Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 2:14 pm on 26 January 2022.
Thank you, Janet. I am absolutely committed to amending the legislation. The legislation was of course passed before we had the 200 nautical mile zone, so we are absolutely committed to doing that, and I'm sure there will be a suitable opportunity to put it into a relevant Bill at some point in this Senedd term; we absolutely want to do that. In the meantime, we're behaving as if the environment Act says the 200 mile zone, because that's obviously what we'd like it to say, and we're making sure that we take that responsibility seriously.
In undertaking a deep dive on biodiversity, I already mentioned I will of course be including marine biodiversity in that; it's a very important part of our biodiversity, as indeed is the intertidal part of Wales. So, all of the massive biodiversity in the intertidal zone is incredibly important as well. So, just to assure you, we will be looking at marine biodiversity at the same time, and that will, of course, include cetacean protection programmes and others. There's a very large amount of work to do here to ensure good conservation status both inside the marine protected zones and in the marine conservation areas, and to make sure that we have the right network right around the shore. I do absolutely assure you that I take it very seriously indeed. We are very, very aware of both the importance for biodiversity and the climate of healthy oceans, but actually, also, of course, to our tourism industry, which relies very heavily on our beautiful countryside and our beautiful coastline and seas. So, I certainly do take that very seriously. We know that we have, from the recent 'State of Natural Resources Report', some real fundamental challenges for the marine environment, including the threat of climate change, so we will be including that in the programme as we bring it forward.