Planning and climate action policy needs to be integrated to meet carbon targets, says IPI

Planning and climate action policy still need to be properly integrated in order for Ireland to meet its carbon reduction targets, the president of Irish Planning Institute (IPI) has said.

Speaking at the annual IPI conference in Kilkenny on Thursday, Dr Conor Norton said the necessary "connections" between policy and planning are not yet in lockstep with the consensus view.

The Climate Action Plan and long term Climate Action Strategy, as well as other related initiatives “all remain to be fully mapped into planning policy and practice,” Dr Norton said.

“And it is not clear how carbon budgets and ceilings might be interpreted, integrated and monitored in the planning system at different levels.”

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Key, immediate challenges outlined at the conference included the need for a change in planning to adopt new realities and processes particularly in collaborative approaches and green infrastructure; and the “political appetite to face up to new realities . . . and some difficult and potentially deeply-unpopular decisions”.

There is a “need for a more joined up governance in the planning system, which will be a prerequisite for climate, particularly at the critical regional level,” Dr Norton said.

The IPI has called for a rapid alignment and implementation of planning and climate legislation at all levels.

Philip Nugent, assistant secretary at the Department of Environment, Climate and Communication, said the way officials often view the planning system was analogous to how Homer Simpson felt about beer – it being both the cause and solution to all of life's problems.

“I think that Government departments sometimes look at the planning system in the same way,” he said.

“It’s the cause of all of their problems – it doesn’t deliver the decisions that they want – but then when there’s a quick fix needed, people look to the planning system.”

Mr Nugent noted that planning covered everything the department did, and affecting 93 actions in the Climate Action Plan.