(Title Image: Climate Change Commission for Wales)
Last week, the Welsh Government published A Climate Conscious Wales – a five-year plan to address climate change between 2020-2025 (pdf; easy read version – pdf).
“We have already invested significantly in climate change adaptation and preparing for the future, through a wide range of policies, programmes and interventions and this plan further demonstrate our ambition to deliver a more prosperous, equal and greener nation.
“Delivering our plan will be a challenge, but we must all adapt and we must all commit to protect our nation for current and future generations. Success will mean Wales is a climate conscious nation, aware of the risks facing us, whilst being prepared and ready to adapt to the impacts before they occur.”
– Environment, Energy & Rural Affairs Minister, Lesley Griffiths (Lab, Wrexham)
The plan includes, amongst other things:
- Prioritising research on the risk posed to communities by coastal and inland flooding and changes to agricultural and forestry productivity, as well as the possible health and social impacts of temperature increases and extreme weather.
- Publish a new strategy for coastal flooding and coastal erosion in 2020.
- Implement a fifteen-year fuel poverty strategy between 2020-2035 and improve the energy efficiency of 25,000 homes by 2021.
- Introduce new Water Resource Management plans in 2020 and seek to achieve “good status” for inland waterways by 2027.
- Increase woodland creation to 2000 hectares a year between 2020-2030 and continue work on creating a National Forest.
