Rewilding Ireland seeks to address the environmental challenges that humanity faces in a way that generates ecological, social and financial benefits.
Our vision of rewilding combines the power of the natural environment with human innovation, investment and wisdom.
Rewilding Ireland respects the Earth and those who live on it.
We recognise the impact that people are having on their environment and want to foster a society where humans and ecosystems can flourish.
To achieve this we embrace communication, innovation, and reflection – the uniquely human attributes which have led us to this point and which can lead us through and beyond it to a better future.
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them"
- Albert Einstein
Environmental Enhancement
Our environment is facing significant threats such as climate change and this is already having serious impacts, including species extinctions. Rewilding Ireland recognises the urgency of protecting ecosystems and is committed to finding ways for everyone to protect and restore the environment around them.
Climate change has significant short and long term, and regional and global implications, while biodiversity loss is occurring at a rate not seen since dinosaurs became extinct. Both of these are attributable to the actions of people, and traditional means of attempting to conserve our environment in the face of such overwhelming human impact are proving inadequate.
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As our name suggests, at Rewilding Ireland we embrace the novel and positive contribution that rewilding can make to conservation. We see rewilding, in which power is restored to nature, as part of the solution to a problem which humans are not able to solve alone.
Our view of rewilding is different from others in that as well as placing our trust in nature we include people and technology in our vision for the future, understanding that we will need the full range of human, natural and technological endeavour to help protect and restore our environment. We also recognise that rewilding needs to embrace activity at all scales, from large, ambitious projects to small, individual efforts, in which countries, companies and communities invest in our shared future.
We fully agree that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
We need to embrace innovative thinking and novel approaches.
"Nothing about us, without us"
- traditional saying
Community cooperation
The world’s population is almost 8 billion and we are all stakeholders in what happens to the Earth and our environment. Rewilding Ireland believes in participatory communication and involving stakeholders and communities of interest in the decision making on everything we do.
The world’s population is 7.9 million and we’re consuming more resources and producing more waste than is sustainable. We already need the equivalent of 1.75 Earths for the behaviour of today’s population to be feasible, and populations are growing and lifestyles are changing.
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More than 200,000 people are born every day and the exponential growth rate means that the world’s population is expected to be almost 10 billion by 2050 – how many Earths would we need to support that many people? And how many Earths would we need as development and industrialisation increase? ‘Overshoot day’ is getting earlier every year and for everyone to have a standard of living equivalent to that of the United States we would need the equivalent of 5.1 Earths.
We have a responsibility, not only to ourselves but to future generations, to change our behaviours so that we use the resources of our one Earth sustainably and responsibly. But decisions about resource use, development, and living standards should be made collectively, not dictated by individuals, organisations, or even governments. That’s why Rewilding Ireland is committed to participatory communication to facilitate collective decision making regarding not just our own activities but everywhere we can make a positive contribution to negotiations about the Earth and our future.
You can calculate your own ecological footprint and how many Earths would be needed if everyone lived like you with the Global Footprint Network.
We fully accept that all communities of interest are entitled to say ‘nihil de nobis, sine nobis’ (nothing about us, without us).
We include stakeholders in all our communications and seek to facilitate their inclusion wherever we have a voice.
"Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"
- United Nations Brundtland Commission
Financial Feasibility
Rewilding Ireland is a not-for-profit organisation but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to be financially sustainable. And it certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t understand that other businesses need to make a profit. We’re committed to finding ways for rewilding to gain economic sustainability and be self-sustaining through nature-based economies which are renewable rather than exploitative.
Capitalism has relied on a system which exploits human and natural resources. In terms of natural resources that has most often entailed extractive industries which have brought great financial wealth at the cost of significant environmental degradation. A system which considers only one form of wealth is inherently unsustainable, especially when economic profit comes at the expense of depleting natural capital and undermining ecosystem services.
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We subscribe to the idea of the ‘triple bottom line’ where any economic success must be matched by social and environmental benefits rather than costs. Given how depleted our natural capital is, it is not sufficient for enterprise to be renewable, it must be regenerative so that it results in net gain for the environment. We strongly believe that such an approach can not only restore our environment but can have long term financial benefits; investing in our environment can bring environmental, societal and financial returns.
We seek to discover a model by which rewilding can provide public goods and private gains through a mixed funding model which includes private enterprise, government support and green investment.
We believe that rewilding should be socially, environmentally and financially sustainable.
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It must ensure that it is does not compromise our social, environmental or financial futures.
"Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss"
- UN Sustainable Development Goal
Including Innovation
One of the most promising ways for us to meet our first three goals is to adopt our fourth goal of embracing innovation. Harnessing technology to avoid further damage to the environment and even to renew and repair it gives us the best chance of remaining within planetary boundaries.
Building on our other goals, especially that of including people, we believe that in order to succeed, rewilding must not only include people but also their technologies. While geoengineering raises important questions as to whether it will give us ‘licence’ to continue our destructive behaviours if we can simply remedy their consequences, as well as having potentially devastating unintended consequences, we believe that the consequences of our destructive behaviours are now so extreme that it is naïve to hope that we can avoid their most serious effects without the assistance of major technological innovation and intervention.
Humans are resourceful, creative and inventive and we will need all of our skills to face the challenge that we have set ourselves. Advances in technology have revolutionised all aspects of our lives and must continue to do so if we are to limit global warming and address biodiversity loss. We recognise that humans are at major risk of disrupting the Earth’s systems to the extent that planetary boundaries are exceeded and the functioning of those systems is compromised, potentially threatening human societies. We need to take account of those boundaries and harness the advantages that advances in technology can offer to assist us in dealing with the challenge of remaining within them.
We recognise the paramount importance of achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal concerning Life on Land.
We believe that to do so will require all the ingenuity, resourcefulness and imagination that humans have at our disposal.