We now move on.

The short debate.

I move to today's short debate, and I call on Delyth Jewell to speak on the topic she has chosen. Delyth Jewell.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Climate change is the single most pressing crisis facing our civilisation and our planet. That is an inescapable fact, and so too are the impacts of climate change that are already taking a damaging toll on the mental health of people everywhere, from heat waves that are increasing suicide rates to floods and wildfires that traumatise the people affected, leaving stress, anxiety and depression in their wake. But an issue I’d like to focus this short debate on is the consequence of how we frame climate change and the ecological crisis, how we talk about it, particularly with children and young people, and the ways in which focusing on devastation alone can lead to despair.

In 2019, I visited a young people's after-school club in Monmouthshire, and as we were talking about different political issues, one very young child said that every time he saw reports about climate change on the news, it made him feel scared. And the others were nodding in agreement—lots of them had felt this same fear. So, we talked about the things that we can do to cope with anxiety, to share our feelings, and we also talked about some of the practical things we can do to tackle climate change—they’d already been working on a project to do with recycling.

But that conversation had a big impact on me, because I think we’ve all become so used to the kind of shocking images that tend to accompany these reports: the upwardly spiralling graphs, facts and figures that flash on the screen, images of drowned villages, devastated crops, animals dying. Now, I would not for a moment wish us to downplay the severity of the crisis that faces us, but rather, I’d argue we should reframe the way we talk about climate change, to focus on giving people a sense of agency in responding to the emergency. Because if we empower people, if we give them tools to be active in the fight against the climate and ecological crises, to contribute to activities at a local level, to enable democratic participation in environmental decision making, and yes, if we ensure children and young people are given a comprehensive education on climate change, we can mitigate the risks I’m setting out.

Why? Well, herein the crux of my argument, the paradox that sits at the centre of this debate: if we don’t take this action, people can be become so worried that they’re less likely to do something about it. That is, if we think of climate change in ways that are overwhelming, we will allow it to overwhelm us. People will either become desensitised to the devastation that they'll put it out of their minds, or they will be left so paralysed by anxiety that they will believe nothing can be done to halt it. Hopelessness can lead to hesitancy, and so a feeling of disempowerment could lead to our worst nightmares being realised.

Now, climate or eco anxiety isn’t yet a clinical diagnosis, but it is a recognised term that’s used to talk about negative emotions associated with the perception of climate change. This can manifest itself through panic attacks, insomnia and obsessive thinking. It can exacerbate other anxiety disorders and depression. But research is scarce and is deeply needed into this area, because it most keenly affects young people—the generation who will bear the brunt of this crisis. And, for many, it is like a kind of grief.

So, what can be done now by the Welsh Government to address this? I’d like to see action in a few areas. Firstly, I would like to see funding and support for programmes that focus on direct and collective action against climate change, because acting proactively allows people to become agents of change and to lessen the emotional toll and the sense of powerlessness. It can help people to achieve tangible changes in their own communities, from tree planting to litter picks, and from cleaning rivers to the provision of community assets like green spaces that can be managed and used for allotments and food share schemes. These types of projects reap benefits for the community and for the environment. But studies also show that collective action on climate change reduces feelings of loneliness; it allows people to share the burden, it propels people into a sense of solidarity, of unity, of hope.

We should be involving people in decision making about the environment through participatory budgeting and citizens’ assemblies, which allow people a stake and an insight into what’s being done, but I would also like to see changes in the curriculum. In the last Senedd, my colleague Llyr Gruffydd put forward amendments to the curriculum Bill, which he worked on with the Teach the Future campaign. They sought to see robust climate change education in the new curriculum, and not just in science and maths, but the social sciences, citizenship, performing arts, literature, languages, health and well-being. 

