The road to a thriving healthy natural environment

Fersiwn Gymraeg ar gael yma

Over the next few weeks, the RSPB Cymru Policy Team will be attending Welsh political party conferences and the message we are taking is a very simple one. We need to act now if we are to save nature in Wales.

Ours is a country full of stunning and diverse land and seascapes and it’s hard to imagine that our nature is in trouble - but it is! In our lifetimes, almost half our farmland birds, mammals, amphibians, insects and invertebrates have disappeared, along with more than 90% of enclosed flower-rich grasslands. Our seabird populations, already under pressure, are also now under threat from Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (Bird Flu). Today Wales is now one of the most nature depleted countries in the World. This can all change, we want to see a Nature Positive future and the people of Wales share this vision.

In terms of political action the Senedd in Wales has declared a Nature Emergency, and in December 2022 the Welsh Government gave its support to a new landmark agreement for nature, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). This framework sets out a globally agreed plan to halt and reverse the loss of nature by 2030, and to recover the abundance and diversity of life by 2050.  This aligns with the international campaign for a global ‘nature positive’ goal which the Welsh Government has also endorsed.

One thing is very clear, if we are going to achieve these goals we must urgently turn these commitments into actions so that by 2030, we have more nature than we have now, putting us on the road a thriving healthy natural environment. This is where talking to Welsh politicians is important as many of the decisions about when and how we do this rests with the Welsh Government and wider Senedd Members (MSs) across all political parties in Wales. These are the key areas we will be advocating for urgent action for Welsh nature:

1. The Welsh Government should urgently bring forward an Environmental Governance Bill for Wales that will set legally binding nature recovery targets and establish an independent environmental watchdog. We believe targets are vital for driving positive action for nature in the same way the Net Zero target is helping all of us tackle climate change.
   
   
2. Members of the Senedd must ensure that Wales’s new Agriculture Bill and Sustainable Farming Scheme maximises the potential benefits for nature. Farming occupies almost 90% of Wales’s land and therefore how we farm has a huge impact on the state of nature. It is vital we take this opportunity to develop new ways of using public money to help our farmers restore nature, tackle climate change and produce food sustainably.
   
   
3. Wales has internationally important seabird populations, which are coming under increasing pressure, therefore it’s essential the Welsh Government develops and implements a Seabird Conservation Strategy that protects important breeding and feeding areas. Wales should also develop a spatially explicit Marine Development Plan to ensure marine development (such as offshore renewable energy) is appropriately located and doesn’t harm life in our seas.

We need to ensure a positive future for nature in Wales where species can thrive as part of a secure a healthy natural environment. To achieve this there are some big decisions that urgently need to be made to ensure we have more nature at the end of the decade than we started with, putting us on an upward path to a nature positive future by 2050.