researched and produced a 56-page report and summary report entitled ‘International Human Rights Impacts of Fracking’, which drew on published public health and other research and on international human rights jurisprudence to analyse the implications of fracking for the rights to life; health; water; food; housing; access to information; public participation; a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment; and non-discrimination. The report played a major role in the campaigning of numerous Irish civil society groups (see here for example), and the summary report was translated into Spanish by concerned individuals. The report was used by Letterbreen and Mullaghdun Partnership for public advocacy purposes and as part of their submissions to a Northern Ireland Executive-commissioned study on the environmental, social and economic impacts of fracking. In February 2022, the Northern Ireland Executive committed to prohibiting fracking in Northern Ireland; this commitment was renewed in April 2024.
  • The students led the legal re-drafting of a proposed UNGA resolution calling for a global ban on fracking, and they communicated this proposal and its human rights-based justifications to numerous Irish government representatives and officials. Together with Friends of the Earth, Safety Before LNG, Belcoo Frack Free, Fridays for Future Ireland, Love Leitrim, FutureProof Clare, and Sister Majella McCarron) the students co-convened a national and international civil society coalition to advocate for Ireland’s support of such a resolution (see further here and here). The Government’s May 2021 Policy Statement committed to working with international partners ‘to promote the phasing out of fracking at an international level within the wider context of the phasing out of fossil fuel extraction.’

• In 2020/21 students worked with Saoirse McHugh and Bridgit Murphy of Talamh Beo to research the potential human rights-related impacts of the planned EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement. The students produced a five-part podcast series as part of the Irish Centre for Human Rights’ ‘Human Rights Podcast’, and a research report, finding the trade deal to risk drastically increasing deforestation, carbon emissions and the abuse of indigenous communities.