1
Landscapes of the Anthropocene: A
Historical Ecology of the Bog of Allen
Jamie Moloney 10601562
Research Master in Social Sciences (RMSS)
Supervisors:
Amade M’charek and Danny de Vries
Universiteit van Amsterdam 15 February 2016
2
Abstract
One of the key problems in determining the future of the Irish landscape is the conflict of interests playing out upon its bogs between those who would utilise these hydrological relics of the past as a domestic fuel source and those who would conserve them as important habitats for both plants and animals. Through the application of historical ecology, the aim of this study is to integrate the methods of social and natural history to give historical and cultural depth to our understandings of this normatively entrenched conflict and to go some way in determining why we may see such competing views of the landscape as a possible manifestation of the
Anthropocene.
Introduction
The Bog of Allen represents, both symbolically and materially, the largest expanse of raised bog in the Irish midlands covering an approximate area of 115,080ha (Hammond, 1979); such a vast area of bogland has been laid down over millennia, stretching as far back as the last glacial maximum (LGM) 20,000 years ago. However, it has taken a mere 200 years for human activity to reduce the Bog of Allen by over 90% (Hurley, 2005); as Viney observes: ‘the great raised bogs of the midlands are down to mere shreds and remnants…drained or scooped away for a host of different and profitable ends’ (Viney, 2003: xii). The ecological basis for such a mass exploitation of this natural resource is the fact that raised bogs are essentially layers and layers of vegetation (most particularly Sphagnum mosses) preserved in anaerobic conditions which have, over the centuries, come to form a vast resource of peat – a flammable material which is geologically known as ‘young coal’; indeed, it could be argued that it is because of a lack of coal within the geological bedrock of Ireland that peat has come to represent the fundamental domestic fuel source of the country (Viney, 2003; Mitchell and Ryan, 1997; Clarke, 2010). With the increasing population of Homo sapiens on the island – most particularly, in the case of the Bog of Allen, the expansion of Dublin – there has been a commensurate increase in pressure on the boglands as a source of energy; as fuel for the fire. Historically, the practice of ‘hand-won turf’ cutting came to be institutionalised within the legally recognised right of ‘turbary’ which is today defended vehemently by those who see the boglands as a source of fuel security; the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association (TCCA) being of pertinent example here. Furthermore, pressured by the lack of a domestic fuel source, the state established Bord na Móna in 1946, providing it with compulsory purchase rights to 36,735ha of the Bog of Allen in the counties of Kildare and
3
Offaly (Hurley, 2005; Clarke, 2010). Of course, such a mass extraction of a natural resource leaves its mark on the landscape and, therefore, on the habitats of other flora and fauna; indeed, there are a great number of endangered and threatened species that depend on the boglands for their reproduction, some of them indefinitely (the ‘tyrphobionts’). Thus, species such as the Marsh Fritillary Butterfly (Euphydryas aurinia) and Greenland White-Fronted Goose (Anser albifrons flavirostris) have become symbolic creatures in the struggle for the conservation of the bogs, as exemplified by the work of the Irish Peatland Conservation Council (IPCC) and their headquarters at the Bog of Allen Nature Centre (Viney, 2003; Hurley, 2005; see map of the Bog of Allen below). The purpose of this study is to determine why, in the historical ecological development of the Bog of Allen, there has come to be a conflict of interests between these key stakeholders – the turf cutters and conservationists – and how such competing views have become manifest in the landscape.
Theoretical Framework
The impetus for the theoretical framework guiding this study can be attributed to an emerging intellectual movement known as the ‘Anthropocene’ – an approach that places the
anthropogenic alteration of the Earth system as central to its mode of analysis and, accordingly, calls for the integration of social and natural history; indeed, ‘integrating our understanding of human history with that of the earth system is a timely and urgent task’ (Pálsson et al., 2013: 11; Zalasiewicz et al., 2011; Latour, 2014, 2015; Haraway, 2014; Armstrong and Veteto, 2015; Costanza et al., 2007a, 2007b, 2012; McCullagh, 2002). According to its advocates: ‘the new era, characterized by measurable global human impact – the so-called Anthropocene – does not just imply conflation of the natural and the social, but also a ‘radical’ change in perspective and action in terms of human awareness of and responsibility for a vulnerable earth’ (Palsson et al., 2013: 4); moreover, the tendency of modern sciences to view the ‘natural environment’ as a separate entity, as if through a lens of objectivity, ‘is itself part of the environmental problem’ (Palsson et al., 2013: 4; Latour, 2015). Whether or not one agrees with such positivistic views of science, it is necessary to embed one’s view in a materialist tradition (Haraway, 1985; Marx, 1867). Thus, I agree with Hartman (2015) in his emphasis on materiality: ‘The circumstances that have given rise to the Anthropocene concept require that we reassess our assumptions about human agency and human effects on the earth system’ (Hartman, 2015: 1; emphasis added). I therefore actively adopt a theoretical framework which address the material manifestations of human activity; one which combines both social and natural history.
4
In order to draw out and integrate the social and ecological factors that have shaped the development of the Bog of Allen, this study adopts the theoretical precepts of historical ecology. By taking the ‘landscape’ as the fundamental unit of analysis, historical ecology will allow me to integrate the social and natural history of the Bog of Allen as I attempt to map how the
historically and culturally embedded norms of property and conservation value have become manifest in the Bog of Allen landscape (Crumley, 1994, 2006a, 2006b; Marquardt and Crumley, 1987; Marx, 1844, 1867; Harvey, 1996). Following Crumley (2006a):
Historical ecology traces the complex relationships between our species and the planet we live on, charted over the long term (Crumley 1987a, 1994, 1998, 2001; Balée 1998; Egan & Howell
2001)…practitioners take the term ecology to include humans as a component of all ecosystems, and
the term history to include the Earth system as well as the social and physical past of our species.
Historical ecologists take a holistic, practical, and dialectical perspective on environmental change and
on the practice of interdisciplinary research…As a whole, this information forms a picture of human-environment relations over time in a particular geographic location (Crumley, 2006a: 16; emphasis added).
Thus, the ‘landscape’ acts as the materialistic node in the dialectical and mutually constitutive interplay between humans and their environment (Crumley, 2006a, 2006b, 1994; Marx, 1844, 1867; Harvey, 1996).
By taking the ‘landscape’ as the fundamental unit of analysis, then, I will be able to integrate both social and ecological analyses in one temporally and spatially fixed geographic location; in this particular case, the Bog of Allen, and the alteration of the landscape due to the extraction of peat over the centuries. Indeed, as Crumley goes on to suggest, landscapes ‘record both intentional and unintentional acts and reveal both the role of humans in the modification of the global ecosystem and the importance of past natural events in shaping human choice and action’ (Crumley, 2006: 16–17); or, as a natural historian of Ireland puts it: ‘the strata of
geological and human history lie welded in the landscape’ (Viney, 2003: xi). Firmly adopting the theoretical and methodological principles of historical ecology as manifested in the ‘landscape’, then, my approach to the Bog of Allen will reflect Leopold’s view of ‘an ecological interpretation of history’, in that: ‘Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human
enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land. The characteristics of the land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men who lived on it’ (Leopold, 1989: 205).
