Solutions to our climate change crisis are grounded in nature
To mark World Environment Day today, Natural Resources Wales chair Sir David Henshaw looks at the action required to tackle the dual climate and nature emergencies, and the role Wales can play in finding sustainable solutions as we look ahead to COP15 and COP26
THE Covid-19 crisis has had an unprecedented impact on the world, brutally exposing so many of our vulnerabilities and bringing into sharp focus the fragility of life and the value we place on protecting the health and wellbeing of our loved ones.
It has also laid bare the therapeutic benefits to be derived from a simple green space or a sprawling coastline, with the temporary pause on normal life providing the opportunity for many to discover or reconnect with nature throughout.
And while crises certainly bring clarity to what matters most, a global pandemic is the last thing anyone would have wanted as the trigger to finally stimulate action to tackle and protect ourselves from the far-reaching impacts of two of the most existential, yet intrinsically linked crises of our time – the climate and nature emergencies.
Only in the past few decades, as more people have become aware of the global threat of climate change, and certainly in the wake of Covid19, have we begun to fully understand how the decisions we make and how we choose to live our lives impact on every sinew of our environment.
We know that we’ve been ravaging the planet’s ecosystems for far too long. The greenhouse gases that we have been pumping into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution have been altering nature’s precious balance at an accelerating pace.
Dramatic facts abound on the ongoing pressures on Wales’s biodiversity, the exploitation of natural resources and environmental degradation as highlighted in our State of Natural Resources Report (SoNaRR) published earlier this year.
The knock-on effects these societal issues continue to have on our climate is not an unexplained accident. It has been our own doing. Which is why committing to delivering the theme of this year’s World Environment Day – to “Reimagine, Recreate, Restore” nature – is so crucial.
It comes in a year when critical decisions by world leaders on how we tackle climate change could put cultivating a nature-rich future firmly at the heart of the urgently needed solution.
The United Nations COP15 conference on nature, to be held in China in October, will be swiftly followed by the COP26 meeting on climate, held in Glasgow in November, pushing the nature crisis into the global spotlight in the same way the climate breakdown and a green recovery have surged up the political agenda.
In the run-up to these milestone moments, Wales must lead the way, working together across organisational and political boundaries to show the difference that we can make to the nature and climate emergencies now for the sake of future generations.
While Covid-19 has certainly not discriminated between hosts, the pandemic has exposed the real cost of social inequalities, pushing us to ensure that our recovery from this most challenging of periods is as socially just as it is green.
In December last year, the Green Recovery Group that I chair presented the Welsh Government with 168 big ideas that could propel Wales’ recovery from the pandemic.
From nature-based solutions to green apprenticeships, these were ideas that could be taken forward at pace, linking the circular economy and the climate and nature emergencies with inclusive and fair economic growth.
The ministers at the helm of the new Welsh Government Ministry of Climate Change will be the catalyst to driving forward this transformational agenda and I look forward to meeting with them at the earliest opportunity to discuss how we sustain the momentum already building.
The First Minister’s commitment to ensuring the environment is a consideration in all that the Welsh Government does will also be critical if we are to reset our individual and collective values and priorities across Wales, realigning them with those required to create a more sustainable future.
Because when governments, groups and individuals commit to working together to protect our climate and reverse biodiversity decline, change can happen.
Natural Resources Wales (NRW) is committed to playing a strong role in this endeavour.
Later this year, we will kick-start a national conversation to help develop a long-term agenda for the management of natural resources in Wales.
The result will be a collective vision, which everyone in Wales can help to achieve.
We are in a unique position to lead this national conversation, to collaborate with others and to help realise a shared vision for 2050, which will focus on how current practices affecting natural resources need to change to become sustainable.
The conversation about the vision will be just as important as the final statement itself.
And we will need the support, the innovation and the dynamism of everyone in Wales to shape an environmental and economic legacy we can feel proud to hand over to the generations to come.
As with climate change, the inconsiderate cull of our natural inheritance has implications which reach well beyond our lifetimes.
But while the window of opportunity is small, we still have time to turn the tide from great acceleration to a great restoration.
This can only be achieved by working together and blending our own ambition with that of our environmental NGOs and the millions of people who want to do their bit.
Backed by bold government action, we can all choose to make a difference and work in harmony with Mother Nature to find a solution to the climate and nature emergencies, rather than against her.
■