Now, I want to continue pushing for these changes, and there are really exciting projects already under way to try to begin to grapple with this reframing that I’ve mentioned—projects like Cynnal Cymru, which has partnered with the Carbon Literacy Project, and they seek to try and face the challenges of the seemingly overwhelming topic. Their trainer, Rhodri Thomas, has written about this as a learning methodology that allows people to engage with the huge, complex and frightening reality of climate change, and break the challenge down into manageable personal and organisational responses. It teaches, he said, an awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and, crucially, the ability to reduce emissions on an individual, community and organisational basis.

Moreover, the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, I know, shares my passion for this area, and her manifesto in May put forward ideas for involving young people in the Government’s environmental decision-making process through citizens panels and an eco schools scheme that involves local businesses collaborating with classroom learning. Her office has also published activism resources that allow schoolchildren to mobilise their own campaigns for change.

The overarching need, Dirprwy Lywydd, is for us to empower children and young people, as well as the general population to, yes, comprehend the scale of the problem, but to learn about it and to conceptualise of it in a way that focuses on what we can do—to couple talking about the effects of climate change with the concrete actions they and others can employ to address both climate change and nature decline. If we are serious about achieving a green recovery in Wales, we have to start acting collectively and positively to ensure that everyone can play their part, that everyone has a stake in what we are doing that is tangible, that instead of anxiety, there is agency.

Minister, I want to use the platform that I have as my party’s spokesperson on climate change to push for these changes, to find ways of empowering young people and those of all ages in the fight against climate change, and to argue for greater support for teachers and students in how to recognise and to deal with climate anxiety, because this challenge is the greatest challenge we will ever face.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I began this speech by talking about what is inescapable. What is vital for us to do is to ensure that children and young people don't believe that the situation is insurmountable. I hope that this debate can begin conversations, that we can help this new ministry to focus on involving citizens in what the Government does to tackle climate change because, collectively, we can make a difference. I look forward to hearing other people's contributions to this debate. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Diolch. Heledd Fychan.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you, Delyth, for raising this hugely important issue.

In 2020, I witnessed first-hand the devastating impact of climate change and flooding on my own community of Pontypridd. One reason I have campaigned so passionately for an independent inquiry into the floods is because no statutory report looks into the impact on health and well-being. I'd like to use the remaining time to share with you the words of one of the victims of the floods, which encapsulate why this is an issue we must address, and ensure greater support for at-risk communities:

'I honestly feel like this experience has pushed me to the brink. It’s been one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced and still affects me every day in some way...thinking back to it all I've cried. I had 6 weeks off work with stress, I can’t sleep or relax when it’s raining badly. I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same again, I’ve spoken to many neighbours who all agree it’s like we have PTSD. The mental and emotional stress of the whole situation has absolutely shocked me, I’ve always regarded myself as a very strong person but this almost broke me.... They need to protect us before they take more of us and more from us than they already have, we can’t survive another instance like this.'

I think one important thing to mention when we talk about mental health and the climate emergency—and, of course, I’m very grateful to Delyth for bringing this short debate forward—is, of course, job security. Tackling climate change has to be a priority, and that, for me, is where the idea of a just transition comes in. It means moving our economy to a more sustainable one, in a way that's fair for all workers, no matter what industry they work in. Many people's livelihoods and wider communities are tied to the polluting industries like steel, oil, and factories more generally, and some of these industries are going to have to drastically change—some shrink and others potentially disappear entirely—which will ultimately change the lives of workers and their communities for generations to come. And let's remember, of course, that we've seen the impact of an unjust transition through the closure of the pits by Thatcher, for example, the effects of which we're still dealing with today. So, one thing I think will go a long way is the establishment of a just transition commission, similar to Scotland, to oversee the changes the Government make with regard to the shift to net zero, to ensure no-one is left behind, no matter what industry they work in. I'd hope the Government would agree with me on this.

Thank you. I call on the Minister for Climate Change to reply to the debate—Julie James.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I’d like to thank Delyth Jewell for highlighting such an important issue so early on in the Senedd term. I'm obviously really delighted; it's the first time I've spoken in this Senedd, and certainly the first time I've spoken as the new Minister for Climate Change, and I’d certainly like to thank her for giving us this early opportunity to have a decent first stab at what will be, I'm sure, a recurring theme all the way through this Senedd.