Taking this point further, it is possible to view the Bog of Allen landscape as a kind of ‘archive’. For example, McLean (2003), in his study of Céide Fields – an area of bogland in the Northwest of Ireland which, due to a series of archaeological finds, is now considered to be a significant source of historical memory, with commensurate national park status and tourist
5
information centre – makes the point that: ‘The bog might be thought of as an archive of sorts, recording the material after-traces both of the processes of its own formation and of the generations of human settlement with which its history is intertwined’ (McLean, 2003: 50; emphasis added). McLean is not alone in this view; besides the more explicit examples of the mutually constitutive basis of social and natural history that emerge out of the bogs in the form of ‘bog bodies’ and find their way into the National Museum in Dublin (Glob, 1998; Godwin, 1981), there is a genuine epistemological shift towards viewing the boglands as nodes of
historical-ecological development. Take, for instance, Malone’s (2009) conception of peatlands as both ecosystems and archives that retain significant historical-ecological data: ‘Peatland
ecosystems play an important role as archives. They record their own history and that of the wider surroundings in the accumulated peat and enable the reconstruction of long term human and environmental history’ (Malone, 2009: 21; emphasis added). The spatio-temporal alteration of bogs, therefore, provides a key historical source in the integration of the social and natural history of particular landscapes.
The Bog of Allen is no exception, of course; it too retains such characteristics that will form the basis of the historical-ecological narrative under formulation here; as Hurley (2005) suggests: ‘The Bog of Allen is an archive of information about the past. As it grows, the Bog of Allen is laying down a continuous three dimensional record of its own growth and developmental history as well as that of the surrounding landscape and its animal and plant communities’ (Hurley, 2005: 16; emphasis added). To trace the history of this particular landscape, I will consult the available historical sources, building a narrative which takes, first, the extraction of peat for fuel as part of ‘turbary rights’; second, the reclamation of bogs for agricultural land; third, the mechanisation of peat extraction and its use in the state-backed generation of
electricity; and, fourth, the growing movement for the conservation of bogs, as the four central focal points, thus setting the stage for the subsequent analysis of ethnographic data gathered in both the field and bog alike.
Methodology
The methodological approach of this study adopts the analytical tool set of historical ecology in its investigation of the Bog of Allen, most particularly the methods of ethnohistory and
ethnographic fieldwork; the aim being to employ a successfully ‘integrative’ approach to the study of the social and ecological development of the Bog of Allen (Pálsson et al., 2013;
6
Zalasiewicz et al., 2011; Armstrong and Veteto, 2015; Costanza et al., 2007a, 2007b, 2012). As Crumley herself suggests: ‘ethnohistory is particularly suited to this formidable integrative task. Ethnohistorians are anthropologists who critically examine documents for evidence of human actions, relations, and attitudes’ (Crumley, 1994: 7; emphasis added). I will, therefore, be utilising the primary source material found in the survey of the Bog of Allen undertaken between 1809– 1813 and published in a series of governmental reports, the Reports of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Nature and Extent of the Several Bogs in Ireland; and the Practicability of Draining and Cultivating them (1810–1814); cross-referencing these with more contemporary data taken from, for example, the Irish Peatland Conservation Council’s (IPCC) Bog of Allen habitat and heritage survey (Hurley, 2005). Such an approach will allow me to capture the spatio-temporal
development of the Bog of Allen as it is increasingly exploited for its utility as a source of fuel by both Bord na Móna, for the state-sanctioned generation of electricity, and the turf cutters, who have been maintaining their fuel security through the exercise of their ‘turbary rights’ since as far back as the seventh century (Clarke, 2010; Anon., 1810–1814; Hurley, 2005; Malone, 2009; Foss and O’Connell, 1996; O’Connell, 1987; Bellamy, 1986; Mollan, 1989).
When combined with an ethnographic fieldwork approach, it will be possible to develop a historical ecological narrative that runs through the centuries to the present day, thus providing a historically and materially embedded perspective of the conflict of interests between
conservationists, turbary rights holders and state institutions as I observe how each stakeholder competes to impose their view on the Bog of Allen landscape. Take, for instance, the view of turbary rights holders who suggest that, even with the centuries old tradition of turbary being responsible for much of the disappearance of peat from the Bog of Allen landscape, Bord na Móna, with its heavily mechanised mode of production, is much more to blame. For the conservationists, on the other hand, represented particularly well by the activities of the IPCC, the extraction of peat for fuel in all its guises is destructive of habitat and should therefore be restricted (Hurley, 2005).
Furthermore, by viewing this conflict of interests within the normatively institutionalised context of the European Union, particularly the 1997 Habitats Directive – which is being
resisted by local groups across the country, most particularly the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association (TCCA) – I will attempt to draw out how the resistance to change exemplified by the TCCA may, in fact, be a resistance to a European normativity aimed at the protection of biodiversity. Thus, by building a historical ecological narrative from available historical source material and combining this with the ethnographic data taken from semi-structured interviews with the key stakeholders – particularly the IPCC and TCCA (Bord na Móna failed to return my
7
emails) who represent competing normative positions in the institutionally embedded
negotiations determining the conservation value of the Bog of Allen – I will be able to draw an informed conclusion as to: (i) why the Bog of Allen has decreased so rapidly over the past two centuries; (ii) what is at stake in the struggle to conserve the ‘shreds and remnants’ of the Bog of Allen; and (iii) why there is a conflict of interests between the stakeholders; the ultimate aim being to determine why the landscape of the Bog of Allen has changed over time and whether we can indeed view it as a ‘landscape of the Anthropocene’.
Building a Historical-Ecological Narrative of the Bog of Allen
Source: Map of the Bog of Allen, reproduced here with the kind permission of the Irish Peatland Conservation
Council (IPCC).
The story of the Bog of Allen begins at the end of the last glacial maximum, approximately 20,000 years ago when the ice sheet that then covered the midlands of Ireland receded, leaving troughs of waterlogged land in its wake. With time, plants came to colonise these areas, most particularly the sphagnum mosses that typically characterise the basis of raised bogs, such as the Bog of Allen (Viney, 2003; Hurley, 2005; Fossit, 2000). Over the course of centuries, these plants detached themselves from the mineral rich marl of the ground and began sourcing their nutrient supply from the rain itself; as many people in Ireland will tell you, the bogs would not exist without the fall of rain which is synonymous with the island.
Even so, a key element of this study is to utilise sources of both natural and social history to corroborate, or indeed dispel, common (mis)understandings. For example, according to an
in-8
depth study of the regularity of rain in Ireland (Rohan, 1975), the average amount of rain to fall on the midlands equates to between 750 and 1000 mm per year (see Appendix 1) on
approximately 1 out of every 2 days in the year (see Appendix 2). Furthermore, following Viney (2003), we can make the connection between such average rainfall and an average rate of growth of sphagnum mosses (which, as has already been alluded to, form the basis of raised bog domes); with such a rate of rainfall, sphagnum mosses are able to grow at an approximate rate of ‘half an inch or more per year’, but a general average for the growth of intact raised bog is ‘about 14 in., 60 cm, in a century’ (Viney, 2003: 107; emphasis added). Newbould, on the other hand, suggests that: ‘A typical rate of peat accumulation would be a millimetre a year, a metre per millennium (Newbould, 1989: 18). I emphasise the temporality of this growth rate here because it highlights a particular epistemological disjunction between contemporary accounts of bogs and the belief that they may, ostensibly, be considered as ‘renewable’ (conversation with the representative of the TCCA – see ‘Ethnographic Accounts’ below); indeed: ‘It is important to realise that, as a source of peat, bogs are essentially a non-renewable resource. It is easy to harvest in 50 years or less what has taken 5,000 years or more to accumulate – 2 orders of magnitude difference in the time scale of harvesting and accumulation’ (Newbould, 1989: 18). This I see as evidence of a wider epistemological disjunction between human conceptions of time and the temporality of the natural environment which may go some way in explaining the continued exploitation of peatlands for fuel in the face of widely held knowledge of such practices being detrimental for the conservation value of bogs.
