Making Relatives: Earth protectors in Leitrim building international solidarity
Private industrial wind turbine development is being pursued in rural areas to serve urban environments and particularly energy-intensive data centres
During the month of May, a series of events took place across the island of Ireland. The occasion for the events was the visit of a delegation of Native American water protectors, Chas Jewett, Jeshua Estes and Lewis GrassRope, from the Lakota Nation, famously of Standing Rock, to Ireland.
Two such events took place in North Leitrim, in Fulacht Fiadh café and the Bee Park community centre in Manorhamilton and The Organic Centre, Rossinver.
The events resulted from the coming together of community groups, environmental groups, artists and academics. The visit was organised by Making Relatives, a collective of water protectors in Ireland and North America and was supported by Friends of the Earth Northern Ireland and Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute.
The visit and events served to highlight the risk to communities throughout Ireland, and elsewhere, from current approaches to the sustainable transition. Across the world, we can see a doubling down on extractive approaches in addressing environmental challenges.
Extractivism is the process of extracting resources from the earth and from communities. It is a way of viewing people and nature as sources that can be extracted from, for economic gain.
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For instance, currently, there are gold-mining prospecting licences issued for 47 townlands in Leitrim, as is across the North West, with communities in Inishowen, Donegal and the Sperrins resisting planned gold-mining in their areas.
One of the presented rationales for these planned gold mines is that the mineral is important to technologies used in the energy transition, though the majority of gold is currently used in jewellery or stored in bank vaults.
There are examples across the world of the sustainability transition being used to justify the continuation of damaging activities such as mining. An important part of the events were to underline the connections between the different community struggles faced with the impacts of such practices.
The events in Leitrim were attended by a diversity of groups, including Save Leitrim, which is highlighting the impacts of monoculture industrial forestry, Treasure Leitrim highlighting the impacts of mining and Save Dough Mountain highlighting the impacts to upland bogs and rare biodiversity of planned large-scale wind turbines on Dough Mountain in North Leitrim.
There were also groups from elsewhere on the island of Ireland, including community members from the Sperrins, who are campaigning against planned mining by Dalradian Gold in the Sperrin mountains.
These groups are highlighting the problematic and uneven impacts of current transition approaches. Rural communities in particular are feeling the costs of the transition, without the benefits.
For instance, private industrial wind turbine development is being pursued in rural areas to serve urban environments and particularly energy-intensive data centres.
This is in the absence of policy frameworks which support and enable the widespread creation of locally owned and run renewable energy cooperatives.
The key thing to reflect on is that the impacts of the transition are being felt by already marginalised communities in Ireland, including rural ones.
For these communities, the threats posed to their livelihoods and local environments from large-scale wind turbines, monoculture industrial forestry, planned mining, are all simply the next iteration in a long history of underinvestment in community, and overdevelopment of extractive industries that bring little benefit to local economies.
It is important to understand that while these groups are often dismissed in national discussions as being against environmentalism, these groups are all about being for climate and environmental action, community renewal and protecting biodiversity.
The people involved in these movements are giving up their time and energy to highlight the impacts the current approaches are having and are highlighting meaningful alternatives.
For example, the North Leitrim Sustainable Energy Community promotes the benefits of community-owned energy schemes and has undertaken studies on microgeneration in hydro, wind and solar, while The Organic Centre in Rossinver has been a pioneering force in the promotion of sustainable living and growing for the best part of three decades.
Groups like Love Leitrim, Treasure Leitrim and Save Dough are diverse in their membership, with community workers, tourism providers, farmers and artists all involved. There is a feeling among many in these groups that their knowledge and energies could be better utilised in working on positive initiatives rather than having to react and reorganise in opposition to the latest extractive threat.
Listening to these groups offers real potential for advancing environmental protection on the island of Ireland, and beyond.
For instance, Love Leitrim’s campaign resulted in a national ban on fracking in Ireland, protecting public and environmental health from the damaging processes of fracking, and letting Ireland take a ground-breaking move on the global stage, being one of the first countries to implement such a ban.
Having listened to and learnt from the first-hand testimonies of people from North America on their experiences of fracking in their communities, many members of Love Leitrim have now become active in the campaigns against the building of Liquified Natural Gas terminals in Ireland, to try and ensure the communities who helped Ireland do not suffer further fracking through Ireland’s building of import terminals.
There are important lessons here in how to create international bonds of solidarity, essential in addressing climate and environmental challenges which are experienced globally, in a manner that contributes to Ireland’s commitments to climate justice.
The environmentalism displayed by communities in Leitrim, the care and passion being shown for biodiversity, environments, and each other, are all exactly what we need to address climate and environmental crises, as well as support rural renewal across Ireland.
Honouring and listening to these communities is the first step in ensuring that shortcomings of current approaches are addressed, so we can develop just, sustainable and successful transitions in Ireland and beyond.
- Dr Louise Fitzgerald is an assistant professor in nature/society at the Department of Geography, Maynooth University
- Jamie Murphy is a community mental health worker and chairperson of anti-fracking community group Love Leitrim
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