I actually had the real privilege of speaking at a youth ocean and climate summit yesterday. It was really nice to listen to the young people there. They did report all of the things that people have highlighted in their contributions today: a feeling of almost despair and the enormity of the task and so on. But what was really refreshing in the group of young people—they were all between 16 and 30; most of them were in the 16 end of the category, a few a little older—was their real sense of hope and ability as long as they're given the tools to do the job and they are listened to by the Governments that hold the levers of power. It was a real privilege to speak to them and to understand the dichotomy, I suppose, between those two senses of, 'It's overwhelming, it's too big for me', but also, 'Actually, I can make a real difference in my small way in my community and in a bigger way in my nation', and so on. So, that was really great.

The biggest thing they said to us was that they wanted decision makers to listen to them, and so I'm really pleased to say that one of the first things we are doing here in Wales is listening, with a determination to act. So, the First Minister has been really clear that our focus now must be on recovery from the pandemic, but also recovery from the devastation of climate change, building a stronger, greener and fairer Wales—a Wales where no-one is held back and no-one is left behind. We're absolutely committed to that vision and nowhere more so than tackling the situation with both climate change and mental health in Wales.

So, mental health, in the new Government, is now being championed by my colleague and friend Lynne Neagle, who I can see is listening carefully to the debate as well. Her responsibilities are also holistic, so they unite service provision across mental health issues, alongside looking at contributory factors such as problem gambling, substance misuse, the experiences of armed forces veterans and homelessness and so on. And that holistic approach shows the importance that we place on the mental well-being of people in Wales. Already Lynne and I have had an opportunity to work together on some of those issues and you'll all know that Lynne championed those issues in the fifth Senedd, where she so ably chaired the committee looking at this. So, I'm delighted to have the opportunity to work with her on a range of these issues as well. We have invested a further £42 million in mental health services this year, expanding support for anxiety and depression through more online and telephone-based support as well.

So, there are lots of factors affecting mental health inside my new portfolio. There are also lots of factors that will allow us to alleviate some of the concerns that people have. I'm not going to be able to cover them all in my contribution today, but I look forward to exploring them with all of you in greater depth as we take this forward. Many of you who I can see participating in the debate will be familiar with the conversations we've had in the housing sphere around homelessness, the need for an adequate home, the need to build place and community in order to enhance people's well-being and their sense of engaged connectiveness across Wales. That's certainly something we want to do. We also, of course, want to enable people to contribute to the greatest problem we have faced—even in the pandemic it was the greatest problem we have faced—which is reversing the climate destruction of our planet and enhancing its biodiversity.

So, I absolutely want to reassure everyone in Wales that we understand all of those things; we do get where they are coming from. It's where we are coming from, and it's why I am doing this job, in fact, and the jobs I did before I was privileged enough to be elected. So, we're very keen to support the many activities that provide opportunities for young people in particular to contribute to tackling climate change and a space to have their voices heard. We are grant funding environment education programmes—Eco-Schools, the Size of Wales, just as some small examples—to continue to work with children and young people to encourage discussion and validation of feelings and anxieties linked to the environmental concerns, as well as the necessary courses of action that they can take to make themselves engaged and feel that they are doing something to contribute to the size of the problem that faces us. Let's be clear: we have a big task ahead of us—an achievable task if we all pull together to do it, but a big task. So, just as a small indication of the size of the task, for decarbonisation alone—that's leaving aside the biodiversity and all the other issues—we must do in the next 10 years what we did in the last 30 to get to our next target. So, it's a big ask. We can do it, but it's a big ask. And we must take the people of Wales with us as we do that. So, we're absolutely committed to listening and supporting everyone's fears and anxieties, but also their contributions to how to do that—how can they make the small changes, big changes in their lives that will actually enhance their lives and that look like, perhaps, downsides at first, but actually they will end up enhancing their lives?