Nevertheless, we can safely say, given the figures of average rainfall and sphagnum growth, that the Bog of Allen – which, as a historical territory, encompassed approximately 115,080 ha – took millennia to grow to the extent that it did, gaining notoriety amongst locals, travellers, and internationally renowned field biologists and conservationists over the centuries as the largest expanse of bogland upon the island (Hurley, 2005; Bellamy, 1986); indeed, as far back as the eighteenth century, Arthur Young described the Bog of Allen as ‘extensive’ (Young, 1892: 61). This is despite that fact that Homo sapiens first began settling on the Bog of Allen around 10,000 years ago as evidenced by archaeological finds where, besides a series of hearths, stone axeheads, religious relics and ‘bog butter’, they found wooden walkways used to traverse the bogs thousands of years ago buried in its anaerobic peat soils (Hurley, 2005; Bellamy, 1986; Moloney et al., 1993; Halpin, 1984); as if preserved in an ‘archive’ (McLean, 2003; Malone, 2009; Hurley, 2005).The question arises, therefore: why has it taken just two centuries for the Bog of Allen to be reduced by approximately 90%? To find an answer to this question is, in fact, to go some way in answering why there is a struggle for conservation of the Bog of Allen between key
9
stakeholders today; and it necessitates an in-depth look at the historically and culturally embedded practices of turbary, reclamation, mechanised production and conservation. Turbary
The practice of cutting peat away from bogs as a form of sod turf for fuel, now commonly known as ‘hand-won turf’ across Ireland, can be traced back to Irish law texts from the seventh and eighth centuries; indeed, it ‘was widespread and regulated at that time’ (Clarke, 2010: 5; Foss and O’Connell, 1997). The practice involves the drainage, opening up and cutting away of vast open peat banks via the use of a sleán (in Gaelic, anglicized as ‘slane’) – a steel-winged blade attached to a long wooden shaft, shaped so to be able to remove a sod of ‘turf’ in one stroke. For example, first, the bank was opened up at the edge of a bog and then, utilising the sleán, wet sods of turf were cut out, thrown up to a fellow turf-cutter standing ready who then spread them out for drying via the use of a ‘turf-fork’. A process of ‘footing the turf’ whereby the sods of turf would be built into progressively larger stacks to aid drying would then have been carried out throughout the somewhat less rain-fed weeks of the year, after which the turf would have been considered dry enough to be transported home for firing; thus, according to Foss and O’Connell (1997): ‘A week’s turf cutting would usually provide enough fuel to last one year’ (Foss and O’Connell, 1997: 191; Clarke, 2010).
It is not surprising, then, that with time such activities became central to the reproduction of the family home and, therefore, became fundamentally engrained into the cultural practices of the period, becoming normatively internalised in the process. For example, it is clear from the historical sources that, in addition to its internalisation within the family unit where: ‘Turf production was an important part of the work-year: between cutting, drying, harvesting, and drawing home the turf, a labourer’s annual supply required up to one month’s work’ (O’Gráda, 1994: 116), as the centuries past and a surplus was created (O’Gráda, 1994), it also became a somewhat artisanal industry whereby people made a living.
Many families cut turf for sale in Dublin and the larger towns. These people were expert turf men, who cut the turf by hand, dried it well and sold it by the sod or per dozen sods in the towns. The turf was transported by horse and cart. The loading of the turf on to special carts could take all day, and the journey to Dublin started in the evening time, the carts arriving in the city the next
morning. After they had a meal the men sold the turf form door to door, returning home that night. It was hard work, entailing a lot of hardship in the winter, but it was a living’ (Clarke, 2010: 6).
Indeed, following Feehan and O’Donovan, the practice of transporting sod turf from the Bog of Allen to Dublin and the surrounding areas became commonplace over the centuries: ‘the breast slane method had been perfected by the professional turf-cutting men over the centuries in the
10
Bog of Allen, who carried their turf by horse and cart for sale in Dublin and the nearby towns’ (Feehan and O’Donovan, 1996: 20). In other words, as the population of Dublin increased, so did the exploitation of the Bog of Allen for fuel.
As time passed, such practices became institutionalised in the common law of the country where, with the emergence of other property rights, such as freehold and leasehold, came the institutionally recognised right of ‘turbary’ – i.e. the right to cut a certain amount of turf from a particular bog. Such a right was, as we have seen, central to the reproduction of the family home and, with time, became fundamentally normalised and, hence, fiercely protected; as Clarke suggests: ‘Holders of turbary rights resisted any encroachment on these rights’ (Clarke, 2010: 11). Such practices continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and, by the time Ireland entered into the nineteenth century, the majority of people throughout the country relied upon the bog for their fuel source; indeed, in the eyes of contemporaries and the historians who have come to interpret these times, the main function of bogs was ‘providing fuel for the bulk of the rural population’ (O’Gráda, 1994: 116; Clarke, 2010).1 Times were hard, but when
coupled with the potato, turf made for a sustainable livelihood. As an old Irish proverb suggests: Dá mbeadh prátaí is móin again, bheadh an saol ar a thóin again(‘If only we had potatoes and turf, life would be rosy’ (O’Gráda, 1994:117, 511f). It is not surprising, therefore, that the practice of turf cutting for fuel is fundamentally normalised in the historical and cultural memory of the Irish people to this day (McIntosh et al., 2000; Crumley, 2000; Stewart and Strathern, 2003; Schama 1995); as O’Gráda puts it, ‘no wonder, it is seen as a historical right’ (O’Gráda, 1994: 116). Such historically and culturally engrained practices continue to this day, with commensurate
normatively entrenched senses of entitlement and vehement resistance to change (see ‘Ethnographic Accounts’ section below).
Reclamation
According to the contemporary accounts of William King – a cleric of the Anglican church – by the seventeenth century, Ireland had become (in)famous for its boglands; indeed, in his view, ‘every barbarous ill-inhabited country has them’ and there was thus a ‘want of industry’ in such places, going so far as to blame the apparently sloth-like character of the Irish people for their ecological terrain: ‘no wonder if a country famous for laziness, as Ireland, is abound with them’ (King, 1685: 948–9). He did, nonetheless, recognise the utility of boglands: ‘yet they are of some use; for most of Ireland have their firing from them’ (King, 1685: 953). Such views were quite
1 The practice of utilising turf increased rapidly following the well-documented clearance of forests throughout
11
commonplace as Ireland approached the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were
representative of a wider sentiment growing within the ‘enterprising classes’ of the period; that of industry. Indeed, it was the common coin of conversation; to be industrious was to be an up and coming man of the world.
Such sentiments are captured in the writings of Bram Stoker who, in The Snakes Pass (1890), provides a particularly concise example of what may be considered the common perception of bogs by the ‘industrious men’ of the period; in fact, not only does he provide an insight into the mindset which deemed bogs good for nothing but ‘reclamation’ – i.e. the drainage and reclaiming of the land for agricultural purposes that was becoming increasingly popular during this period, as we shall see – but he also links this with the enterprising mentality where a ‘man of industry’ was also a ‘man of science’. Thus, by placing the main protagonist of the story in a situation where he becomes incessantly curious about the ‘quaking bogs’ of Ireland – mostly due to their being ordained with mythological properties embedded in local folkloric tails of buried treasure and pagan overlords – and who, therefore, is delighted to find an old friend and well-educated engineer, Dick Sutherland, employed by the local ‘gombeen man’ (usurer) to search a particular stretch of bog, Stoker builds a narrative which captures the tendency of the period to view bogs as an object to be conquered by the industrious application of science. Take the following passage, for example, which shows not only this sentiment but also applies it to the infamous Bog of Allen – a challenge to all those wishing to conquer the natural world through industry:
As we bumped and jolted over the rough by-road, Dick Sutherland gave me a rapid but masterly survey of the condition of knowledge on the subject of bogs, with special application to Irish bogs, beginning with such records as those of Giraldus Cambrensis, of Dr. Boate, of Edmund Spenser [famous naturalists], from the time of the first invasion, when the state of the land was such that, as is recorded, when a spade was driven into the ground a pool of water gathered forthwith. He told me of the extent and nature of the bog-lands, of the means taken to reclaim them, and of his hopes of some heroic measures being ultimately taken by Government to reclaim the vast Bog of Allen, which remains as a great evidence of official ineptitude…“I find, we cure bog by both a surgical and a medical process. We drain it so that its mechanical action as a sponge may be stopped, and we put in lime to kill the vital principal of its growth. Without the other, neither process is sufficient; but together, scientific and executive man asserts his dominance (Stoker, 1890: 44; emphasis
added).
