The Natural Environment

Domain Overview: The natural environment has a role to play to ensure sustainable supply of natural goods like food, water, minerals, raw materials, and to maintain critical ecosystem services that provide benefits for human welfare.

The 4 measures in the Natural Environment domain are:

  • Total green house gas emissions (millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent)
  • Protected areas in the UK (million hectares)
  • Energy consumed within the UK from renewable sources – No NI Data Available  (electricity generation from renewable generation for NI and UK presented below)
  • Waste from households that is recycled

Natural Envirnoment Charts

Latest findings

  • In 2016, Northern Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions were estimated to be 20.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, (UK overall: 467.9 million tonnes).  In Northern Ireland, the longer term trend shows a decrease of 15.9% compared to the base year (the base year is 1990 for carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, and 1995 for the fluorinated gases).
  • In terms of greenhouse gas emissions per capita, this equates to 11.0 tonnes per capita in Northern Ireland compared with 7.1 tonnes per capita in the UK overall.
  • In 2018, Northern Ireland’s protected areas were estimated to be 0.63 million hectares (UK overall: 27.4 million hectares in 2017), including both on land and at sea.  In Northern Ireland the protected areas on land represent 28.4% of the country, whilst 33.7% of Northern Ireland water is designated as protected.
  • Almost 9 percent of energy consumed within the UK in 2014 was from renewable sources (8.9%). No comparable figure is available for Northern Ireland.  However, looking at the percentage of total electricity generation accounted for by renewable generation, in 2016, this was 25.3% in Northern Ireland, compared with 24.5% in the UK as a whole.
  • In 2016, just over two-fifths of waste from NI households was recycled (43.0%), this is slightly lower than the position in the UK overall (44.6%).
  • A range of NI environmental statistics is available on the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs website.

Do you want to know more? – Office for National Statistics Wellbeing.

10 National Wellbeing Domains

Personal wellbeing          Our relationships           Health           What we do

             Where we live          Personal finance          The economy

Education and skills          Governance          The natural environment

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