Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 11 January 2023.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 1:46, 11 January 2023

Yes, Delyth, I completely agree with you. Obviously, we have to do something very dramatic to help our pollinators, and actually all of our wildlife species. It's why we did the deep dive to find out exactly what the scientific community could help us with in terms of the plans. It's why we've been speaking to local authorities across Wales about the wildlife corridors, No Mow May—I would say June and July as well—and the whole issue about planting native wildflower species along our transport routes to make the corridors necessary for the pollinators to be able to move around and to make sure that they don't have diminishing gene pools in particular sectors—all of the things that affect them. 

There's an enormous piece that we can do about people's gardens as well as just in wider agriculture. The sustainable farming scheme is all about making sure that we can farm in that sustainable way with a diminishing use of both herbicides and pesticides, both of which have a really dramatic effect on our ability to have that biodiversity that we all actually need to survive—literally need to survive. So, we have a range of measures in place. One of the things, though, that I know you'll be interested in is that I will want to see, as part of the 30x30 targets, what we can say about the diminishing use of pesticides and herbicides across the piece for ordinary things, if I can put it like that. 

We've got a re-education piece to do here as well. All of us will receive complaints from constituents about weeds on the pavement, for example, but weeds on the pavement are necessary, they're necessary for insects to hide. I think we've got to learn that neat is not good, that actually sometimes a little bit of scruff is exactly what nature needs. Trying to get people to understand that the neat pavements with no green of any description on them are not in fact neat, they're in fact dead, is a really big part of this piece. So, working with our local authorities to change the regime of weed clearance and so on and to change it into native wildflower species and that people recognise it is one of the things we really do need to do. This is all about the attitude and what we see out of our eyes when we look at nature.