The Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss has today (Sunday, November 27) voted in favour of holding a referendum on an amendment to the constitution to protect biodiversity.

The assembly has also advocated that the proposed amendment should include a "range of protections for substantive and procedural environmental rights" for both people and nature.

The group of 99 randomly selected members of the public, together with their chair Dr. Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, have also called for a radical overhaul of the national approach to managing biodiversity loss.

In total the Citizens’ Assembly adopted 17 key recommendations following the seventh meeting of the assembly this weekend at the Grand Hotel, Malahide, Co. Dublin. It also agreed a series of sector-specific recommendations.

The top three recommendations adopted by the assembly outlined that:

The other recommendations that were agreed reflected key areas of the assembly's discussions since April of this year.

These included, for example, the national policy and strategic approach to the biodiversity crisis, funding to address biodiversity loss, and the role of communities, non-government organisations and industry.

Overall, the assembly said the recommendations that were adopted reflect "all sectors and aspects of Irish life".

They range from recommendation 12 which highlights the role that the assembly believes the business community should play:

To recommendation 11 which deals with food policy and outlines that:

"This review must take into consideration vulnerable sections of the population and ensure reasonable standards of living, and result in a plan to address these issues".

Meanwhile, recommendation 13 underlines the assembly's position on pesticide use in Ireland:

"It should also regulate the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers, while maintaining food security. This should coincide with the improvement of schemes for the safe disposal of unused hazardous materials, as well as their containers."

Members have now agreed during the weekend to seek an extension to their ongoing work on biodiversity from the Oireachtas which they said would facilitate further discussions on sector specific recommendations.

These include agriculture; freshwaters; marine and coastal environments; peatlands; forestry/woodlands/hedgerows; protected sites and species; invasive species; and urban and built environments.

The Citizens’ Assembly wants to produce a report on its discussions and recommendations that will then be presented to the government and Houses of the Oireachtas.

Dr. Ní Shúilleabháin said their seventh meeting was unique in that it was the first citizens’ assembly on biodiversity loss to have taken place "anywhere in the world".

"We have made significant and major decisions including inserting a specific commitment to protecting biodiversity into Bunreacht na hEireann," the chair of the assembly said.

“The assembly has also endorsed new centralised structures for co-ordinating and implementing national policy on biodiversity loss to ensure that those laws and regulations to protect the environment that are already in place are properly enforced," she added.