Harnessing diversity: reflections on a trip to Northern Ireland

Andy Atkins

17 May 2013

As we drove up to Mrs McKiernan's bungalow in County Tyrone, the garden looked more like a pond with a stream flowing down the drive and into the field beyond. The quarry on the hill behind discharged water right through her property. Most people would expect the council and Environment Agency to stop it within hours. It would be on the news, prosecutions might follow. Heads would roll if action was not taken. But this is Northern Ireland.

Quietly spoken, Mrs McKiernan stood on her doorstep, toes just out of the water and recounted events. The flooding began last autumn. It didn't seem weather-related. It was the latest incident with the quarry, following a legal suit by the quarry operator to force her to sell up so he could expand operations over her land. Mrs McKiernan had lobbied everyone - the council, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, the police, the Environment Minister, her MLA. So far, everyone appeared to have passed the buck.

Inside the bungalow, Mrs McKiernan's seriously ill husband was undergoing chemotherapy. She was anxious to keep the house warm and dry to protect him. Her concern was around quarry water seeping into the septic tank and overloading their sewerage system. Mr McKiernan would then be readmitted to hospital, adding further distress to a family crisis. In this situation I would have been incandescent. Mrs McKiernan spoke calmly with dignity and stoicism - typical of so many I met experiencing injustice and governance failure in Northern Ireland.

As we said our goodbyes, committing to contact the Environment Minister, I was shocked and angry. I got used to injustice, intimidation and lack of redress when I worked on human rights in Latin America. It had a distinctly Colombian flavour to me! But I'm shocked to see this so blatantly here. It's the symptom of a thoroughly broken system.

Happily, following pressure from Mrs McKiernan and ultimately my own intervention, the Environment Agency took action to stop flooding to the property. And unprecedentedly, the local council recently voted against supporting new quarry applications.

Campaigning for change

However, this story highlights weaknesses in Northern Ireland's planning laws - something I encountered time and again on a recent visit there. The Government's trying to weaken these laws further, to aid economic growth. And implementation and enforcement are a joke. The Peace Process had unintended consequences. Political power was distributed amongst former adversaries in a 'unity government' leaving no real opposition. Decisions and political appointments are perceived to be made according to whose 'turn' it is and maintaining the balance of power between the parties - including keeping funders and business supporters sweet. Many feel that decisions are not made according to natural justice, community preference or environmental merit. Citizens' rights are squeezed out. The environment has become the opposition.

Fortunately, people don't accept this. In Fermanagh and Tyrone, I saw numerous examples of abuse allowed by a broken system - and people resisting it.

I met someone who stopped the illegal sale of contaminated rock from Omagh's gold mine by personally funding a public interest judicial review. At one stage, residents had 140 lorries a day trundling down a road no bigger than a cart track, spreading contaminated rock. I also met the Alternative A5 Alliance, which organises communities on the route of the biggest planned road on the island. This will cut through farmland and nature sites, purportedly to make the political point of rapidly connecting Belfast to the Republic. This is in spite of decreased traffic on the existing route which is not even one of the busiest roads in Northern Ireland. There are better and cheaper alternatives.

Working together for greater impact

For every environmental idiocy there is some brave individual or group speaking out. And Friends of the Earth are often there alongside them. I saw great examples of collaborative working giving greater combined capacity and impact. Without this we won't achieve our strategic goals.

We need to 'join up the dots' between environmental and everyday concerns. Our Who Pulls the Strings campaign on party funding transparency hits at the heart of why many decisions are taken against community wishes and environmental interests. And people get that.

To achieve a low carbon economy, we need to change the economic and political framework. So we're campaigning for a Northern Ireland Climate Change Act, to achieve emissions reduction targets and promote the green economy. As part of a windy island, Northern Ireland has huge scope for wind and wave power.

Political and cultural realities vary between the nations. To achieve Friends of the Earth's goals and engage more people, we need to complement and support local activity. Diversity provides an opportunity to do both, more frequently. So Northern Ireland are exploring affiliate and student groups, with one beginning at Queen's University, to widen the activists circle. Not to harness this diversity is to throw away gold - metaphorically, and possibly literally!