It is this normatively entrenched view of bogs as an object to be exploited, to be conquered by ‘scientific and executive man’, that I wish to take issue with in this paper, as I see it as being at the root of the so-called ‘Anthropocene’ (Latour, 2015); I refer to it here as ‘Anthropocenic normativity’. Thus, following the historical source material, I suggest that this historically and culturally embedded mode of knowledge production emerged out of the reclamation policies of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with the epistemological mantle later being
12
taken up by the state itself in the utilisation of peat for the state-sanctioned generation of electricity, eventually finding its way into the more micro-scale industries of turbary in the latter part of the twentieth century. First, though, let us take issue with reclamation, for the mere fact that it chronologically precedes the mechanisation of peat extraction.
Thus, besides the already cited examples of King and Stoker, there were many
contemporaries who saw reclamation of bogland as both a victory over the untameable wiles of nature as well as a national necessity. As the agricultural policy of the colonial government shifted from revering the bogs to conquering them, they felt the need to employ an engineer by the name of Griffith to undertake an in-depth study of the bogs of Ireland to assess ‘the
practicability of draining and cultivating them’; that is, the Reports of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Nature and Extent of the Several Bogs in Ireland; and the Practicability of Draining and Cultivating them (1810–1814). Within what is still considered to be a magisterial work on the geological and botanical character of several bogs in Ireland, we get an idea of what measures were taken and what technoscientific principles were applied in the reclamation of the Bog of Allen. The great vastness of this particular bog, as alluded to in Stoker (1890) and others (Young, 1892), was notorious; indeed, it was seen as a ‘great morass’ to be reclaimed (Richardson, 1809). It is somewhat unsurprising, then, that The Reports took this particular morass as their starting point. Utilising the methods of modern science, most particularly engineering, but also that of geology and botany, Griffith collates tables, measurements and images of the depths involved, the geological character of the bedrock, the composition of the peat soils, the common plants to be found, and so on, culminating in a detailed map of the Bog of Allen and its so-called ‘great lobes’ – Lullymore, Timahoe, Mouds, Clane, Clonsast and Pollagh (see Appendix 3; Anon, 1810–1814; Hurley, 2005; Bellamy, 1986: 48).2
To a large extent, these vast lobes have now disappeared from the Irish landscape, partly because of the promotion of reclamation by such reports and the subsequent steps taken by the industrious men of the age to then reclaim the Bog of Allen; as Hurley (2005) suggests: ‘When they [The Reports of 1810–1814] were completed the Bog of Allen was relatively undisturbed and near its maximum extent. Since that time development of the Bog of Allen has gradually reduced its original area by over 90%’ (Hurley, 2005: 6; emphasis added). Such practices, in my view, reflect the emergent Anthropocenic normativity of the time where nature was to be conquered by ‘scientific and executive man’. Of course, it is not sufficient to simply look back at
2 According to Bellamy (1986), Clara Bog is part of the Bog of Allen, yet personal communications with the IPCC
(21 October 2015) and Matthijs Schouten (16 December 2015) suggest otherwise, as does Hurley (2005) and Anon. (1810–1814).
13
such moments in history and determine these as causes; there is a maelstrom of dialectical processes and complexities at work beneath the surface, from the need for infrastructure, such as roads, and the need for funding from governmental institutions, such as the Royal Dublin Society (McLean, 2003; Clarke, 2010; Young, 1892; Connell, 1950). It is possible, nonetheless, to illuminate what is clearly a normative trend that characterised both how contemporaries viewed the Bog of Allen at the time – ‘as a great evidence of official ineptitude’ (Stoker, 1890: 44) – and the particular manifestations of such views; in this particular case, to clear the bogs to make way for agricultural lands. As Ireland moved through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, however, ‘scientific and executive man’ came to increase his ostensible dominance over the bogs by other means, particularly by the mechanisation of production.
The Mechanisation of Production
By the early nineteenth-century, pre-famine Ireland had a burgeoning population of approximately 8 million. This, of course, was centred heavily in the urban centres, most
particularly in Dublin where increases in the population brought about increases in demand for fuel (O’Grada, 1994; Hurley, 2005). Such pressures manifested themselves in the development of distribution networks; thus, as early as the late eighteenth century, developments in infrastructure were put into action to quicken the transport of peat from the Bog of Allen to the urban
dwellings surrounding Dublin. As Hurley notes: ‘The construction of the Grand Canal and its routing through the Bog of Allen allowed for large scale turf cutting schemes to be put in place and made it possible to transport the fuel to Dublin city where it was needed to heat homes and for cooking’ (Hurley, 2005: 13); in fact, by the early nineteenth century, ‘30,000 tons of turf was being shipped to Dublin from the Bog of Allen by canal every year’ (Feehan and O’Donovan, 1996: 8).
It is about this time that ‘scientific and executive men’ began looking to mechanise peat production ‘for a host of different and profitable ends’ (Viney, 2003: xii; emphasis added). Thus, for example, Charles Wye Williams of Derrylea is credited with giving birth to the first turf sod machine in 1844; whilst Charles Hodgson came up with a novel way for milling peat and transforming it into manageable ‘briquettes’ in 1860 (Clarke, 2010). In fact, much like we saw with the reclamation of bogs, it is possible to view such activities as the material manifestations of Anthropocenic normativity and its application via the technologies of the period. As Foss and O’Connell note: ‘These pioneering methods were followed by many other attempts at small-scale commercial exploitation of the bogs, most of which failed, although they fostered the notion of turning the vast resource of peat wastelands into an economic resource’ (Foss and O’Connell, 1997: 191; emphasis
14
added); a view echoed by Clarke who suggests that, as Ireland moved from the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, there was not only a move away from reclamation into the use of peat as a source of fuel, but there also ‘grew a consciousness that such an enormous resource as turf should not be exploited as a part-time adjunct to farming but should be produced on an industrial basis’ (Clarke, 2010: 14; emphasis added). It seems, therefore, that the Anthropocenic normativity of ‘scientific and executive men’ was increasingly manifesting itself in the boglands and,
therefore, in the landscape of Ireland.
