Image: © Dustin Humes on Unsplash
On Tuesday 13th, the Welsh Government set out its Draft Budget for 2023 – 2024, with a small but welcome increase in both revenue and capital for the Climate Change MEG (Main Expenditure Group) compared to last year. It sets out that the revenue will be £948m, up from £940m last year, and capital spend will increase from £1.576bn to £1.657bn, although there are challenges in keeping up with current inflation.
However, with this portfolio combining all transport spending – including road improvements – into broader spending on environmental priorities, it’s difficult to extrapolate how much of this will actually get spent on nature and how much will be spent on mitigating or improving existing systems, without necessarily making any impact on biodiversity.
Although the Senedd and Welsh Government have recognised that we face a dual nature and climate emergency, we need to invest in ways to tackle it directly. With Climate Change Minister, Julie James, recently attending COP 15 in Montreal, we very much welcome Wales’s commitment to adopting statutory nature targets. But it remains to be seen how we will meet them unless we invest in creating a resilient natural world. The pressure is on, with one in six species at risk of extinction in our already nature-depleted country.
Wales Environment Link members are developing a roadmap for nature’s recovery, to be released in the New Year, which includes estimated costs for some of the key actions needed to reverse the decline in nature across Wales. In advance of this, and to make clear the kinds of interventions we’d hope for from the Welsh Government budget, we’ve outlined some of these from our draft report below.
There is substantive overlap between these actions and those that have emerged as commitments following the Biodiversity Deep Dive, within which the Welsh Government has recognised the need for increased investment in nature.
The upcoming Sustainable Farming Scheme
The Welsh Government is currently taking forward the Agriculture Bill, which sets the framework for introducing the new Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS). This is the greatest opportunity the Welsh Government has to halt and reverse nature loss on land. With close to 90% of Wales as farmland, it is essential that future SFS support is targeted at fostering nature friendly and regenerative farming practices, that invest in habitat restoration for nature. Re-framing the near £300m per annum rural budget to reward farmers for managing their land in a way that produces food sustainably and secures environmental benefits – like making room for nature through the restoration and management of hedgerows, native woods, flower-rich grasslands and peat bogs – will help species recover, lock in carbon, reduce pollution, and improve soil health.
We want to see pilot projects funded as soon as possible to demonstrate, on the ground, how these kinds of practices can help improve the economic stability of farm businesses, at the same time as improving the environment. These pilots can be used as training to help land managers to transition to the new SFS. We also want to see National Minimum Standards underpinning practice from the beginning, to ensure that we bring an end to decades of frequent agricultural pollution incidents damaging our rivers and lakes. This must be combined with proper compliance monitoring and enforcement and can only be achieved by providing Natural Resources Wales with a significant boost in capacity. Based on NRW’s own estimates, this would require between 60 and 200 new staff which we gauge would require £12m per annum to do it properly.
Restoring marine biodiversity
Nature restoration needs to take place in our seas as well as on land. The Wales National Marine Plan was meant to be our guide for sea-based decisions, but it’s not currently equipped to direct development to the right locations that would avoid harm to ecosystems, or to maximise opportunities for wildlife and blue carbon storage.
We would urge for increased resources in Welsh Government to deliver an improved strategic plan that meets this aspiration. An improved marine plan would protect our most sensitive habitats and species, and improve certainty for developers. For example, it should enable the transition to renewable energy to take place in a nature positive way.
Direct habitat restoration of seagrass meadows, seaweed and salt-marshes around the Welsh coast will improve water quality, lock up carbon, reduce risks from coastal erosion and flooding, and keep our wildlife healthy and therefore boost coastal tourism. We advocate investment of around £9m per annum, which would cover most aspects of marine habitation creation. Although this figure does not include what would be required in terms of resource to update the Wales Marine Plan to something more spatial.
Protecting the Celtic Rainforest
The Celtic Rainforest is a rare and threatened habitat in Wales, home to many rare plants and animals. Overgrazing and invasive species threaten many of the remaining areas of rainforest, and we need to restore and expand it as much as possible. This has already been taking place in Snowdonia, but more investment is needed to expand this to other areas; we estimate this would cost £24.5m per annum.
In addition, fragments of rainforest need to be connected and new rainforest areas created. The restoration of this and other ancient woodlands should be central to the delivery of the National Forest for Wales.
Protected sites on land and in the sea
The Welsh Government’s recent ‘Biodiversity Deep Dive’ recognised the important role our protected and designated sites play in nature’s restoration and delivering our ’30 x 30’ target (an aim to protect and manage at least 30% of the land and 30% of the sea for nature by 2030). The Deep Dive found that we need to transform Wales’ protected sites, on land and sea, to networks that are better, bigger, and more effectively connected. We would like to see £30m per annum put towards delivering on their commitment, by ensuring Natural Resources Wales is properly resourced to deliver the monitoring and management of existing sites, as well as making new designations to meet the target.
Skills and workforce
We’ve highlighted the additional capacity that NRW will need to deliver on protected sites management and monitoring, environmental monitoring and enforcement and many other tasks. We’ve also highlighted the central role of the Sustainable Farming Scheme in nature recovery; it is widely recognized that the ambitions of the scheme will only be met if the necessary skilled advisory services are available to landowners.
In this vein, we welcome Welsh Government’s interest in developing a National Nature Service (NNS). The NNS could be a means to focus investment, bridge skills gaps, and increase our collective workforce capacity for nature recovery.
Further to providing development funding in 2022, we hope the Welsh Government will confirm funding for a demonstrator project in the coming financial year.
In conclusion, we’re glad to see the right messaging coming out of Welsh Government, but this needs to be matched with the right investment if we have any hope of restoring Welsh nature. Time is running out for the natural world and we need decisive action.
For more information on the Welsh Government’s Budget, you can look at the relevant documents here. The Senedd Research Service has published this helpful article too, setting out what it means for each portfolio.
