Diolch, Lywydd. Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for the tone and the positivism in her quite comprehensive response there? But could I also compliment all of the speakers today, many of them, and those who sought this debate, not least of all, Simon Thomas, who referred to how we’re in the anthropocene era? But he had a positivity about his contribution, which said that if we choose to make a difference, we can make a difference. That was the theme that came through from many of the speakers.

Sian Gwenllian touched on an issue that was repeated by Joyce Watson—this issue of how we explain this to the next generation unless we steward this properly, unless we reverse the declines in biodiversity and unless we repair the damage to our ecosystem services as described in the state of nature report.

Vikki Howells rightly focused on the marine environment and the work that can be done there, because, very often, we look at the great blue yonder, and it is the great blue yonder. People do not look at the health and the well-being of that area in the way that we do in terms of the terrestrial natural environment.

Angela Burns reminded us of the global imperative on a day when we actually see that slightly imperilled, slightly, with the selection by the largest and greatest nations in the world of somebody who is a climate change denier. We have to work doubly hard now to actually keep the global impetus on actually delivering on biodiversity, climate change and so on.

We also had many champions here of the natural environment today—all of them are champions—John Griffiths, the water vole champion; Julie Morgan, the waxcap fungi; and Mark Isherwood, the curlew. We had Rhun ap Iorwerth saying how chuffed, indeed, he was to be here. [Laughter.] And Mark Reckless, Chair of the CCERA committee, quite rightly—I’m not sure what he’s championing, but he did champion the need for independent monitoring and evaluation of the Welsh Government’s progress on all of these issues.

Now, I’m proud to be the lapwing champion here in the National Assembly, and that question of where have all the lapwings gone is an excellent distillation of all the grand themes in this debate, noting the decline and fall of the once great empire of marine and terrestrial life, of plants and birds and butterflies, the declines of species and habitats, and the tragic loss of biodiversity. In years gone by, black and white lapwings could be seen in flight all year round all over Wales. They were as abundant as the wildflower meadows that sustained them. Now, they are rare and special. The lapwing is our modern equivalent of the miners’ canary. Their slow demise is showing us that nature is in trouble. For their sake, and for ours, we need to take action.

Now, for the lapwing, the solutions are in farming and landscape management, and we need to address this in our policies for agriculture, rural development and, not least, in this post-Brexit landscape. We need viable farming, viable rural communities, viable species and habitats, too. We need to rethink our approach to get the very best of all worlds, whilst restoring the best of this world, of which we are stewards not masters. Regardless of Brexit, we should be looking at a brave new world, and in this brave new world there should be no conflict between maintaining our ability to grow food and looking after the land and nature on which it depends. The first is utterly dependent on the second. So, let’s take this opportunity to work towards intelligent and sustainable farming, landscape and environmental management, where we, the citizens, invest in farming, not simply for food and the vitality of rural communities but by using public funds to generate tangible public goods, such as clean water, pollution prevention, maintaining healthy soil, caring for nature, climate mitigation and adaptation, including recreating natural flood defences, such as floodplains with wet grassland and wet woodland.