S4, E18: Good News: A New Way To Look At Sustainability & Pocket Forests & Retrofitting in Ireland

Transcript 

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[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is Constructive Voices. Constructive Voices, the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews.

[00:00:10] Jackie De Burca: Hi there, this is Jackie De Burca for the Constructive Voices Good News podcast. A short, sharp burst of uplifting stories from the built environment with a side of conservation. We’re hoping to light up your day with some really interesting news about a new way of thinking about sustainability. In fact, it’s one that’s not just about protecting the planet, but also about protecting our minds.

It’s called neurosustainability, a concept linking environmental conservation with brain health. As you may know, research shows that spending time in nature can have profound effects on our mental and cognitive well being, something many of us felt firsthand during the COVID 19 lockdowns.

For nylig talte jeg med Mohamed Hesham Khalil. Han er førende inden for dette koncept og har skrevet mange forskellige artikler om det. Jeg vil klippe ind i en kort del af mit interview med ham, der forklarer lidt om dette koncept. Men forlad ikke Mohammeds artikel, for vi har flere gode nyheder om pocket forests i Irland og lidt om eftermontering.

[00:01:10] Taler A: Dette er Constructive Voices.

[00:01:13] Jackie De Burca: Hvad fik dig først til at udforske dette krydsfelt mellem neurovidenskab og arkitektur?

[00:01:19] Mohamed Hesham Khalil: It was during lockdown, to be honest, when I started seeing so many people feeling more depressed and having higher levels of anxiety. That was sparked to something that it is something about the built environment and especially that some people have sustained those symptoms even after lockdown. So that shift, like from experiencing the belt environment in a specific way and then going back was an alert to start seeing this relationship between the built environment and the human brain. Because I know that it is associated with mental health and cognitive performance was really the motivation.

Og jeg begyndte at udforske dette under min kandidatuddannelse. Det var tværfagligt mellem arkitektur og neurovidenskab, specifikt anvendt neurovidenskab.

And then that was the departure point based on which I started doing my PhD at the University of Cambridge to explore this impact of the built environment on neuroplasticity in more depth.

[00:02:31] Taler A: Dette er Constructive Voices.

[00:02:33] Jackie De Burca: Dejligt at høre fra Mohamed. Hold øje med hele episoden og serien, vi laver om emnet, som udkommer i oktober 2025. Så hvis du lytter til dette efter den dato, så bare kig på din yndlings podcast-app eller gå til Constructive Voices' hjemmeside, constructive hyphen voices.com, det er constructive Voices.

[00:02:57] Sarah Austin: Og hvor mange af disse lommeskove har du skabt indtil videre?

[00:03:02] Catherine Cleary: We’re up to about 125 at the moment. I think some of them will be Extremely small, the size of a single car parking space and others would be larger. Our largest is about 100 square meters, which is roughly half a tennis court.

[00:03:18] Sarah Austin: Wow. Og så mener jeg, for dem af os, der ikke ved, hvad en lommeskov består af? Hvordan er den anderledes end måske at have en almindelig byhave eller et blomsterbed, som man måske har derhjemme eller på en skole?

[00:03:28] Catherine Cleary: Yeah, it’s really interesting to kind of discover what the traditions of urban landscaping are. So we traditionally do a lot of grass, so we will call a green space, a green space when there’s very thin soil and just a layer of grass and then that’s usually mown to within an inch of its life over the summertime, although no mamey is happening. And then with tree planting they tend to be planted widely spaced lone trees with those grassy areas in between them. There are various reasons given for this.

Cyclones, certain local authorities and, and people aren’t, some are, aren’t very happy at the idea of not being able to see what’s happening everywhere in every, every public space. So what we do looks very different to that. We’re planting much younger trees than would normally be planted. They’re only two year old whips, so they’re very small, planted in winter time and planted much more closely together about 3 per square meter, which would be very dense compared to traditional landscaping in cities. But the result is that they create this microclimate very quickly the soil changes and we do a little bit of that work before we plant anything as well. That’s part of the pocket forest difference, I suppose. We do a soil preparation workshop with communities.

[00:04:38] Taler A: Dette er Constructive Voices.

[00:04:40] Jackie De Burca: Sørg for at dykke ned på vores hjemmeside, hvor du finder titlen "Grøngør Irland fra Pocket Forests til Native Woodlands" med Katherine Cleary. Denne er skabt af Sarah Austin, som er en af Constructive Voices' frivillige, og hun har virkelig gjort et fantastisk stykke arbejde. Mange tak, Sarah. Tak. Nu har vi bare et kort indlæg om eftermontering i Irland, og hele afsnittet om dette udkommer i september 2025.

[00:05:05] Taler A: Dette er konstruktive stemmer.

[00:05:07] Mark: Den 7. august 2025 offentliggjorde Irlands bæredygtige energimyndighed, SEAI, sin kvartalsrapport, der viste, at 11,910 energiopgraderinger i boliger blev støttet gennem offentlige tilskudsordninger i de første tre måneder af 2025, en stigning på 2 % i forhold til samme periode. I 2024 nåede de offentlige udgifter 76 millioner euro, en stigning på 4 %.

Mere end 5,100 boliger blev opgraderet til en BER B2-vurdering eller højere.

1,350 energifattige husstande modtog gratis opgraderinger, en stigning på 14 % og undgik 15,000 % CO2-udledning, hvilket forstærker det nationale pres for renovering. Og det fuldender dagens positive nyhedsopdatering fra Constructive Voices.

[00:05:53] Taler A: Dette er Constructive Voices.