Tag: wetlands

Peat Hub Ireland Podcast Write-up

Mechanical Dolphin

“It’s easy to look at those scenarios on a screen. It’s much harder to get a room full of scientists, government officials, and local farmers to sit together and actually inhabit them…This is a deeply philosophical, sometimes heavy conversation. We dig into the trust gap between researchers and landowners, the heavy weight of climate grief, and what it really means to have hope when the future feels profoundly uncertain.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the scale of environmental loss, or wondered how we actually get people with competing interests to share the same imaginative space, this episode is a must-listen.”

There’s a great write-up of last week’s podcast for RE-PEAT with my colleague Kate Flood, over at the RE-PEAT Substack page.

Peat Hub Ireland Report including Peatlands 2050 scenarios

Mechanical Dolphin

“What I liked most about the workshop was getting to experience a framework for discourse between different stakeholders where everyone was approaching challenging ideas with an amount of vulnerability and openness. Things like the icebreaker question and being pushed outside of our cognitive comfort zones led to a kind of shared sense of uncertainty and unease that made it much easier for conversation and creativity to happen.”

Words from a participant at the scenarios workshop I led as part of the Peat Hub Ireland initiative, funded by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency and delivered by UCD colleagues under the leadership of Florence Renou-Wilson, including David Wilson, Kate Flood, and Elena Aitova.

You can see the full report, including an appendix on the scenarios, at the EPA website. Thanks to all the colleagues and to the host of our scenario session at Tyrrellspass, County Westmeath – it’s a rare delight to run a scenario workshop with a ninety minute bog walk in the middle of it…