3. How is the Welsh Government working with local authorities to tackle the climate and nature emergency? OQ58051

Thank you very much, Carolyn Thomas. We are working very closely with local authorities to tackle the climate and nature emergencies, together with our partnership council, the local government climate change strategy group and the local nature partnership network. Our funding to the Welsh Local Government Association, and through Local Places for Nature, supports our work.

Thank you for the answer, Minister. The Welsh local government elections have shown that there is a clear mandate across Wales for progressive policies to tackle the big issues our society faces, and perhaps the biggest threat is posed by climate change. Minister, how do you plan to ensure that the climate and nature emergency is high on the Cabinet agenda of the new Welsh authorities, as high as it is here in the Senedd and with Welsh Government? I've been really impressed at how much it's talked about here in the Chamber since becoming elected. I know that they are also facing pressures in delivering front-line services as well, so very often they're hitting the ground running all the time to deal with those issues. How can we make sure that it's high up on the agenda as well as tackling those really important front-line services? Thank you.

It's a very good point, isn't it, because we all recognise the challenge of balancing the day-to-day daily grind, if you want to put it like that, with a focus on critical and strategic work that's needed to respond to the climate and nature emergencies. I think I said yesterday in one of my statements that my colleague Rebecca Evans and I will be working with the new leadership teams in local government to work with the newly formed cabinets, the individual cabinet members, to make sure that there is no slacking off of the agenda. Prior to the local government elections, we had really good buy-in across all local authorities on this piece, and I don't anticipate any different result from the outcome now. We had some really interesting conversations with leaders who were leaders before the election, and continue to be leaders now, about structuring their cabinet in a way that has resource efficiency and climate emergency as a very serious part of their Cabinet portfolio work, and I hope to see at least some of those portfolio positions coming through. It's all about making sure that it stays at that strategic leadership level and doesn't slide down the organisation and lose focus.

So, I'm really clear that the political will is there. We'll do some central co-ordination as we always do with the WLGA and through the partnership council to keep this, and it's a standing item on the partnership council agenda, and continues to be. And we've allocated £1.49 million for WLGA to deliver the support programme to help authorities do a once-for-Wales approach with a lot of this. Can I just say, while I'm at it, that the work you've been doing on the verges and No Mow May and so on has been really helpful? I had a really interesting meeting yesterday in Torfaen with a No Mow May piece of amenity ground funded by a Local Places for Nature that's been building on some of the work you've done, which we're hoping to build on very much as we go forward.

Minister, I certainly welcome your continued commitment to work closely with local authorities, particularly in this area of climate and nature emergency. As previously stated, I believe local authorities can play a crucial part in supporting and delivering the ambition for a greener and stronger economy here in Wales, and a prime example of this in my part of the Wales, in north Wales, has been the work of the Mersey Dee Alliance, and with local authorities there, working with local authorities across the border in England and other organisations, to look at delivering thousands of green jobs, such as the work around the hydrogen infrastructure, which will make a huge difference to the economy more broadly. So, in light of that, I wonder if you could outline how you see further opportunities for local authorities to play their part in supporting delivering a stronger economy, such as those green jobs that the Mersey Dee Alliance are looking to deliver, which will of course help to tackle the climate and nature emergency. Thank you.

Yes, absolutely, Sam, and that hits the nail on the head, doesn't it, really? Because this is about the climate and nature emergencies, but it's also about changing the mindset to see that as an opportunity, an economic opportunity, a tourism opportunity and a whole series of services opportunities, as opposed to a barrier to that kind of thing. I think we've worked really hard to do that with our local authorities across Wales, and with the North Wales Economic Ambition Board and its various iterations. I know you played a pivotal part in much of that in your previous role too. So, we continue to work very hard with our local authority partnerships and regions to do some of this work. And then just to give one small example of how these things snowball, I'm very pleased that Wales retains its third-in-the-world on recycling, and we're about to roll that out to businesses in Wales. We've got a lot of positive consultation back from businesses whose mindsets have really changed over the last five years or so; their customers want them to be better in this space, with the whole global view of packaging that's completely changed in the last five years.

But off the back of the recycled material that we're now able to provide in Wales to re-processors, we are getting re-processor requests to come here to Wales and put new plants in Wales for recycled material that we don't even have yet. So, they're saying, 'If you collected this particular material, separately as well, then we could use it in Wales to create jobs and economic opportunities', particularly in places like the Mersey Dee Alliance, because of the wealth of material that would be got from a collection regime there. So, it's just one example, and there are many others, of the snowballing effect economically of doing the right thing for both the climate and nature emergencies, and I really look forward to working with local authorities to identify a lot more.