With the turn of the century, then, came an increasing interest from the colonial government in the utilisation of bogs as a domestic source of fuel for the Irish economy. Thus, in 1902, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction convened a conference on industrial methods of peat production; in 1904, ‘The Manufacture of Peat Fuel in Ireland and How to Improve it’ could be read in the pages of the Department’s journal; and, in 1907 and 1908, a Professor Ryan produced a particularly influential report on ‘The Irish Peat Industries’ (Clarke, 2010; Ryan, 1907–8). Ireland was, of course, also dependent on coal as a source of fuel; yet, due to its unfortunate geological history and the fact that the majority of the coal that was formed during the carboniferous period had since fallen victim to the Atlantic tide and been washed away (Mitchell and Ryan, 1997; Viney, 2003), Ireland was fundamentally dependent on importing such resources from the British mainland. Thus, when a coal crisis hit during the First World War, the colonial government was quick to set up the Fuel Research Board ‘to make recommendations on improving the winning, preparation and use of peat as a fuel in Ireland’ (Clarke, 2010: 15). However, this was also a time of great political upheaval and with the Easter Uprising came the signs and symbols of a new political order; one which would come to utilise peat as a domestic fuel source as part of a programme of political economic nationalism.
Following the execution of the leaders of the Easter Uprising of 1916, there was a surge of nationalistic sentiment throughout the Irish population which culminated in the radical nationalist party of Sinn Féin being swept to power in the general election of 1918 as it won 73 out of 105 Irish seats in the British Parliament. However, rather than take the seats, Sinn Féin invited the elected members to form their own Irish Parliament; their own Dáil. Following the reprehensible decision of the British Government to then invade Ireland, a form of guerrilla war broke out which continued into the 1920s; by 1921, however, the two parties were ready to negotiate and a truce was agreed on 11 July 1921 (Clarke, 2010). The Irish Free State was
established in 1922 following the hard-won Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921, referred to by James O’Connor as the moment when: ‘I signed my death warrant. I thought at the time how odd, how ridiculous – a bullet may as well have done the job five years ago’ (O’Connor cited in
15
Foley, 1992: 19). Nevertheless, a consistent policy of political economic nationalism followed, with peat coming to form the bedrock of domestic fuel policy; a legacy which, of course, came to be manifested in the Irish landscape, most particularly that of the midlands and the Bog of Allen.
The Irish Free State wasted no time in tackling the domestic fuel issue, commissioning the Ryan Report in 1921. Following much of the advice given in an earlier report set up by the colonial government in 1917, the Ryan Report recommended that the larger bogs be utilised for experimentation in industrial production, that drainage schemes be implemented and that the particularly large bogs, such as the Bog of Allen, be retained by the state for future exploitation (Clarke, 2010). Indeed, it seems that the larger bogs of Ireland were earmarked from the beginning as the most suitable grounds for developing a mechanised peat industry, not least Lullymore Bog that formed one of the ‘great lobes’ of the Bog of Allen and which was, therefore, ‘the location for several of the early attempts at large-scale mechanical exploitation’ (Feehan and O’Donovan, 1966: 55). Furthermore, in 1932, the industry was given impetus by the incoming government of Fianna Fáil which ‘came to power with a policy of economic self-sufficiency’, aiming ‘to change the country’s economic and social policies by encouraging the use of native resources, creating employment and stimulating native enterprise’ (Clarke, 2010: 23). Thus, in 1933, Lullymore bog became part of a pioneering project in the testing out of peat milling, briquetting and disc-ditching machinery; with such technology forming the basis of the mechanised peat industry in the years to come (Clarke, 2010). In the following year, the Irish Free State decided to take an even more direct role, establishing the Turf Development Board to oversee the continued development of the mechanised peat industry, with particular focus on experimenting with the production of milled and sod peat for the generation of electricity (Foss and O’Connell, 1997; Clarke, 2010; Hurley, 2005).
Development was put on hold during World War II when, due to the severing of the coal lifeline from overseas, the state initiated nationwide turf cutting schemes which saw the setting up of residential camps across the country, particularly in the Bog of Allen, that were then housed with armies of turf cutters ready to do their duty to serve their country’s need for fuel (Hurley, 2005). Following the war, however, a renewed impetus for the development of the peat industry took hold and in 1946 a state-based company, Bord na Móna, was set up to ‘develop the country’s peat resources on a fully commercial basis’ (Foss and O’Connell, 1996: 49). Thus, ordained with compulsory purchase rights, Bord na Móna acquired 80,000 ha of bogland across Ireland, 36,735ha of which were in the Bog of Allen (Hurley, 2005; Foss and O’Connell, 1996). Since this point onwards, the peatlands of the Bog of Allen and its great lobes have been utilised
16
by Bord na Móna, in cooperation with the Electricity Supply Board (ESB), as the main source of fuel in the domestic production of electricity in Ireland.
One can only imagine the amount of peat necessary to produce such vast quantities of electricity for the domestic economy over the past 60 years; what is clear, however, is the mark that such industry has left on the landscape of the Irish midlands, particularly the Bog of Allen, as vast swathes of brown ‘cutaway bog’ have been left in the wake of increasingly sophisticated machinery (see Appendices 4 & 5). As Viney observes:
To travel by helicopter from Dublin to Galway above the Irish midlands is to fly past hard-edged tracts of chocolate-brown plain, criss-crossed with drains and sprawling machines that crawl across them. Glistening at intervals are long ridges of milled peat, shaved from the surface of the bog piled up under plastic sheeting. This is the industry of peat extraction, mechanized for more than half a century as an Irish state enterprise’ (Viney, 2003: 129–130).
In fact, the great raised bogs of the midlands have been the main focus of Bord na Móna’s industrial activities and with output approaching eight million tons per year in 1990 it is not surprising that: ‘The most serious impact of mechanised peat extraction in Ireland has been on the midland raised bogs accounting for a loss of 24% of the resource in less than 50 years (Malone, 2009: 22–23; Foss and O’Connell, 1997); indeed, as Viney also suggested: ‘the great raised bogs of the midlands are down to mere shreds and remnants…drained or scooped away for a host of different and profitable ends’ (Viney, 2003: xii).
What is more, such technoscientific epistemologies are now making their way into the more informal economy of turbary rights holders who, as we shall see in the ethnographic section of this paper, are now following Anthropocenic norms by mechanising production methods themselves. As Malone (2009) notes, alongside the use of the sleán that has
characterised the production of hand-won turf for centuries, it is now common practice to use milling machines, diggers, hoppers, chain cutters and a host of other mechanised implements in the extraction of peat from the local bogs; indeed, ‘mechanised extraction is the norm’ (Malone, 2009: 53; emphasis added). Thus, temporally speaking, whereas turbary has in the past, equated to a relatively slow rate of extraction of peat from bogs (which, as we saw earlier, have taken millennia to develop), the mechanisation of peat extraction by turbary rights holders means that what before took generations to extract is now being removed at an increasingly unsustainable rate (Malone, 2009). If we add this increased rate of extraction by turbary rights holders to the already accelerated rates of production maintained in the state-backed generation of electricity over the past 60 years, keeping in mind the impact of reclamation, it is not surprising that the great Bog of Allen has been reduced by approximately 90% over the past two centuries (Hurley, 2005). Thus, having established the reasons why the Bog of Allen has so rapidly decreased over
17
the past two centuries, the context has now become clear and the stage now set as we ask what is at stake in the struggle to conserve the ‘shreds and remnants’ of the Bog of Allen and why is there a conflict of interests between the stakeholders?
Conservation
Much like in the preceding discussion, we can plot the normative emergence of conservation as a value as it becomes manifested in the Irish landscape; as Viney suggests, with time, the
normative value of conserving raised bogs, in opposition to their commercial exploitation, has become common place: ‘What was once considered bleak wilderness, fit only for mining as fuel or “reclamation” for forestry or grassland, is now a valued ecosystem’ (Viney, 2003: 103; emphasis added). Thus, starting with the writings of Robert Lloyd Praeger (1901, 1934, 1937), we see the beginnings of this normative position as it starts to take hold in the common literature of the period, much reflecting the tendency to amateur naturalism that became popular about this time (Viney, 2003; Clarke, 2010). In fact, no sooner had it started to emerge that it began drawing the ire of industrialists. As Todd Andrews, the celebrated head of operations for Bord na Mona reflects in his memoirs of the 1940s, such ‘enthusiasts in Quaternary research’ believed that bogs ‘should not be developed at all’ (Andrews cited in Clarke, 2010: 105); indeed, ‘Andrews was dismissive of the few early conservationists’ (Clarke, 2010: 105).
