subcategory

Agroecology

Feasta supports agroecological farming as a vital part of the transition to a wellbeing economy. Agroecology is a holistic approach that seeks to reconcile agriculture and local communities with natural processes, for the common benefit of nature and livelihoods.

Within Ireland, we collaborate with the Irish farmer’s group Talamh Beo, which is a member of the global agroecological farming group La Via Campesina.

If you’re a farmer in Ireland and you’re interested in getting practical information on agroecology, exchanging experience-based insights and contributing to the global agroecology movement, you can join Talamh Beo here.

Talamh Beo core

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Resilience and Well Being Group

Humanity is faced with a series of devastating challenges that will utterly change our civilisation and dramatically impact our everyday life. These interrelated challenges include climate breakdown, bio-diversity collapse, resource scarcity, economic collapse, war and political instability. The central cause to these problems is the unsustainable economic path we are following which is depleting the natural world, causing a dangerous climate and creating huge social inequality. We are entering a period of ‘unravelling’ and collapse which we are not prepared for.

The work of this Feasta group is focused on understanding the psychological roots of our current predicament and learning …

Beyond Extractivism

Working towards a sufficiency-based approach to the extraction and use of resources

Feasta is working with partner organisations to identify and address the economic dynamics that are encouraging the current rush to mineral prospecting and mining, both in Ireland and elsewhere.

While it is clear that everyone on the planet needs access to a certain amount of energy and resources in order to live a decent and dignified life, we believe it is dangerously erroneous to assume that overall energy and resource use must (and can) therefore remain at its present high level, or indeed increase.

Rather than planning for …

Healthy Habitats

Environmental action is often framed in terms of improving single metrics such as carbon or nitrogen. Yet this approach risks inadvertently causing damage by over-emphasising one metric at the expense of the overall ecosystem.
For example, poorly-managed efforts to decarbonise through reforestation can result in the planting of non-native monocultures, which compromise soil health and undermine biodiversity.

It’s clearly vital that we take as holistic an approach as possible to healing breaches in planetary boundaries. A more detailed discussion on this subject can be found here.

Parallel to the need to avoid over-simplifications and reliance on one metric,

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Bridging the Gaps 2023: podcasts on ecology, health, well-being….

In our Bridging the Gaps podcast series, the hosts, Seán O’Conláin and Caroline Whyte, explore a range of topics with guests from a wide variety of backgrounds. As with our previous series in 2022, 2021 and 2020, and our 2019 podcast series Beyond the Obvious, it is co-organised by Feasta and the European Health Futures Forum (EHFF). Please feel free to comment below.

Special thanks to Laoise Kelly who gave us permission to use her harp music. The piece is ‘Waltzing Daisy’ from her album ‘Just Harp’. You can find our more about Laoise’s music here.…

Land, Labour, Housing, Money, Farms: Moving the economic goalposts of Irish agriculture

This Feasta working paper explores the potential for cross-sectoral economic measures to ease expansionist pressure in agriculture in Ireland.

Download the complete paper (pdf)
Online discussion of first draft of paper, April 28 2022
Online discussion, May 18 2022: Cross-sectoral economic measures to support biodiversity in Ireland

Summary

This paper is intended to help fill a gap in the conversation about Irish agriculture: it examines how the broader economic context affects agriculture, and how certain upstream economic changes could be beneficial for agriculture in the future.

In order to meet the terms of the Paris Agreement, the Irish Climate Action …