Feasta is changing as an organisation. In some areas of our work, we feel that we now know in broad outline the systemic changes that need to be made if the world is to become more sustainable. As a result, the emphasis for the groups working in those areas is shifting from analysing the problems and devising solutions to attempting to put their ideas before the public and get them considered by those with the power to implement them.
Feasta is gradually becoming more influential, partly due to a growing public realisation that radical changes are needed if the crises facing humanity are to be overcome, partly to the record we have established over the years and partly to the contacts we have built up. Two members of the Executive serve on the 20-person council of Comhar, the Irish Government’s National Sustainability Partnership and on monitoring committees overseeing the National Development Plan. Two executive members have been invited to contribute to a newly founded Irish think tank for rural issues, Tuaithe. A Feasta member is also a Director of the EENGO, the network body of Irish ecological environmental NGOs, which has been tasked with channeling state support (very limited) to the sector. Following a Feasta initiative, the EENGO has started the process to get full social partnership status for the environmental / sustainability sector. We have also inspired the founding of similar organisations, one in the Czech Republic, the other in South Africa. The only two groups meeting regularly in Sweden to discuss the effects of oil and gas depletion were set up by Feasta members, both of whom have joined in the discussions in Kerry.
