Wales has a long history of internationalism. Solidarity movements have existed for generations, with communities as far afield as Somaliland, as we know from Wales's coal-trading history and long-settled diaspora; Lesotho, through Dolen Cymru, founded in 1982, which after all was the world's first nation-to-nation twinning; and Uganda, where several charities have worked over four decades.

Let's take the Wales for Africa programme as a prime example. The programme connects professionals in health, education and the environmental sectors and diaspora in Wales and Africa, and harnesses the power of community-based collaborative civil society links. Rather than professional agencies or staff in country offices, projects take place through volunteers in direct contact with in-country local partners, in domains such as health, education, climate change and water. Wales for Africa catalyses huge amounts of community work here in Wales, raising awareness and funds at a local level, and Welsh Government funding of course has supported this through capacity building; the co-ordination of Wales’s fair trade movement, with Wales becoming the world's first Fairtrade Nation in 2008; efforts to mitigate climate change, including the Size of Wales project to help protect an area of rainforest the size of Wales; and volunteer placements for professionals.

So, we do understand here in Wales the benefits of working collaboratively at the international level to help our fellow people abroad, but with the contributions of my fellow Members in mind, can we really, honestly, hand on heart, state that we're making a net positive contribution to the world, when our consumption at the domestic level is actively driving climate change, biodiversity decline and the loss of culture? How can we simultaneously preach for sustainability and cultural preservation here in Wales while contributing to what amounts to cultural and environmental genocide in lands afar?

Let's look again to another case study—one championed by the Size of Wales—the cause of the Guarani people. The Guarani are one of the largest groups of indigenous people in Latin America, and their ancestral territory sits in the Atlantic forest in Brazil, only 7 per cent of which remains intact. The Atlantic forest still holds about 5 per cent of the world's biodiversity, and it provides water to around 67 per cent of the Brazilian population. They nourish, protect and respect the land, plants, animals and insects, regarding their lives as equal, and they never seek to gain dominion and power over nature or exploit it. Despite the forest suffering huge levels of deforestation, vegetation cover within legally recognised Guarani land stands at nearly 100 per cent, exemplifying the fact that indigenous peoples are the best guardians of the world’s forests.

But consumption patterns at the domestic level cast a long, dark shadow on these indigenous cultures abroad. Powerful economic forces are threatening the few lands the Guarani have been able to defend, and preventing them from demarcating and protecting the remainder of their ancestral home, through things like mineral ore production and large-scale infrastructure projects. Indeed, Guarani territories are currently threatened by up to 178 million hectares of legal deforestation on private land, and up to 115 million hectares of illegal deforestation in currently protected indigenous territories: a total area of more than 12 times the size of the United Kingdom. These threats were driven at least in part by the damaging premiership of Jair Bolsonaro, which was characterised by corruption, greed and extreme lack of regard for indigenous rights and the rights of the natural world.

But the degradation of habitats is driven by a much more fundamental behaviour, which is consumption. We are responsible for some of this consumption-derived damage, and we need to be honest about that. As a nation, we have tried to atone for our past crimes, such as our role in colonialism and empire among them, but we've also had a role to play in global climate change, in habitat loss, and our behaviour today is still driving deforestation abroad; an extractive economic relationship built on greed that destroys native cultures and habitats.

So, we urge the Welsh Government to support international projects and initiatives aimed at preserving and restoring forests in the main commodity, and in responding to the debate, I hope that the Minister can outline how Welsh Government intends to achieve these aims to ensure that Wales is a globally responsible nation, not just for the climate, but for people and their cultures too.