Three, Sixty: With Michael Officer

This is an extract from Issue 76 of SDG Alpha, my newsletter that casts an Irish lens on the world of Impact Investment, Innovation, and Sustainability. In these regular features, I pose three questions on the theme of sustainability to an impact entrepreneur or innovator, to get a better understanding in sixty seconds of how they’re working to achieve the SDG targets.

For this issue, I’m delighted to welcome Michael Officer , Programme Manager of Cuan Beo , a Galway and Clare based not-for-profit organisation, actively restoring native oyster (Ostrea edulis) reefs in Inner Galway Bay, delivering primary & secondary level education programmes, organising heritage events and scientific activities, and informing environmental, social, and economic policy.

On a personal level, what impacts of the climate/biodiversity crisis are you most concerned about?

Thinking anthropocentrically here, I’m concerned that tackling the climate/biodiversity crisis’ impacts represents the antithesis of how humankind traditionally thinks, operates, and reacts to crises. The climate/biodiversity crisis’ impacts are so interconnected and affronting, but at the same time unaccountable, that deflecting ownership of our contributing roles to the crisis is easier than accepting our roles in addressing it. I’m concerned that the crisis’ confrontation of the way we think and act, may be an impact too difficult or unactionable for many, that we won’t be able to minimise the crisis’ impacts and adapt to our changing world effectively. Immediate financial limitations, convenience, political uncertainty/instability, and personal struggles, to name a few, all diminish our individual and societal capacities to tackle this less personally infringing, but wickedly overarching crisis.

I believe overcoming the crisis’ confrontation on our way of thinking underpins tackling the wider and devastating ongoing and projected losses of ecosystem functioning, forced displacement and migration of communities; changes in global food security; and expanding economic inequalities. Not to mention the crisis’ impacts on physical and mental health, and erosion of cultural identities and cultural ties to ecosystems.

But I feel there’s great hope yet! Paradigm shifts in individual and community thinking are happening every day. This newsletter for one is an excellent source for inspiration and evidence of paradigm shifts and ambition to deliver a sustainable just transition. (Folks, I did not pay Michael to say this, honest…) Considering the global distribution of people into the corners of the world, an upswelling of community-led environmental pressure, action, and awareness balanced with international and national environmental action, funding, and legislation will accelerate our capacity to minimise and hopefully reverse the impacts of the climate/biodiversity crisis.

Which of the UN SDG’s was Cuan Beo established to address?

Although Cuan Beo’s founders weren’t considering SDGs at the time, the company has evolved to directly link to (from my last check) 8 of the 17 SDGs, and in doing so Cuan Beo indirectly benefits 5 other SDGs.

Primarily founded to restore the Galway Bay native oyster fishery and its associated ecosystem services, Cuan Beo is linked to SDG 13 - Responsible Consumption and Production and SDG 14 - Life Below Water: Native oysters are keystone species, providing habitat for animal nurseries and seagrass beds, and improving water quality – as of October 2024, Cuan Beo in collaboration with the Marine Institute, Bord Iascaigh Mhara, and the Clarinbridge Co-Op has deployed over 800 tonnes of shell for oyster settlement, increasing the native oyster population by an estimated 20 million oysters in four years. Our Conservation Management Plan, prepared in anticipation of the native oyster bed’s recovery, will, if our restoration efforts are successful, enable responsible harvesting of native oysters from the oyster bed while retaining the bed’s capacity to effectively provide its diverse array of ecosystem services. We recently released our collaborative report, “Status and Restoration of Native Oyster in Galway Bay 2018-2023”.

Through our Source to Sea education programme and outreach events, we are also linked to SDG 4 - Quality Education, SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities, and SDG 13 - Climate Action: Our “Source to Sea” education programme brings primary and secondary level students on a journey from upstream in the South East Galway Bay catchment down its rivers and out to aquaculture farms in Galway Bay learning how upstream activities affect downstream habitats, communities, and livelihoods.

Outreach events stimulate discussions and initiatives to improve community sustainability, environmental actions, and adaptation to climate change. Focusing on the environment, heritage, and economy of Galway Bay, we connect people with the importance of protecting water quality through topics that most strongly resonate with them. We are currently updating our Catchment Economic Assessment, the first of its kind in Ireland, and have previously published a Heritage Report of the Native Oyster in Galway Bay.

Our water quality projects, land to sea environmental protection approach, and political engagements also connect us to SDG 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG 15 - Life on Land, and SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals: Cuan Beo’s catchment approach to water quality management and advocacy aligns us closely with the Local Authority Waters Programme, who we collaborate with regularly. Our education programme and outreach events similarly seek to reconnect people with the land and sea, highlighting the downstream impact of land-based activities, and the capacity for the marine to provide for upstream communities and environments.

How does the Cuan Beo model enable the transition to a more sustainable future?

Cuan Beo is inherently a grassroots organisation, engaging, enabling, and mobilising communities in active environmental and sustainability initiatives and projects. This engagement extends further into political advocacy, where community pressure builds to take meaningful and genuine action at local, regional, and national scales.

Our native oyster restoration project is similarly aware of its myriad interested stakeholders. Restoring native oyster reefs in Inner Galway Bay, we’re acutely aware of the incredible ecological benefits healthy, functioning oyster reefs have and the simultaneous deep cultural connection of local communities to oyster fishing. If our restoration efforts are successful, we seek to enable a harmonious balancing of ecological functioning and enabling local communities to maintain their connection to the fishing, selling, and gastronomy of the native oyster in Ireland. We’re keen to scale our restoration efforts and are actively exploring opportunities to standardise our net biodiversity gains to align ourselves to the funding imperatives of restoration verification and credits systems.

Through our Source to Sea education programme and political engagement, we seek to inform the actions of communities and policymakers respectively, providing them with the necessary awareness to make more environmentally conscious decisions. For example, such decisions have been informed from the outputs of the previously mentioned Catchment Economic Assessment. As part of this report, we conducted a sea swimmer survey which pointed to a lack of water quality and marine information in South East Galway Bay. Using the outputs from a separate Galway Bay modelling collaboration with the Marine Institute, we placed QR code signs at sea access points across South East Galway Bay. These signs host live and predicted tide times, tide heights, temperature, and salinity (a proxy for pollution levels) specific to that sea access point. With the success of this project in engaging communities and aquaculture farmers in a novel way, we’re now adding locally relevant bird, seaweed, and jellyfish ID charts to build on and encourage people’s interest in their local environments.