Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 6 October 2021.
Again, Delyth, I'm going to resist, I'm afraid, the clarion call that you are offering me, but I do understand it, of course. What we want to do is we want to make sure that—. We've declared the nature emergency; we all agree with what you're saying about biodiversity loss and the need to protect our landscapes, of course we do. What we want to do is make sure that we have the measures in place to protect and enhance those landscapes. Of course we will set targets—that's how you hold our feet to the fire—but the targets themselves don't do anything, they just measure whether we succeed or fail. What we need is the action plans in place to make sure that we actually do the work, and I want to do that together with Members of the Senedd and the committees and with external scientific advisers. We're assembling a sort of TAG team, technical advisory group, that will help us do that and with the many groups of amateur experts across the country who have worked so very hard in their particular spheres, to understand and know what needs to be done in their particular landscapes. So, I'm not going to rush it; we will put the targets in place for our feet to be held to that fire, but much more importantly, we will work very hard on making sure we have the right set of action plans across Wales to put in place that protection and enhancement that we need, and that's not something we can do quickly. I want to make sure that those plans are correct, that they don't have unintended consequences, and that we protect all of the right landscapes in the right places. So, that's not a quick fix, but it is a fix, and I absolutely understand the need to put targets in place once we've agreed those actions, to make sure that we then do what we say.