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Views sought on the current environmental governance arrangements and options for improvement.  

The Department or Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) has launched a call for evidence on a Review of Environmental Governance in Northern Ireland.

The environmental challenges Northern Ireland faces are complex and cannot be addressed in isolation by any one organisation. But among the many actors, public, private and from the voluntary sector active in this area, the Northern Ireland Environmental Agency (NIEA), the principal environmental regulator for Northern Ireland, has a unique role to play. And yet when compared to similar bodies in neighbouring jurisdictions in the rest of the UK and in Ireland, NIEA is an outlier.

It is both less well resourced (smaller budget, fewer staff), and less independent from government than its counterparts. This leads to concerns about its ability to deliver for the environment in a transparent, effective and timely way. This is particularly problematic as tackling environmental challenges will require difficult, sometimes unpopular decisions – a strong, well respected and well-resourced regulator is needed to both inform and 91Ï㽶»ÆÉ«ÊÓƵ these decisions. 

This call for evidence is structured around six themes, including, but going beyond, a reformed NIEA and whether or not it should be independent. For many respondents these are not new questions – but the context is new. Northern Ireland is outside of the European Union, with continued environmental degradation but changing environmental rules and regulations, and we can learn from other jurisdictions on what has worked or is not working in designing and sustaining good environmental governance.

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Stakeholder events

DAERA is holding a series of free stakeholder events on the call for evidence - you can register for a place:

First published 12 February 2025