Even so, the dogged determination of conservationists, then as now, proved to be a challenge for industry. For example, one day in 1951, whilst roaming through Pollagh bog (one of the great lobes of the Bog of Allen), J.J. Moore, Professor of Botany at University College Dublin, came across the Rannoch rush (Scheuzcheria palustris) – a particularly rare species of plant. Moore set about ecologically surveying the area in an attempt to convince Bord na Móna not to develop the site for turf; sadly, they went ahead with the project anyway and the Rannoch rush is now considered to be extinct (Bellamy, 1986). Even so, this moment in Irish history represents a key historical node in the normative rise of conservation in opposition to industry; as Foss and O’Connell (1997) suggest: ‘This landmark case represented the first time conservation of a bog had been sought primarily due to the presence of rare species, and was the first where conflict arose between development agencies and environmentalists’ (Foss and O’Connell, 1997: 193).
Incidentally, the normative pressure exerted by Moore upon Bord na Móna convinced their scientific officer, Tom Barry, to try and persuade the Board that there was ‘an obligation to preserve some bogs’ (Foss and O’Connell, 1997: 193). In fact, Tom Barry would go on to become a major proponent of bog conservation, propagating its normative value through
18
paper on ‘Environment Protection and the Bogs of Ireland’ and strongly advocated the preservation of intact raised bogs, citing such reasons as: ‘the preservation of gene pools; the provision of refuges for flora and fauna; the preservation of natural or semi-natural ecosystems containing whole plant assemblages in their own habitats;…for their wild beauty; and for research and educational reasons’ (Clarke, 2010: 206); whilst arguing the need for a sustained effort by both the state and landowners to preserve the bogs (Clarke, 2010). In the early 1970s, there were increasing signs that the government were beginning to feel the normative pressure with peatland surveys being commissioned by both the Agricultural Institute, An Foras
Talúntais, and theNational Institute for Physical Planning and Construction Research, An Foras Forbartha, with the latter undertaking a national survey to identify sites of conservation value between 1968 and 1974 (Foss and O’Connell, 1997; Anon., 1980).
It was, then, about this time that the Irish government took the decision to enshrine the norm of conservation value within their legal institutional framework. Thus, the Wildlife Act of 1976 prescribed the legal protection of the island’s flora and fauna, providing the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) with executive powers in this regard. The legislation was, however, rather hollow, conveying protection solely upon those lands in state ownership that were
designated as National Parks and Natures Reserves; in addition, the NPWS had the option to convey particular parts of the landscape with the protected stratus of Areas of Scientific Interest (ASIs), but in practice these were few and far between and were difficult to enforce due to their not having recognition under the 1976 Act. The institutional framework soon changed, however, and, following a decision by the Supreme Court in 1992 where it was determined that ASIs could not be declared without the notification of landowners, the legal impetus of conservation value was manifest in a framework based upon the designation of Natural Heritage Areas (NHAs).
As part of the NHA framework, the NPWS undertook, with the financial help of the European Commission (EC) Life Fund, a national survey in order to determine the boundaries of protected areas with 1251 such sites being ‘designated’ in 1996. However, this system too lacked the legal teeth necessary to enforce such protection, with damage to habitats across the country continuing apace and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) powerless to stop it (Foss and O’Connell, 1996). In fact, it was not until the 2000 Amendment to the Wildlife Act that NHAs were given the legal force necessary to prohibit the damaging practices of development and turf cutting, as enforced in the section concerned with the ‘Prohibition of works on lands in natural heritage areas’ (Oireachtas Éireann, 2000). From this point on, NHAs have proven to be a thorn in the side of turf cutters, particularly that of the Turf Cutters and Contractors
19
Such examples give the impression that the normative fertility of conservation sprang solely from a domestic well. However, besides the already highlighted financial support of the EC Life Fund, there is evidence to suggest that the early signs and symbols of conservation were fundamentally bolstered by the influential and normatively entrenched institutions of the
European Economic Community during this period, and later as the European Union. Indeed, Viney (2003) traces the influence of Europe upon Irish institutions concerned with planning, such as An Foras Forbartha, as far back as the 1960s, when ‘a new concern for wildlife species was elaborated in a steady flow of conservation directives from Europe’ (Viney, 2003: 307). In fact, if we follow Foss and O’Connell (1997), it seems that, since the 1970s, a pluralistic model, based upon a mixture of both domestic and European normative pressure, has motivated the Irish state into institutionalising the norm of conservation value: ‘In response to heightened public consciousness of environmental conservation, stimulated in 1970 with European Conservation Year, the first steps were taken to conserve bogs. An Taisce, Bord na Móna, the Forest and Wildlife Service (Dublin)…discussed the value of conserving peatland, and areas were set aside for protection’ (Foss and O’Connell, 1997: 193–4; emphasis added). In other words, the normative pressure to institutionalise the value of conservation has come from both the
domestic and European spheres; a tendency which characterises the struggle for conservation of boglands to this day.
In 1982, for example, Professor Moore accepted the ‘European Prize for the protection of Nature’ from the German-based Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe-Stiftung Conservation Trust. Here, he noted that his work with the Wildlife Advisory Council had been rather fruitless, mainly due to a lack of financial support from the government, but that he had faith in a recently
founded organisation, the National Peatland Conservation Committee – a key stakeholder in our story, as we shall see – made up of a set of ‘very active’ conservationists from a number of key organisations, including An Foras Talúntais and An Foras Forbartha. Moore then, as if passing on the normative chalice to this particular organisation, highlighted their hopes for bog
conservation in the midlands: ‘only 6 per cent of the Midland raised bogs remain undrained and their hopes are that, as a result of their efforts, a representative series of bogs, comprising about 4 per cent of the remaining undrained areas, be preserved for posterity’ (Moore, cited in Foss and O’Connell, 1997: 194).
It s not surprising, then, that many have suggested that the impetus for the normalisation of bog conservation came from countries such as Germany and The Netherlands, whose raised bog habitat had practically disappeared by this point, with Germany the only one holding onto approximately 500 ha. In fact, it was with the arrival of Matthijs Schouten in Ireland in the early
20
1980s that bog conservation was given a boost. There to do his PhD, Schouten quickly realised that if Ireland didn’t take measures to conserve the bogs, it would likely go the same way as The Netherlands. Thus, besides joining the newly formed National Peatland Conservation
Committee in 1982, Schouten took the decision to go back home and found the Dutch
Foundation for the Conservation of Irish bogs’, in 1983; an organisation which would come to raise enough funds in three years to fund the purchase of three Irish bogs (Schouten and Nooren, 1990; Foss and O’Connell, 1997; Newbould, 1989; Clarke, 2010). In fact, this strategy of raising public funds in order to purchase and protect particular tracts of bogland continues to this day in the work of the National Peatland Conservaiton Committee, now known as the Irish Peatland Conservaiton Council (IPCC).
