The first session of Leitrim Cróga Climate Dialogue took place in Ballinaglera on Saturday 7th December. This exciting and well-attended event included the launch of the Cróga report, a report on the Western Development Commission LeCO project, and a really fascinating Climate Dialogue session that focused on Land Uses, the Built Environment, Transport & Energy and Food & Waste.
Presentation of Cróga Baseline Report
The main purpose of the event was the launch of the Leitrim Cróga Baseline Report, the groundbreaking inventory study of the county’s carbon emissions and sinks. Leitrim was the initial county taken but the methodologies can be transferred to other counties.
Aedin McLoughlin 
Nicolo G. Tria 
Oonagh Duggan 
Jules Portier 
Orla Nic Suibhne
Presentations on the Cróga results were made by GEAI researchers Jules Portier and Nicoló Tria, who discovered some surprising figures for different activities in Leitrim. For example, Leitrim homes consume 18% more energy for heating than the national average; agriculture accounts for 43% of the total county emissions, but this is totally off-set by the sequestration of carbon by Leitrim forestland (which includes natural woodlands as well as commercial conifers).
The areas the Report focused on included Transport, Energy, Residential, Commercial, Agriculture, Forestry and Wetlands. The figures for both CO2 emissions and sequestration (absorption) were calculated and presented in an easy-to-understand style.
Climate Dialogue
Following the presentation of the Cróga Report, the first Leitrim Cróga Climate Dialogue session was inaugurated, based on the recently-held Regional Climate Dialogue model.
We prepared many interactive activities to get people engaged around the multi-faceted issue of the Climate & Biodiversity Crisis:
Agree-Disagree lines
People had the possibility to express their sentiment on a series of challenging issues related to energy use and sustainable lifestyles. Various sentences were displayed on the hall’s walls and attendees could stick colored dots on a line, according to how much they agreed with the sentence. Here are some of the outcomes of the voting rounds:
Climate Dialogue Roundtables
Then, we moved into the core of the Climate Dialogue, and attendees distributed themselves around four tables, each one addressing a specific topic of the climate-verse. All attendees were invited to join in the discussion of each topic and to express their ideas via facilitated dialogue. The topics were:
Agriculture, Forestry and Other land uses 
Built Environment 
Transport & Energy 
Food & Waste
A detailed report for each one of the four discussion tables is available following these links:
Although the climate dialogue session went on for 90 intense minutes, it was agreed that the discussions only started to scratch the surface of the issues and more events of this kind are needed to be held in the near future to get more people engaged.
A second Climate Dialogue session will be held in Carrick-on-Shannon in February 2020. Stay tuned for info!
People that participated in the Climate Dialogue enjoyed taking part in the discussions. Here are some of their valuable impressions on how the session went:
“Like-minded people and a thirst for real change environmentally.“
“Very informative. Discussions were very interesting.”
“Gained an understanding of the different issues.”
Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses table 
Transport & Energy Table 
Built Environment table 
Food & Waste table
Greenhouse gas emissions in Leitrim
Main figures
The figures below show the Greenhouse Gas emissions of each sector of activity in Leitrim, as reported in the Cróga Report. The units for the figure on the left are in thousands of tons of CO2 equivalent per year. As can be seen, Agriculture is the highest emitter sector. The industry sector is the lowest (due to the low industrial base of Leitrim).
Leitrim gross emissions per capita are 13.6 tons CO2 equivalent per year. This result is on par with national value. However, when we take into account the carbon sinks’ activity, net emissions results to be remarkably less than the national average (36% less, population adjusted).
For more details and information, look at the Cróga project page and download the report.
Download the executive summary: Cróga – Leitrim Greenhouse Gas Emissions – Executive summary
Download the full report: Cróga – Leitrim Greenhouse Gas Emissions – Baseline report
Download the Cróga Baseline Presentation Slides: Presentation Slides
Download Dr Orla Nic Suibhne’s Presentation Slides: Case Studies for Community Energy Projects
Download Oonagh Duggan’s Presentation Slides: High Nature Value Farming (coming soon)
Land use is an area we are focussing on at the Irish Regenerative Land Trust. I attended events early on with ye up there and its been interesting to watch ye develop. On the Land Use topic – see the work of Dr.Walter Jehne, Dr.Christine Jones (who spoke in Ireland at Biofarm this year) , then note the sudden influx of Syntropic Agroforestry events – we are hosting a 3 day workshop with Paul Soden, Irish student of the Austrian legend Ernst Gotsch, Jan.31-Feb02 at the Growery in Birr. Policy supports in this area, via the new LULUCF framework (land… Read more »
[…] team had already facilitated two Climate Dialogues sessions in December 2019 and in February 2020. We collected a lot of brilliant ideas from the local community, but once the […]