So, one of the things that I really want to highlight for people is the behaviour change that we all experienced during the pandemic. Some of it was dreadful and it had terrible effects on people, but there were definitely good things, too. The way we tackled homelessness in Wales during the pandemic is a matter of great pride to everyone in the sector and all of us here in the Senedd who helped. But, for example, we saw children playing back on our streets—you know, the air got cleaner, people weren't out in their cars, and they got a sense of their community and space. We also saw some of the social injustices where people didn't have some of those amenities, and it accelerates our determination to make sure that they do have them. 

But we have it demonstrated in front of us that active travel, the ability to use our streets as more than just a place to put your car, really does improve physical and mental health. Increasing woodlands, biodiversity and access to the natural environment absolutely has a beneficial effect on mental health, and if you feel that you are able to improve your natural environment, it has an even greater effect on increasing mental health.

One of the things I'm just going to sneak in as a personal experience here is: some of you will know that I had breast cancer early on in my political career, and I went to the Maggie's centre in Swansea quite a lot; it was really helpful there. What they have, of course, is a garden woodland outside them, and you are able to work on that garden and woodland and enhance it, and it really does make you feel better; there's absolutely no doubt about it. Even facing some big personal challenges it can make you feel better. It also helps men to talk to each other when they're doing gardening as well, which I thought was an added benefit; the Men's Sheds movement was part of that. So, all of these things really do make a difference.

We will have multiple benefits from those things as well. It improves people's mental health and well-being, but also, getting people out of cars for short journeys, travelling in a way which improves their health, is ambitious. We've all had a love affair with the car over the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries, but we all know that it produces multiple benefits—cleaner air, less congested roads, improved mental well-being, busier local shops. So, our ambitious agenda to make sure that we have 30 per cent of people working remotely—and that doesn't mean just from home; that means in their local communities, in hubs and so on—will really help a whole series of agendas there.

We've seen projects delivering sustainable models for health and well-being. There are walking groups, for example in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority's west Wales Let's Walk initiative. I know some of you have been involved in that and are participating in the debate. There's work with GP practices and other community settings across Wales, making sure that the medical practice has—I'm reluctant to use the term 'social prescribing', but is engaged with making people connected to their local communities and access to the countryside as part of the well-being initiative. The Outdoor Partnership's Opening Doors to the Outdoors project, for example, brings together health professionals with outdoor activities experts to increase physical activity levels, improve mental and physical health, linking local community clubs with mental health teams, enabling patients to lead independent, long-term active lifestyles because of their greater connection to their community and the natural world that surrounds them. 

We have to have a truly green and blue recovery. We've got to enhance our biodiversity, underpin our economy, improve our environment and aid our health and well-being. Heledd, I think, mentioned the flooding most. We're very well aware of those kinds of climate problems that we have coming ahead of us. What we've got to do is make ourselves more resilient to that. We have to make our lifestyles more resilient. We have to make sure that our climate doesn't get any worse, and we have to make sure that we have all the strategies in place to ensure that people are safe and well in their own homes and can take advantage of that. I don't think that it would be a good thing for me to pretend, talking to you now, that we are unlikely to have a dramatic flood over the next winter here in Wales. Sadly, I think there is every likelihood that we will. We've come out of the last 14 months or so with the wettest February last year, and the hottest May; this year the coldest February and the wettest May. The climate has had a profound effect on the way we live our lives just in the last 14 months, never mind over the rest of the world. 

During the youth climate summit yesterday, one of the contributors called the small island nations who are most affected by climate change globally—they don't like being called that, apparently, we were told last night; they like to be called 'big ocean countries' not 'small island countries'. I thought that was a lovely way of thinking about it, because it makes you really realise the extreme importance of the ocean to communities right across the world, and Wales, of course, is no exception to that. So, looking again at our marine conservation zones, the way that we help our small sustainable fisheries, our inshore fisheries and so on, is an excellent way of encouraging people to take part in enhancing our biodiversity and our decarbonisation goals. 

