Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 3. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 3:19 pm on 14 March 2023.

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Photo of Delyth Jewell Delyth Jewell Plaid Cymru 3:19, 14 March 2023

(Translated)

Thank you to Sam for pointing that out, something that has been published on Twitter too, but I'll return to that in a moment.

It is encouraging that the biodiversity deep-dive commits to bringing forward legislation that sets general targets for nature restoration, and also provision regarding environmental governance, and to do so as early as possible in this Senedd term, and I take on board what you just said. It also commits, of course, to a series of statutory targets that are more specific on nature restoration, which will have a role to play in ensuring that Wales plays its part in the global framework on biodiversity that exists.

Do you agree, and I'm bearing in mind what you just said, that you can't give a specific timetable, do you agree that it's now a matter of some urgency, perhaps following the decision, perhaps—? Yes, as Sam Kurtz just pointed out, no matter if this was a decision that had already been made by the broadcaster, some people think that a decision was made to not broadcast a programme that talked about how fragile the natural systems are in Wales and what the reasons for that are, and no matter whether that was done because of Government pressure—it seems it was not—or because the public wasn't in a position to want to hear that, or to be open to hearing it, no matter at what point that happened, do you agree that we need to do so much more to bring the public with us, so that we can all understand? We talk, for example, about a climate emergency and a nature emergency, but I'm concerned sometimes that we are losing this idea of how fragile the situation is. Over the weekend, we saw it on our screens. We will lose that, and the public need to understand that. What do you think that the Welsh Government can do to reinforce how critical this situation is with regard to nature in Wales?