The IPCC is a key stakeholder in the struggle to conserve the remaining parts of the Bog of Allen; it does this by utilising both domestic and European institutions to normatively enforce conservation value. For example, as we saw in the case of NHAs, NGOs have been powerless in their efforts to apply norms of conservation value to the boglands of Ireland without the
sufficient backing of state institutions that have, to a greater or lesser extent, internalised the norm of conservation value into their apparatus. Such a process of internalisation can occur with either public pressure from below in the domestic sphere or with international normative
pressure from above, such as via the institutions of the European Union. In fact, in the case of bog conservation, one of the most forceful legislative frameworks available to organisations such as the IPCC is the European Union Directive on the Conservation of Natural and Semi-Natural Habitats and Wild Flora and Fauna (Directive 92/43/EEC) – otherwise known as the ‘Habitats Directive’ – institutionalised into Irish law Statutory Instrument (S.I.) No. 94 in 1997 (Hurley, 2005).
Working in tandem with the NHA system, the Habitats Directive ‘designates’ particular sites as being Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), with these then being incorporated into the NATURA 2000 network of conservation worthy sites in Europe, many of which are constituted as ‘priority habitats’. Raised bogs fall under the legal umbrella of the directive if they are, either, active peat forming bogs (this being considered a ‘priority habitat’ under the directive at 7110*), or, damaged bogland still capable of regeneration and peat formation (7120, but which is not considered a priority habitat and, therefore, does not carry a *) (Romão, 1996; Hurley, 2005). Of the 1251 sites designated as NHAs, a subset of 420 sites has been designated as sites worthy of SAC status under the auspices of the NATURA 2000 network (Foss and O’Connell, 1996; Hurley, 2005); with this translating into approximately 20,000 ha across the Irish landscape.
21
In the context of the Bog of Allen, however, where the majority of intact raised bogs has been exploited by turf cutters and Bord na Móna, leaving ‘a chocolate brown plain’ (Viney, 2003: 129), this does not translate into much. In fact, even in cases where the remaining parts of the Bog of Allen have been designated as SACs, turf is still being cut in spite of international normative pressure; as Hurley (2005) points out: ‘only 7.5% of the original area of the Bog of Allen is now recognised as peatland of international conservation value. The sites that comprise this area are fragmented in their distribution and some are even being exploited, despite
international recognition of their nature conservation value’ (Hurley, 2005: 6; emphasis added). Furthermore, in 1999, the Irish government decided to delay the implementation of the Directive for 10 years as part of a ‘cessation’ period, with the government citing ‘the social and economic impacts immediate cessation of turf cutting would have had’ (Malone, 2009: 52). It wasn’t until 2009, therefore, that turfcutters really began to feel the pinch of a legal framework that was increasingly enforcing the normative value of conservation.
It is here, then, within this maelstrom of domestically and internationally normalised frameworks of legality, that we see the conflict of interests between the different stakeholders play out as they tussle for the ‘shreds and remnants’ of the Bog of Allen; as those hoping to squeeze out the last drops of calorific value from the bogs for fuel – such as the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association (TCCA) – commence in normative conflict with those determined to conserve the bogs as habitat and for posterity – such as the Irish Peatland Conservaiton Council (IPCC). In fact, one might say that the landscape itself was the normative battlefield; as Malone suggests: ‘Conflicts between turf cutting (turbary) and conservation are greatest where peat extraction is occurring on sites that are of conservation value’ (Malone, 2009: 55). The next section, therefore, explores the ethnographic data gathered in the field in order to analyse the competing normative viewpoints of the different stakeholders involved in the struggle for conservation of the Bog of Allen and the wider Irish landscape.
Competing Views of the Irish Landscape: Ethnographic Accounts
It is clear from the preceding discussion, then, that the competing views of the Irish landscape represent different normative positionalities depending on whether you see the bogs as, either, an object to be exploited for its calorific content in the generation of fuel – that is,
Anthropocenic normativity – or as a part of a complex habitat to be protected – as conservation value. Furthermore, as we have seen, one cannot understand this conflict of interest or what is at
22
stake for either of the stakeholders without first understanding the institutional context which enforces, to a greater or lesser extent, the historically and culturally embedded norms of property and conservation value. Thus, having determined the layout of the normative playing field, we can now take an informed look at the contemporary ethnographic accounts of two of the main stakeholders within the debate – the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association (TCCA) and the Irish Peatland Conservation Council (IPCC).3
The TCCA
Meeting in an inconspicuous diner outside of Galway city centre, the sound of pop music fills my ears as I sit waiting for the representative of the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association (TCCA) – an organisation that represents tens of thousands of private turf cutters actively practicing their turbary rights upon the country’s boglands, many of which have been ‘designated’ as NHAs under the Wildlife Act 1976 and as SACs under the auspices of the Habitats Directive (TCCA, 2015; Malone, 2009). Soon, the round face of a rather jolly expat who’s come to adopt Ireland as his home greets me with a mixed accent and a characteristically Irish friendliness. He wastes no time in informing me on the practices of the turfcutters of today, going into some detail on the machinery used:
##TC1##: Now, what happens nowadays, a machine will go in, with a bucket, they’ll go down the face of that
bog, clean off the heather at the top, dig down and scoop out some of that turf. They put that into what’s called a bogmeiser… at the back of the bogmeiser you’ve got a shoot that comes out and it divides the turf into about 8 rows, the machine will drive along and spread the lines of turf behind it in near enough a continuous line of turf. That comes out quite wet and soggy…
It is clear, then, just by the first few moments of conversation, that mechanised production is the norm.
As the conversation moves forward through the details of how to cut turf, the kinds of implements they use, etc., it’s clear that the TCCA’s representative is somewhat nervous and internally conscious of the controversy surrounding both the Habitats Directive and the TCCA’s decision to continue to cut turf in spite of it – that is, even after the ‘cessation’ period ended in 2009. Thus, manifesting a historically and culturally embedded narrative, he continues:
##TC1##: If I explain the basic function of the TCCA, then maybe you’ll understand where we’re coming from.
So, in the late 1990s–early 2000s, the Habitats Directive was put in place and the Special Areas of Conservation, and Ireland chose to nominate certain bogs and it was decided at that point that people would then not cut turf. But it took about 9 or 10 years for that to really kick in, like you’re alright, you’re alright, keep cutting away.
3 Due to the fact that Bord na Móna did not return my communications, I have had to focus upon these two
stakeholders; though I believe they still represent the two sides of the normative debate and, therefore, the study does not lose too much in this omission.
23
##JM##: Yeh, the cessation period?
##TC1##: They did put a name on it but actually it was never the case, it was all just done on a nod and a wink,
you’re alright, keep going. What was ignored, if you like, was that people actually have rights to cut turf.
##JM##: Turbary rights, you mean?
##TC1##: Yeh, people have turbary rights; and those rights were just being, not even trampled, they were just
being completely ignored, they became an irrelevance; they weren’t bothered. And we as the TCCA were saying, well hang on, you cannot do that, we have got rights – whether it’s on your land, or on a bog away from your land, you might not even own a bog your family might have just been granted rights to cut turf, historically…
It’s clear, then, that turfcutters see turbary as a historically and culturally embedded right and that, in spite of the normative pressures coming to bear from the European Union, they believe that this right takes precedence over the norm of conservation. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly clear that they see this as kind of value-based battle with the European Union. As their Chairman make clear: ‘The TCCA was setup to fight for the right of the continuation of domestic turf cutting in Ireland. It was also to represent the people affected by the Habitats Directive which was passed into Irish law in 1997…There is a real threat from Europe’ (TCCA, 2015); in fact, it forms the basis of much of their support:
##JM##: …And you’re saying that this is because of the Habitats Directive?
##TC1##: Well the Habitats Directive was the implement of the EU to say, that’s it, stop cutting turf. And we’re
saying, no, no, I have a right to do it and we will exercise that right.
##JM##: So the organisation was formed about this time?
