Climate Camp Ireland 2024 from 7-11th August at Ardboe, Co Tyrone, on the shore of Ireland’s biggest lake, Loch nEachach (Lough Neagh). Take action and join us!
Slí Eile hosts the Climate Camp together with a range of community groups and campaigns. The Camp is an anti-capitalist, all-Ireland, family-friendly gathering, which features workshops and debates, direct action training, practical skill-sharing, music, art, craic and more.
We build upon a long tradition of solidarity camps, dating back to the Peace Camps of the 1970s-’80s: one that models the society we need, beyond capitalism, bringing people together to build a strong and radical climate movement on the island of Ireland.
Focus of Climate Camp 2024
This year’s camp is co-organised with frontline community campaigns resisting the extractive industries that cause so much harm to the environment in this region – the intensive animal agriculture running noxious effluent into Loch nEachach and also highly destructive gold mining proposed for the Sperrins Mountains.
The camp will act as a central meeting point of resistance-building on the island of Ireland – connecting communities north and south of the Border. We will support and work closely with local campaigns, in particular Save Lough Neagh, a coalition of environmental activists fighting to defend the lough from pollution and extractive exploitation; and Save Our Sperrins, a community campaign defending the Sperrin mountains in Co. Tyrone from industrial mining.
Lough Neagh
The ecological disaster at Ireland’s biggest lake demonstrates what happens when the economic growth of agriculture is prioritised over environmental protection. Industrial animal agriculture is the main cause not only of the pollution of Loch nEachach, but also the number one cause of greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and biodiversity collapse across Ireland. We need to support farmers while recognising we simply cannot continue with the extreme destruction of business as usual.
The ecological catastrophe at Loch nEachach, which provides more than 40% of the North’s drinking water, has been caused by a combination of intensive animal agriculture – driven by the Stormont government’s Going for Growth strategy – raw sewage, industrial sand dredging and climate change.
We have also been highlighting the bizarre colonial legacy whereby the bed and banks of the Loch are owned by the Earl of Shaftesbury, who earns royalties from the more than 1 million tonnes of sand extracted from the bed each year. Watch our recent webinar to learn more.
Sperrins Mountains
More than a quarter of all land on both sides of the Border is under prospective licences for extractive mining practices. We must resist the neocolonial governments, who maintain unsustainable economic growth, while poisoning the land and the life that depends on it.
A Canadian exploration company, Dalradian Gold, applied for planning permission for a goldmine and processing plant in the Sperrins Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Dalradian Gold was granted prospecting licences across 300,000 acres in Counties Tyrone & Derry.
Having researched goldmining in many countries of the world and learned that it pollutes water, air, land and health, Save Our Sperrins campaign group formed in June 2015 and is registered as an environmental charity with NI Charity Commission (NIC108907).
About Slí Eile
Slí Eile is the organisational group involved with the climate camp. We began in 2019, emerging loosely from the tradition of climate camps. We are building a movement on the island of Ireland to resist climate change and its driving force, capitalism. We target the powerful interests that are causing the climate crisis while profiting from the current economic system. We are organising for the transformation of our communities and the wider world into one based on equality and solidarity.
Our Aims
We believe in the power of self organised communities to create the new systems we need. We need to take urgent strategic action to resist climate and ecological destruction.
We have three aims:
- To create spaces for education, for ourselves and our wider communities
- To build a radical climate movement on the island of Ireland.
- To act to end capitalist control of people and the earth