Green Restoration Ireland Co-operative Society Ltd

Green Restoration Ireland Co-operative Society Ltd was established in 2019 and aims to revitalise rural Irish communities by promoting new approaches to farming and community-based ecological restoration which tackle environmental challenges, driven by applied science and innovation. We restore peatlands in Mayo and run the Farm Carbon EIP with 20 farmers in the Midlands, a pilot project to diversify farm incomes by reducing the significant environmental impacts of peat grasslands so helping fight climate change, build climate resilience and restore biodiversity and ecosystem services.

They have developed a prediction tool for greenhouse gas emissions as a basis for compensating famers along with a range of viable options for sustainable carbon farming and the restoration of non-farmed peatland habitats, including Ireland’s first wetland agriculture/paludiculture trials.
They are also researching a quantifiable basis for results-based payments of environmental improvement measures in terms of biodiversity, avoided carbon emissions and water quality, alongside the development of an Irish Community Peatland Code as the basis of high quality carbon ‘offsets’ for farmed peatland projects.

Ireland’s first paludiculture trials represent a promising opportunity in the form of these new agricultural methods and higher value crops which will also resolve the associated issues of GHG emissions, biodiversity loss, water storage and water pollution as ‘by-products’ of the new approach to farming.

Through this work, which empowers farmers to restore peatland habitats and restore and create other on-farm habitats (hedgerows, ponds, meadows and woodlands), they are helping to shape a green and sustainable future for rural Ireland.

Website: https://greenrestorationireland.coop/