##TC1##: We were already an organisation, but we certainly grew in strength at that time; it started to take off
when people realised that actually property rights and turbary rights were just being ignored…
As the cessation period closed out, the TCCA became increasingly militant in their modes of resistance, even walking out of the Peatlands Council – a nationally delegated
committee aimed at deliberating between the conflicting parties, including the NPWS, Bord na Mona, TCCA and IPCC – believing it to be a ‘talk shop’ in which they ‘weren’t being listened to’. It soon becomes clear, however, that compensation was at the brunt of this decision and that the evocation of turbary and history is more a moral, indeed normative cover, for what is really at the centre of their disgruntlement: the monetary (i.e. property) value of the bog:
##TC1##: …They were just talking around in circles and that’s all it was, and there was nobody really going to
listen to much of the concerns that we had. There was a Peatlands Council meeting and we just said, this isn’t working, we’re leaving. We were asked to go back on and we have no intention of going back onto the Peatlands Council until the action is actually going to be implemented and everything’s taken into consideration.
24
##TC1##: The actions whereby: are you compensating us for the land? The land value…
He goes on, further emphasising the motivations behind the TCCA’s intransigence:
##TC1##: …money was sent over from Europe in order to set all that up and nobody knows where the money
went.
##JM##: Nobody got paid out?
##TC1##: Nobody. There was no scheme set up, so when we then started protesting saying we’re not stopping
cutting turf, they came up with a scheme that said, right, we will give you €1500 for a maximum of 15. And after that, nothing. So a maximum of 15 years. It could be two years. But if you times 15 by 15, it’s not big money. Bord na Móna values an acre of bog at €250,000 per acre. They were offering €1500 for however many years that they didn’t care, for a maximum of 15 years, which is pittance…
Such a view, in fact, contrasts starkly with the view of the IPCC who, as we shall see, believe that no EU funding has ever been transferred to the Irish state for such a purpose (see section below); in fact, according to Malone (2009), there has been a great deal paid out to turbary rights holders, approximately £23 million (Malone, 2009: 52); somewhat contrary to the informant’s view.
Nevertheless, it soon becomes clear that there is an epistemological disjunction underpinning the TCCA’s intransigent resistance to the conservation measures set out in the SACs which may go some way in explaining why they view bogland more as a source of monetary and cultural value than of conservation value. For instance, when discussing what measures the NPWS would likely take if the bog was given over to the state for conservation, the TCCA representative unveils a fundamental misrepresentation if not complete misunderstanding of the temporally protracted ecological processes of raised bog formation, holding that they may be considered ‘renewable’ sources of energy:
##JM##: It’s not exactly renewable then?
##TC1##: Well, under a definition of renewable, it is.
##JM##: But in practical terms, is it?
##TC1##: But a definition isn’t always practical is it? And there has been research in either Denmark or Finland
or somewhere in a Scandinavian country that recognises turf as renewable.
##JM##: I’m surprised, because it takes millennia to regenerate, doesn’t it?
##TC1##: So what? I mean, that’s it isn’t it, what’s the definition then?
##JM##: I suppose it’s based upon time isn’t it?
25
As alluded to earlier, I see this as evidence of a wider epistemological disjunction between human conceptions of time and the temporality of the natural environment which may go some way in explaining the continued exploitation of peatlands for fuel in the face of widely held knowledge of such practices being detrimental for the conservation value of bogs (Newbould, 1989).
Furthermore, besides this example of a fundamental misrepresentation of the ecological processes of bog being used to justify their own normative stance, we also find the TCCA representative seemingly denying and inadvertently concealing the ecological basis for viewing the boglands as a habitat for endangered species of birds, going so far as to suggest that there are not any birds ‘up there’ because humans no longer leave food around; as if the Greenland White-fronted goose migrated all the way from Greenland for discarded crusts of bread, rather than to feed on the storage organs of particular bogland plants, such as bog asphodel, beak sedge and black bog rush (Foss and O’Connell, 1997; Viney, 2003).We thus see Anthropocenic normativity in action:
##TC1##: …we’d love to think that bird life is up there – I would gladly love and encourage to see bird life up
there – but there isn’t bird life up there; there isn’t, somebody pointed this out, because when there was the families up there and it was a big community thing, people would eat up there, they’d have picnics, they’d throw away bits and pieces, and the birds actually had a lot more feeding when there were people up cutting turf because the throw aways, their crusts of bread; now those people are not there, the feeding isn’t there for the birds so they’ve moved on. There’s every chance that the birds have moved on because there isn’t the feeding there for ‘em…
Again, we see the normatively charged use of misinformation where a fundamentally erroneous argument is used to undermine the legitimacy of SACs in an attempt to give precedence to the normative value of turbary and property rights. It seems, therefore, that an epistemological disjuncture, involving the fundamental misrepresentation of both bogs and the birds that feed upon them, is, either consciously or unconsciously, being used to delegitimize one side of the normative divide in favour of the other – that is, to legitimize the TCCA’s narrative over that of the IPCC’s.
The IPCC
It’s a mild, yet rainy day in the Irish midlands. I cycle up to the Bog of Allen Nature Centre after making my way through the vast tracts of chocolate brown fields still excavated by Bord na Móna and turbary rights holders (see Appendices 4 & 5). A large renovated farmhouse, the Bog of Allen Nature Centre acts as the headquarters for the Irish Peatland Conservation Council, with a well put together and informative museum running along the bottom floor, offices with enough room for 10 or so people on the top and an exhibition garden around the back to show
26
the thousands of school children that arrive here every year what goes into the making of bogs, from sphagnum mosses to insectivorous bladderworts.
It is no coincidence that the IPCC have chosen to situate themselves in the Bog of Allen, right in the centre of Lullymore Bog – one of its ‘great lobes’ which, as we have seen, was a key experiment site in the industrial production of bogland as fuel. Indeed, the IPCC
conservationists waste no time in emphasising how the Bog of Allen is a landscape scarred by 200 years of population growth, turbary and industrial production and which is, therefore, ‘largely undesignated’:
##IP1##: …it’s largely undesignated, the Bog of Allen, it’s not designated.
##JM##: Well this is the thing, it crosses like 6 counties, but the main focus is in Offaly or Kildare, it depends on
your perspective, but is any of it ‘intact’?
##IP1##: Well, there are, there’s a smattering; you can look at the NPWS distribution of NHAs and SACs in those
2 counties and, you know, the entire landscape is a peat-filled landscape so you can pretty much assume that anything that’s there is probably peat-related. In Kildare, you have about 2-3% of the original peatland area still intact, physically looking like a raised bog, but the quality of it is not god because it’s being destroyed all around it.
##JM##: Drained away?
##IP1##: Absolutely, yeh, there’s been a massive change in the landscape, not just in our time but previous to
us, across 200 years…And when the government decided, ok, let’s take this peatland thing seriously and they set up Bord na Móna pretty much the first area they would’ve came in and taken over was what’s going on around here, so I think a lot of the Bog of Allen as we talk about it in this area was probably pretty wrecked in the 40s even.
##JM##: But Bord na Móna was founded it ’46, just after the War right?
##IP1##: Yeh, but just before War there were people camped here in this area who were out cutting turf and it
was all brought up to Dublin for people who had no fuel…
As they continue, their role as the enforcers of the institutionally embedded norm of conservation value becomes clear:
##IP2##: …We have a list of sites that would be of conservation value, about a thousand something sites, and
we work towards conserving those sites.
##JM##: And these are SACs?
##IP1##: No.
##IP2##: They include SACs.
##JM##: So they’re a mixture of SACs, NHAs, etc.?
