Activities

Feasta has been involved in a variety of multiannual projects. These currently include Smart Taxes, which has the aim of developing policy options to reform fiscal and other financial and monetary mechanisms in Ireland so as to deliver environmental, social and economic sustainability, and Carbon Cycles and Sinks, whose goal is to develop policies which will enable the Irish land mass to become a carbon sink rather than a source of greenhouse emissions. The Liquidity Network aims to address the current liquidity problem – the slow-down in economic activity triggered by the credit crunch.

Feasta’s Climate Group has developed the theoretical underpinning for the Cap and Share campaign, which is proposing a system for cutting greenhouse gas emissions that should be reliable, equitable and bring about a reduction in global poverty.

In the years since its inception, Feasta has organised a wide range of events, including seminars, international conferences and workshops. You can read about these in more detail on our events section. You can also download videos of many of our lectures and seminars from our multimedia page.

We have also published various books and briefings concerning the environment and economics. These are all available for free download from this website, as are a series of submissions we have made to the Irish and UK governments.

Within Ireland Feasta also engages in the Irish Environmental Network (IEN) and the Environmental Pillar of Social Partnership.

The IEN is an organisation which was set up to distribute funding (mostly from the Environment fund) to member organisations. It also helps organisations to increase their capacity by training, helping with media work and facilitating cooperation on various pieces of work, and acts as a support on issues of relevance to many or all organisations (for example it campaigned successfully for the natural environment to be included in the National Lottery Bill, and will engage in relation to the new Lobbying Bill.)

The Pillar is a structure whereby a range of national environmental NGOs cooperate together on policy issues according to their interests. Feasta has been involved in the Environmental Pillar’s Climate and Energy Working Group. The group has been engaging in 2013 particularly in the process for the development of a Climate Change Bill. It has also been discussing the international negotiations and proposing that Ireland builds on the work started with the UNEP Building the Climate Change Regime project. Upcoming work includes reacting to the European Commission’s proposals for the international climate regime from 2020 and for developing EU targets for 2030.