Urgent action needed onWales’ environment

IF THERE was ever a policy area the Welsh Government were going to hang their hat on it is the environment.

First Minister Mark Drakeford et al never stop espousing their climate change fighting credentials. Whether it be cancelling the M4 relief road, bringing transport under the control of the climate change minister, abandoning road building or introducing a ban on single use plastics, the Welsh Government likes to shout about this.

However the latest report by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) shows they are not, at the current rate, going to hit their net zero targets. In short they are not planting enough trees, restoring enough peatland or installing enough charging stations.

Even for their much vaunted UKleading recycling – an area where Wales outperforms other UK nations – “improvements have stalled in recent years”.

A recent poll showed the Welsh public only have a net positive approval for three Welsh Government policies – Covid, culture and the environment (the last two only being 1% and 3% respectively). For them to be failing in one of their flagship areas is a cause of concern for them, us, and the planet.

This doesn’t mean that the Welsh Government faces an easy task – it really doesn’t. Just making the steel works at Port Talbot greener is a mammoth undertaking which will likely need at least £2bn of investment.

The site currently produces roughly 15% of Wales’ carbon emissions.

They also don’t just need to increase the speed of that emissions decrease, in some industries they actually need to reverse a recent increase.

The CCC report showed that emissions from agriculture in this country had actually gone up in recent years.

The need for effective action across many of Wales’ important sectors is urgent and should be accelerated if the progress required is to be achieved.

That said, such measures need to take into account what matters to communities across Wales – in the practical detail of how they live their day-to-day lives and on a wider level such as how it impacts on the economy – so any unintended consequences now and in the future are avoided. Collaboration, technology, investment and education are key.

As the new Future Generations Commissioner Derek Walker says today: “This is an urgent report calling for Welsh Government to work faster and smarter on the climate emergency.”