Updated plan aims to boost NI's resilience to climate change

An updated plan to boost Northern Ireland's resilience to climate change has been approved by the executive.

The Northern Ireland Climate Change Adaptation Programme (NICCAP3) contains 280 actions across nature, food, infrastructure, communities and business, from 2024-2029.

Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera) Minister Andrew Muir said the plan was created through "positive collaboration" across all government departments.

This is the third Northern Ireland Climate Change Adaptation Programme.

Climate change adaptation means taking action to adjust to those effects of climate change already being felt, and projected future impacts.

It is different to mitigation - action that reduces or limits emissions of greenhouse gases.

Producing an adaptation plan is an obligation under the UK's Climate Change Act 2008 - the world's first legally-binding national framework for greenhouse gas reductions.

Each version covers a five year period, the first of which was published in 2014.

This plan includes actions for a range of stakeholders across the public and private sector including Translink, NI Water, local councils, academia, the community and voluntary sector and businesses.

It also includes a new Peatlands Strategy, city draining plans for Londonderry and Belfast, a Sustainable Agriculture Programme and a new Food Strategy Framework.

Muir said: "We are already experiencing firsthand the impacts of climate change through the frequent and severe storms we are witnessing and more frequent and extreme flooding events."

He said Northern Ireland has seen new climate sensitive animal diseases arriving and more intense wildfires, all of which are "impacting upon our communities, businesses and environment".

Farmers like Stephen Murdoch are already adapting.

He grows cauliflowers, broccoli, leeks and brussel sprouts around Comber in County Down.

Murdoch said he has noticed the climate changing.

"Working outside all my life, I would say we tend to get weather in 10 week periods now," he said.

"It doesn't matter which time of year, it's either unseasonably wet or unseasonably dry."

Murdoch said due to this he has had no choice but to adapt.

"In an ideal world, we aim for about 200 crates of cauliflowers harvested every day.

"But since just after Christmas, we're down perhaps averaging 50, maybe 100 every day."

Murdoch uses a harvesting rig for leeks, but this year, because rain has forced dirt between the leaves, they are being gathered by hand into which affects his planning and costs.

"It's very difficult. You know, vegetable farmers, we do not get any help at all really.

"The cattle men, if they lose cattle with TB, they get compensated.

"If we get a spell where we can't get spraying for disease, if we lose an entire field, vegetable growers don't get anything - we just have to deal with it."

This according to Murdoch is accounted for financially every year.

Peter Gallagher has been farming for more than two decades in County Fermanagh.

He describes his 150 acres near Boho as "a marginal-type hill farm" - vulnerable to environmental impacts like flooding.

"We are definitely seeing that you cannot depend on the weather behaving as you would normally have expected it to be - it seems to be a lot wetter nearly all of the time and also a lot milder.

"We have grass growing at times of the year we wouldn't usually have had grass growing.

"But we have grass then that is very, very hard to utilise because the ground just gets that wet at unpredictable times."

He is also a High Nature Value farm adviser for conservation charity Ulster Wildlife.

Gallagher has moved to a regenerative approach to grass-growing for his 70-strong suckler herd.

Grass grows longer in fields that are resting up to two months between being grazed.

It may lead to lower quality grass, but it means wet weather doesn't affect the ground as much.

"While it would be nice to grow lovely, high-powered green grass, if we get a really wet week or fortnight in the month of July, we're really looking at housing cattle here and all that grass going to waste."

Hay meadows are highly valuable for farmers as a crop and as a support for pollinators.

But the weather is making it harder to cut or "win" them at the appropriate times.

"You're ideally looking to cut those mid-late July into August, but you can't be sure that you're going to have the weather to actually win it in good quality hay."

With land quality across Northern Ireland varying, he believes a "one size fits all" policy approach can make life harder.

Deputy president of the Ulster Farmers' Union, John McLenaghan, said a changing climate is "compressing" an already-busy seasonal schedule.

"The slurry spreading is now catching up with the ploughing, which is catching up with the seeding, and all of that is just making those pressures more and more and more and more difficult for our farmers."

But he said there is a need for "more efficient and more productive" agriculture, with a growing global population to feed.

"No matter what the adversity is, farmers remain optimistic and that's important.

"We believe there is a real boom time ahead for agriculture and for farming.

"Northern Ireland has the potential to be at the centre of that."