Towards an ambitious plant health protection policy in Northern Ireland - learning from past failures; capitalising post-Brexit opportunities

Abstract

Good plant health contributes to sustainable agriculture, food security and a healthy environment. Critically, the impact of turbo-globalisation, rapid environmental change and human induced climate change, are having increased impact on the transference and establishment of pests and diseases globally. Disease infestations can have devastating societal and economic impact, as experienced in Italy with the extensive loss of olive trees from Xyella fastidiosa, which is estimated to cost up to €5.2 billion, over the next 50 years, in one region in Italy. In the UK, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), have estimated the social and environmental value resulting from the loss of ash trees from ash dieback at £230 million per year and could total £15 billion. Plant health protection is a global imperative.

Protecting plant health is embodied in regulatory and administrative procedures, applied globally by countries, to prevent plant pests and diseases from entering and spreading within their territories. This thesis seeks to examine how plant health protection could be enhanced in Northern Ireland, by the regulator, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), through the delivery of improved regulatory processes to implement the 2016 Plant Health Regulation.

The thesis scrutinises and tests the application of better regulation to plant health, to assess the opportunity this provides to effect regulatory improvements within Northern Ireland. This is achieved through an examination of the history of plant health regulation, its implementation and enforcement mechanisms, accounting for realised successes and failures, taking into account the impact of devolution. Other jurisdictions in GB and ROI will also being assessed, identifying best practice, which DAERA could adopt, to improve precautionary and regulatory interventions. The opportunities presented by the post Brexit regulatory landscape are outlined, identifying where the application of better regulation could assist regulators navigate this uncharted territory.

A number of key findings emerged from research, these included misunderstandings amongst policy makers regarding the meaning and application of better regulation; a belief that better regulation was implemented through the 2016 Plant Health Regulation; and differing perceptions of policy problems and risk shaped outputs and outcomes. Additionally, the thesis assessed the impact of historical environmental governance practices in Northern Ireland.

The research identified how the concept of better regulation could be applied to enhance the delivery of plant health protection and while the thesis indicates that elements of the better regulation framework are being applied across the jurisdictions studied, significant shortcomings and weaknesses were exposed.

This study ultimately concludes that applying better regulation could enhance the delivery of plant health protection in Northern Ireland, if underlying environmental governance issues are addressed.

Date of Award	Jul 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Sponsors	Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs
Supervisor	Peter Doran (Supervisor) & Dieter Pesendorfer (Supervisor)