We now move to item 9, which is the short debate, and I now call on Joyce Watson to speak on the topic she has chosen. Joyce. 

Diolch, Llywydd. I'm pleased to lead today's short debate and delighted to give time to my colleagues John Griffiths and Llyr Gruffydd. I look forward to their contributions, and, of course, to the Minister's response. Today is World Environment Day, and this year especially it feels like it comes at an important moment. We've seen the Extinction Rebellion protest and school strikes inspired by Greta Thunberg. Hundreds of young people demonstrated outside this Assembly in February as part of the global youth strike for climate movement. At the same time, people have been watching David Attenborough's new BBC series on climate change and demanding political action across Europe. Something momentous seems to be happening. The Welsh Government is at the vanguard. It has declared a climate emergency. The Minister said that she hopes the declaration will trigger a wave of action. Yesterday we saw that when the First Minister announced the M4 relief road will not go ahead because we have to give more weight to the environmental argument. John Prescott famously said:

'The green belt is a Labour achievement, and we mean to build on it.

Well, declaring a climate emergency is a great Welsh Labour policy, and today I want to build on it by talking about rewilding. 

Rewilding is a hot topic, and a controversial one. Broadly speaking, it's about restoring landscapes to their natural state, thereby creating wilder and more biodiverse habitats. It tends to grab headlines when carnivores are reintroduced, like bears and wolves. Here in Wales, the Wildlife Trusts are leading the Welsh beaver project, which is investigating the feasibility of bringing back wild beavers. Scotland has already recognised beavers as a native species, and established a management programme and legal protections. The plan for Wales, submitted to Natural Resources Wales by the Bevis Trust in 2015, is to establish 10 pairs along the River Cowyn and Nant Cennin in Carmarthenshire. So far, 50 farmers and landowners along the length of the river have signed off to support releases or to permit monitoring. But, of course, giving up more land to nature, rather than using it to grow crops or rear livestock, can be as equally contentious as reintroducing animals. 

But, according to a new report by the organisation Rewilding Britain, though, as much as a quarter of the UK’s land could be restored to nature without a consequential fall in food production or farm incomes. And the group is calling for billions of pounds in farm subsidies to be spent on creating native woodlands and meadows, and on protecting peat bogs and salt marshes. As well as helping wildlife, they claim that the plan could cut our country’s carbon emissions to zero.

Yesterday, the Minister published the Welsh Government’s policy response to its ‘Brexit and our land’ consultation, and at the heart of it is the principle that public money must support public good, not private profit. The crucial thing is to define what constitutes a public good. Rewilding Britain’s plan is to put carbon sequestration front and centre as a model of payments that values carbon sequestration in different restored ecosystems to develop long-term mitigation of climate change. In other words, that translates as managed rewilding, and not neglecting swathes of our countryside. Around half of the 12,000 respondents to 'Brexit and our land' supported the Government’s proposals for payments based on outcomes and for a greater emphasis on environmental outcomes. The other half, mostly farmers, didn’t. We need to win those over with those arguments.

In terms of the uplands, some acknowledged the risks of destocking, while others pointed out the huge potential environmental benefits. One respondent worried that, in 20 years, Wales would be, and I quote, ‘a nation of park keepers’. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, and one respondent observed that huge political will and bravery is needed to deliver a bold public goods scheme. We’ve already had a model of what that might look like in mid Wales. The Summit to Sea project will bring together one continuous nature-rich area, stretching from the Pumlumon massif—the highest area in mid Wales—down through wooded valleys to the Dyfi estuary and out into Cardigan bay. Within five years, it will comprise of at least 10,000 hectares of land and 28,400 hectares of sea. It’s a bit of a tangent, but it strikes me that the great success of the Wales coast path project was to find a way to link up all public rights of way and permissive pathways and to negotiate new access to private land. By doing so, people can now enjoy 870 uninterrupted miles of walking from Chepstow to Queensferry, if they have the stamina.

Why can’t we do something similar for wildlife? Give it freedom to roam, not isolate it in pockets. Summit to Sea, or O’r Mynydd i’r Môr, is testing how those partnerships across multiple landholding and payments for public goods would work on a large scale. Whatever the strategy, we must do something and we must do it now. Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. We are luckier than most in this country—Wales supports a large proportion of the UK population of many breeding and wintering bird species, for example, and, unlike England, we’re not killing one of our precious few native mammals en masse—badgers. However, we have witnessed dramatic declines too. The 2016 state of nature report indicates that one in 14 species in Wales are at risk of extinction and almost a third of birds here are declining significantly. Across the UK, 56 per cent of species have declined since 1970.

