If we were to allow the Welsh countryside to develop through natural succession, it is likely this would turn large areas of Wales into woodland, and, on the face of it, this could seem like an attractive idea, helping us to reach our woodland planting and climate change targets. However, many of our most threatened and priority habitats in Wales are not woodland and rely on management through grazing, for example, to hold them in a more open condition, to allow their characteristic plant and animal species to thrive.

In Wales, we have an extraordinary variety of habitats and species in our seas and on our land, and we have an equally extraordinary variety of local community and campaign groups who are there day in and day out to help us to properly understand, value and protect those precious natural assets. As a Government, we are committed to supporting the work of those groups by increasing the size and the coherence of our protected sites, improving monitoring and, ultimately, their condition. This morning—and I mentioned this at lunch time—I announced £11 million of new investment in nature's recovery through our enabling natural resources and well-being grant scheme. One of the projects will lead to the creation of 30 new community meadows, and the restoration of a further 22 sites, through collaborative action between the National Trust, NRW, our national parks and 25 other partners, including many community groups. I also mentioned that one of the collaborations is between the four local authorities in south-east Wales, working in partnership with other groups who, together, will test new collaborative approaches to driving down the local impacts of pollution, invasive non-native species and other key environmental pressures. These projects illustrate the type of collaborative approach built around a focus on well-being of current and future generations that I believe is needed to tackle the threats faced by our environment, at the same time as making Wales fairer and healthier. And I do hope to be able to announce further funding for successful projects in the coming weeks.

In the last two years, we've also provided £20 million on 44 landscape-scale projects across Wales through our sustainable management scheme, with a further £3 million available through the next funding round. That's currently open to applications. There will be important lessons to learn from this activity, which should help us to determine if and where rewilding can be a suitable method of achieving our environmental ambitions. In particular, the Cambrian Wildwood project, funded through our SMS, has applied rewilding principles as a core element of their approach.

I'd also like to make mention of Wales's farmers, who I believe have a central role to play in helping to achieve our environmental ambitions, and I've been inspired by the level of the ambition and commitment many of our farmers show. Welsh Government is committed to developing policies—and Joyce referred to the statement I made here yesterday—that properly reward farmers for the positive environmental outcomes they produce alongside high-quality food. Our first principle that guides the development of our policy is that we must keep farmers, foresters and other active land managers on the land. That is to protect the interest of our rural communities and to ensure that we do not lose the unique and irreplaceable local knowledge, skills and dedication that exist in those communities, and, in this sense, our policy must avoid retrenchment from or abandonment of our rural areas.

Llyr referred to what further action we were taking in relation to the climate change emergency and, obviously, the biodiversity crisis. This morning—and Joyce mentioned it in her opening remarks about the climate change strikes with young people—I met a group of young people along with the children's commissioner and the future generations commissioner, and it was inspirational. Some of them were little ones from primary school, others were older, and we heard what they expect us to do over the coming years, and we're working a plan out as to how we can ensure that our policies and proposals—. And they're not going to let me off the hook. They want to know when they can meet me again, when they can write to me to make sure that the polices, particularly in the low-carbon delivery plan—the 100 policies and proposals that we brought forward in March—how we're going to implement them, and whether we are going to change them in light of the declaration of the climate change emergency.

So, in conclusion, Deputy Presiding Officer, we must take every opportunity to bring new vitality to those communities, and I believe the ideas put forward by Joyce and John and Llyr to today's debate have great potential to do that. Diolch.