5. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Nature, biodiversity and local places for nature

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:39 pm on 12 October 2021.

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Photo of Alun Davies Alun Davies Labour 4:39, 12 October 2021

I'm grateful to you, Minister, for the statement this afternoon. I think it contains a lot of things that we have the right to look forward to. Also, I'm very grateful and pleased to hear your answer to Delyth Jewell earlier in this session, where you outlined the process by which you will be looking towards developing targets; I think that's absolutely essential in terms of driving forward this programme. But there are two things I would like to raise with you this afternoon: first of all, my concern that there is a certain lack of coherence in many of the schemes and projects and programmes that the Welsh Government is producing. There are a lot of good things happening, and there are a lot of good schemes being announced, but I worry that there isn't the coherence between schemes that actually means that they are actually meeting the ambitions that they could be meeting.

The second thing is that of designations. The Welsh Government reviewed the whole principle of designations some years ago; I felt that the report was quite a disappointing report. And we know that designations by themselves do not lead to the protection of biodiversity, or certainly have a very mixed record in doing so. Is it not time for us to review again the designations that we use to protect land, nature and landscapes in Wales, to have the sort of coherence of designations that can actually prevent biodiversity loss and restore habitats? Because, at the moment, the one thing we can be clear about is that the range of legal tools available to us are not delivering in terms of biodiversity loss across the country.