“Courage and leadership” are needed to ensure Northern Ireland catches up on tackling climate change.
The new chair of the Climate Change Committee, Nigel Topping, is spending two days on a fact-finding mission to hear the thoughts of people across different sectors.
He said Northern Ireland was a small nation that could be “agile and innovative” in tackling challenges like increasing renewable energy, improving waste management and reducing emissions.
But he warned that a failure to act would mean missing out on innovation opportunities, paying more for energy and damaging the health of children.
The Climate Change Committee is an independent body advising the UK and devolved governments on emissions targets.
Over the course of a two-day visit, Topping is meeting farmers, people from the business sector and politicians.
It is being described as a fact-finding mission, looking at “challenges and opportunities”.
He acknowledged that politics in Northern Ireland was “complex” and that “when things flip-flop, it doesn’t help”, due to the impact on investment decisions and people’s choices.
But he said there was “a real sense of collectively wanting to catch up” and avoid anyone being left behind on the road to net zero.
“You’ve had these lags where there’s been no ministers sitting and so there hasn’t been policy – there’s been civil servants working but no policies,” he said.
“It’s going to take some real courage and leadership from all sectors of society to make sure that the just transition process is a conversation, that it doesn’t just disappear into polarised views in different corners of different rooms.”
