Pádraic Fogarty: Ecosystem collapse is real and is happening here now

Ireland can breeze through the collapse of our own ecosystems because of the stabilising effect of much larger ecosystems elsewhere. Now those ecosystems too are at risk of collapse, due principally to livestock farming and industrial fishing but supercharged by the burning of fossil fuels and the pollution of waterways, writes ecologist Pádraic Fogarty

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature says that “an ecosystem is collapsed when it is virtually certain that its defining biotic [living] or abiotic [non-living] features are lost from all occurrences, and the characteristic native biota are no longer sustained”.

What is the first thing you think of when you read the term ‘ecosystem collapse'?

I think for many people it conjures images of science fiction films like Blade Runner or Disney’s Wall-E, or books like Cormack McCarthy’s The Road.