I think I've done a little bit of a canter through all of the issues. What we want to do, in short, is safeguard our environment, build a green economy, provide sustainable homes, and create the well-being of future generations place-making communities that enhance our mental health and well-being, but also our community cohesion—our sense of ourselves and our country and our nation. And we can absolutely do that.

The First Minister, in setting up this new portfolio, has asked me to put the environment, biodiversity loss and climate change at the heart of everything we do as a Government—not just my own portfolio. By bringing together responsibilities for housing, transport, planning, energy and the environment, we can tackle the dangers of climate change and enhance our natural assets to the full, we can build the green, sustainable future for Wales we all hope to see. But we can't do that alone as a Government; we must take the people of Wales with us, we must take all of you with us, we must take as many people as possible with us, and take our businesses, our corporations and our global responsibility really very seriously.

I'm going to go back and indulge myself for the last two minutes of my contribution by saying that you will all know as well that I have long talked about enhancing, protecting and creating woodlands as one of my big drivers—making sustainable homes out of Welsh timber, making sure the supply chains are sustainable, that our farmers and agricultural industries can contribute to them, and in doing so, enhance the biodiversity and the natural beauty of Wales. So, we will have a national forest programme, to create the network of woodlands running the entire length of the country, but we will also be creating a sustainable timber industry to go alongside that.

My colleague Lee Waters is listening in to this debate as well. He will be taking a lead in looking immediately at what we need to do to remove the barriers to being able to achieve some of those ambitions, and bringing back to the floor of the Senedd what we will want to ask all of you to participate in, to make those things a reality. Some of you will know some of the barriers on the ground already. So, we will be looking to work across party lines, with all of you, to make sure that we are able to remove those barriers and build the woodlands in Wales that we want, and I know that you all want them as well.

We'll be able to protect our network of areas of outstanding natural beauty, sites of special scientific interest, protected nature sites, special areas of conservation rivers, and all those sorts of things. But I want to go further than that. We want to put restoration programmes in place. We want to restore our river valleys. We want to make sure that projects like the Pumlumon project, up above Machynlleth, which some of you I'm sure will be familiar with—restoring the sphagnum moss bogs at the top of the River Severn to help us prevent the terrible flooding that we've seen in our rivers, so that we get good river catchment restoration all the way through Wales.

There's an enormous amount to do to improve our environment, protect our endangered species, and provide spaces for emotional enrichment as we do it. There is nothing better for your mental health than knowing that you have made a substantial difference personally and in your community to the surroundings that you have, and that you've been able to be involved and engaged in that way. So, I can assure you, Delyth, that we're really grateful for you to have brought this to our attention, given us the opportunity to debate it, and to start the conversation, because that's all we're able to do tonight. I hope you can see that we're very engaged in it already, that Lynne and I, in particular, will be looking forward to working with you, and across party lines, on making sure that these agendas work for us all. We're a little nation, we have a long-standing and proud commitment of leadership in this field, both at home and on an international stage. So, we're really proud to take that forward.

One last thing I want to mention is our Uganda tree project. One of the things that we've been really successful in doing is planting more than 1 million trees out in Uganda. It's been a particularly successful project. One of the ways we did it was that we just asked everybody to plant a tree, and then we made sure that they could get hold of the right native trees to do that. So, interesting ideas such as that, which have worked elsewhere—would they work for us? Those kinds of things—that's what we want to look at, really small steps: what we need to do to enhance our tree nurseries; what we need to do to make our jobs sustainable as a result of that; what we need to do to make Wales the nation we want it to be.

I'm delighted to be able to at least start that conversation, Delyth, and I am very grateful to you for bringing it forward at such an early stage in the sixth Senedd. Diolch yn fawr.

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

The meeting ended at 18:29.