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.