‘It would restore your faith in humanity’: Leitrim man reflects on his week at COP31

Around 80,000 people descended on the southern Türkiye city of Antalya last week as the world's largest climate conference kicked off, with participants from around the world attending to tackle challenges facing the environment.

Among them is Leslie O’Hara, a Carrick-on-Shannon man with a long background in environmental activism.

O’Hara helped found the Leitrim Environmental Network to help with the campaign against fracking in the county and works with the Better Energies Alliance in the county.

“The scientists are now saying that the weather next year is actually going to be warmer than this year - that in turn has its own consequences,” he says.

This is not the Carrick natives' first trip to a COP; however, he says the scale of this year's event was mind-blowing.

“It would restore your faith in humanity,” he says.

During his five-day trip, he says he has met with people from across the world who are passionate about solving the issues facing the planet, a gold mine manager from Peru, Spanish Olive farmers, to Irish sustainable beef farmers.

“It's our earth, it's our planet, all that sort of stuff, and everybody should have a say in it …

I mean it's great for me as a person from Leitrim to be there, and you could say being there at the table, so to speak”

And sustainable farming has been a key issue being tackled at this COP, with around 4000 workshops on sustainable farming taking place during the event.

Experts warn that rising temperatures are a driving force behind food instability globally as droughts reduce harvests, floods destroy crops, and storms can disrupt markets and livelihoods.

In countries where temperatures have increased by around 1 degree, the World Food Programme (WFP) has found that the proportion of people facing crisis levels of food insecurity increases by almost 5 per cent. Devising ways to deal with the change that has already occurred is a central part of this meeting

O’Hara will be amongst an Irish delegation that includes Professor John Sweeney and Oisín Coghlan, Director of Friends of the Earth. Meanwhile, a wider Irish delegation at the event includes department members and the minister.

Close by the Irish pavilion, where members of the Department of Environment were stationed, were the Ukrainian and Palestinian pavilions, with a Palestinian minister coming to speak at the Irish tent, according to O’Hara.

O'Hara admits it's a long distance to travel to lobby for local issues, but he felt that he heard good things about developments in offshore wind while in the Irish delegation.

“Ireland has done its bit for onshore wind; now you know that we're a small enough place not to have more onshore wind, you know, without causing the type of problems that we get in North Leitrim or whatever, and so the big emphasis now is on offshore, but it's really a case of you know pushing the Irish government to get their act together in terms of you know offshore as quickly as possible.”

“This would solve so many of our problems and would provide us with not just energy security, but we would also be able to export the stuff in the form of hydrogen, and it would resolve not a lot of stuff, whether it's truckers or whether it's farmers in terms of the cost of their diesel and all that sort of stuff. It would just be a total and over game changer.”

This year's COP comes as Climate change slides down the EU’s list of priorities in recent years, with concerns around the bloc's defensive and economic security taking precedence.

However, O’Hara maintains hope following the conference.

“I'm more hopeful than when I went in,” he says.

“I do think just seeing the sheer number of people that are there that are keen to make the place a better place to live and to make sure that we don't end up frying our asses off in a climate that's just not livable. I do actually feel very, very hopeful,” he says.