Wales Environment LINK members highlight actions for Welsh Government

Members of Wales Environment LINK, including the John Muir Trust, welcome the Welsh Government’s promise to make climate and nature central to all its policies, and the commitments made in the Net Zero Wales Plan. 

However, with the delayed Convention on Biological Diversity COP 15 taking place in 2022, it is vital that Wales takes action now to fulfil its ambitions for nature’s recovery, including achieving a ‘nature positive’ Wales by halting and starting to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.  

In a letter addressed to the First Minister of Wales, members of Wales Environment LINK list eight policy areas for swift action:

1. Increase the scale and pace of investment to protect and restore peatland in line with the recommendations of the UK Committee on Climate Change (UKCCC).

2. Support a UK ban on the use of peat for horticultural purposes and cease procurement as a matter of urgency, along with an immediate ban on burning upland peat.

3. Embed and fund climate, nature and public access objectives in farming support schemes.

4. Recognise the importance of equal access to quality green space for public well-being in towns and in the countryside.

5. Ensure that our protected sites network is large enough and sufficiently well managed to protect climate-critical habitats and species, and the carbon stored within them.

6. Increase protection of the marine environment and restore key habitats and species, as well as harnessing the sea’s carbon-storing potential.

7. Set ambitious, legally binding, long-term and interim targets for nature recovery, giving parity to efforts to tackle the nature and climate crisis.

8. Get tree planting right – set ambitious targets for restoring habitats including a major expansion in tree canopy cover, in line with recommendations of the UKCCC. 

The letter sent to the First Minister of Wales is available to download below.