6. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Biodiversity

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:58 pm on 4 October 2022.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:58, 4 October 2022

Thank you, Janet. So, on the 30x30 and the targets put in law, I’ve said endlessly in this Chamber, and I’ll repeat it again: we expect COP15, which is now being held in December in Canada, and which I very much hope to attend, to set global targets. It’s extremely important that our targets meet those targets and exceed them. So, I’ve said all the way through, we absolutely intend to put the targets in law. Part of the work of the group going forward—. So, we’ve got the first lot of recommendations from the deep-dive group. They will now form an action team that will take it forward. They’re very keen to work with us and continue to do so. I cannot express my gratitude enough for the long, long hours people have put in for no reward other than having done the right thing. Having worked with us, they’re going to continue on. They’ve all agreed to continue on working with us—that includes active farmer associations and so on—to make sure that we have an action plan in place now to get the very specific targets.

So, I agree with you, Janet, but you can’t write down the targets any more than l can. The problem is, it’s all very well to say you want the targets in law, but I don’t know what they are. So, 30x30, sure, we can do that. But, if I wanted to, I could tell you that 30 per cent of the land in Wales is protected already—job done. But you know and I know that that’s not what’s needed. So, what we need are very specific actions, which the expert group will help us work up. We have the wider round-table and stakeholder groups feeding into that, and we will get targets that are meaningful, that hold our feet to the fire, and are indeed in law. But, I need to know what those targets should be. It's no point in me wanting them now when we haven't got them developed, and I also need to know what COP15 will do. I've been consistent in saying that all the way through, so we will follow that through. We will put a Bill through in this Senedd term that puts those into law, but I need to be able to do that in the light of the global arrangements for this. And, as I say, we plan to take a very active part in COP15 as well, as we have been feeding through with all of the Under2 alliances and all the rest of it.

On some of the other things, on the marine development plan, I just don't want to divert very scarce resource. I'm sorry, Janet, but you are a Conservative in the end—so, with the ongoing attack on public services and the amount of resource that we have, diverting resource to doing yet another plan, when what I want is to actually have the plan implemented, is just not something I'm prepared to do. So, I do agree with you that there should be a strategic element to this—we will be including that. We've established the MPA network management steering group. We'll be working with them to produce the action plan. But I want to get on and do it. I don't want to divert my scarce resource to doing yet another plan—we're very much a strategic factory as it is, and I don't want to do that. But I agree with you that it needs to be spatially allocated, so we will be working with that on the action plan.

And then, just to say that it's just as important to work with the fisher folk on the marine plans as it is to work with the farmers on the terrestrial ones. So, we'll be wanting to consult with our fishing industry people, we will want to consult, obviously, with all the non-governmental organisations, and we will want to discuss this with our experts. We had marine experts on the biodiversity deep-dive quite deliberately because this is about all areas—terrestrial, freshwater and the sea. So, we'll be doing that.

And then, just on the farmers, I'm afraid there's a lot of myth-busting that needs to be taken about what we’ve asked farmers to do. Obviously, we want farmers to produce the best food possible, in the most efficient way possible, and the sort of food that we want, going forward, but we also need them to support the absolutely vital biodiversity, without which our food is impossible. If there are no pollinators, there's no food. If there are no habitats for those pollinators, there's no food. So, we have to get a sustainable mix between the right kind of forestry, the right kind of open grassland—not ploughed, not farmed—peatland restoration and that, and the food production. We have to get that mix right, and the truth is it isn't right right now, and that's why we've got destruction of our biodiversity, because our previous farming practices in the twentieth century have contributed to it. They're not solely responsible for it but they have very much contributed to the loss of that biodiversity. So, the sustainable farming scheme, coming forward, will reward farmers for doing that mix properly. And of course we will help them do that, and of course we value the food they produce, but they also produce the air that we breathe and the plants that we are completely reliant on to keep alive, and the species that actually help us control the climate. We've seen what’s happening to the climate. We have to get more resilience for that.