It’s not about the big ideas though; everyday, small changes are vital too. A few weeks ago, I met up with Pauline Hill, people and wildlife officer at the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales in Brecon, and we talked about three wildlife projects in Ystradgynlais at the hospital, the library and Penrhos allotments. The official scheme came to an end last year, but their legacy lives on in the community and through engagement, and gives environmental benefits. Throughout June, the wildlife trust is encouraging people to do something wild every day, as part of its 30 Days Wild challenge. We can all do our bit, especially in the 1.4 per cent of Wales that's defined as green urban space, parks and gardens. Those areas are vital for wildlife, not only for sustaining biodiversity, but as connectors to the 60 per cent of land that is framed, and the 35 per cent that is natural space—moors, forest, lake, grasslands, et cetera. I spent this morning on the roof of the Pierhead, visiting the bees. For example, they, in turn, feed on the wildlife-friendly areas planted in the local schools. It's the same idea behind the Welsh Government's green corridors initiative for trunk roads and motorways. But, as I said, 95 per cent of Wales is made up of farmland and natural land, so that's where we can, and we must, make the biggest difference. And if we're serious about using public money to deliver public good, rewilding is part of the big, bold and brave solution we need.

I was very pleased today to sponsor the World Environment Day event here at the Senedd, raising the importance of taking urgent action to address the ecological crisis we face, in order to restore nature in Wales. As we've heard, Welsh nature is in a fragile state. Half of Welsh wildlife is in decline, and hundreds of species are threatened with extinction. To address those biodiversity declines in Wales, we must ensure that our land and seas are managed to support nature's recovery and that nature is put at the very heart and core of Government here. Dirprwy Lywydd, providing the right policies to address this must involve rewilding, and it should be viewed as one of the conservation management tools we use to address this ecological crisis. For example, restoring peat bogs or allowing the natural regeneration of woodlands. But we must also recognise that some habitats and species, such as curlew—a ground nesting bird—favour open habitat, and so require active management through grazing. That is the balance that we must strike.

May I thank Joyce Watson for the opportunity to contribute to this debate? I listened very carefully to what she said on rewilding—is ailwylltio the correct term in Welsh? Obviously, reintroducing species is a topic that's very timely in Wales, but I do think that there's more work that needs to be done to persuade people that broader rewilding is something that people would wish to see. I know that Summit to Sea started off badly, with many people feeling that it's something that's being done to our rural communities, rather than something that is being done jointly with them, as it should be. So, I would strike that note of caution.

But what I wanted to say really was that I wanted to hear from the Minister, if truth be told, what direction, or guidance, she has now given to the public bodies under her auspices in response to the climate emergency statement, which includes the biodiversity crisis that we are facing. I mentioned yesterday to the First Minister the possibility of changing remit letters for bodies such as Natural Resources Wales, and so on, to reflect this change of tack that we're looking for from Government. Therefore, I would be very eager to hear from the Minister, in her response, if she has any comments to add to that specifically.

Thank you. Can I now call on the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs to reply to the debate? Lesley Griffiths.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I thank Joyce Watson for tabling a debate on this topic, on World Environment Day, and also to John Griffiths for sponsoring the event at lunchtime, which I was pleased to speak at?

I think Joyce made a very pertinent point when she said we are at a pivotal moment in relation to the climate change emergency. And I absolutely agree—we do have a biodiversity crisis too. As a Government, our natural resources policy is built around a commitment to increasing the resilience of Wales's ecosystems. We believe that rewilding, as a carefully managed process, does have the potential to be part of the solution. And I think Llyr referred to this when—. I think we've got to define the meaning of 'rewilding'. I think that's very important, because it can divide opinion, with some associating the concept with the widespread abandonment of land that had previously been in productive use, or the reintroduction of iconic species from the distant past into rural areas at random. So, Welsh Government, obviously, does not support a policy of abandoning land or animals in that way. However, if rewilding is to mean the positive restoration or creation of habitats to contribute to the building of resilient, ecological networks, then we believe this can help to bring a range of environmental and other benefits to the well-being of Welsh communities.

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.

Thank you very much. That brings today's proceedings to a close. Thank you.

The meeting ended at 19:30.