Ruth Chambers: Welcome to the Green Alliance Podcast. We are the charity and think tank dedicated to achieving ambitious leadership for the environment. I’m Ruth Chambers, senior fellow at Green Alliance.

So I’m delighted to be joined today by Joe Wilkins, policy and advocacy manager at the Wildlife Trusts in Wales. Welcome, Joe. I’m looking forward to exploring the state of nature and of Welsh politics with you, both of which I think is fair to say are facing significant challenges and uncertainties.

Of course, we must also talk about the new environmental governance bill, which is making its way through the Welsh Parliament. It’s certainly been a long time coming – eight years in fact. But at long last it’s here, although we have one eye on the clock, don’t we, as it’s got to pass before the Senedd elections in May 2026.

One thing that bill will do is it will lead to new nature targets in Wales, which I think is a good place to start. But first of all, would you mind telling us a bit about your role at the Wildlife Trusts in Wales?

Joe Wilkins: Yeah, of course. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, so I’ve only started this role very recently actually. When this goes out, I think I’ve been doing it for about four weeks. So, it’s a very new role, which I’m really excited to be stepping into.

And like you said, I feel like both nature and politics in Wales is in a very interesting place. If we start there, I’m sure we’ll delve into what I mean by that. But you know, the role will be predominantly working with members of the Senedd and especially in this very exciting year, we’ll be looking at political parties and their manifestos in depth and exploring where nature is included and perhaps where there’s space for nature to be included in their manifestos.

Working a lot on the Species Champion project, you know, making sure that members of the Senedd, whatever their regional or just topic of interest, they have something to focus on as well. So, I’ve been really excited to step into that. It kind of feels like a nice step from my work in the past, which has been a mix. I used to work for West Wales Rivers Trust, doing a lot of farm engagement and community engagement, which I loved because it was that on-the-ground practical implementation level.

Before that I was working on the UN Global Biodiversity Framework for about two years, which also felt like it was a long time coming given COVID and given the delays in the UN processes. So, it’s been really nice to sort of span the international to local level. I feel like now I’ve settled on this more nationally focussed role, so very excited to step into that.

Ruth Chambers: Well, it’s great you could join us and thank you for all that you’re about to do, because I think the hard work starts now, as they say. But let’s maybe start by looking at how nature in Wales is doing. There was some good news recently on protection for beavers. In fact, in the words of the Welsh government, it was damn good news. I always like a pun in a press release if I could squeeze one in, but more seriously, I’d like to get your thoughts on how the Welsh natural environment is fairing at the moment.

Joe Wilkins: Yeah, I do have to say I was surprised by the Welsh government with that pun. I quite enjoyed that actually. I think it’s kind of how I would sum up the Welsh natural environment at the minute. We have had some incredible wins over the last few years, you know, whether that’s very local on-the-ground changes in species coming back and we’re seeing them in more abundance than they were perhaps a decade ago. We’re seeing some great sort of changes and protections in some of our marine environment.

But unfortunately, I think the overall trend is still one of a very negative decline, and I always think it’s important that we do talk about those wins because you know, we’re in a stage where hope and where optimism can feel spread out and far between. But having the sense to be like, when we have committed and when we have dedicated action, you know, we can make these wins. And now what we need to do is translate them into more landscape-scale, into more seascape-scale recovery, rather than just having isolated pockets of wins, which we definitely have. And the beavers is just the latest one, and we’ve still got a lot of work to do on that. But I hope we get to a point where those wins are more across our landscapes rather than just in isolated pockets here and there, because at the end of the day, it’s connectivity where the wins will be.

Ruth Chambers: I guess as well as those environmental wins, we also need to see some political wins and political ambition, don’t we? And I think there are definitely challenges for this in both the short and the long term. So next week, a by-election in Caerphilly in South Wales could really shake up politics for the rest of this Senedd term. If a party other than Labour wins that seat, then Labour won’t have a majority in the Senedd, so it will need to rely on other parties to pass the environmental governance bill, other legislation, the budget and so forth.

While none of us know what the makeup of the next Senedd and the next government is going to be, I think it’s fair to say that things will look and feel quite different to how they are now, not least because the Senedd itself is increasing by around 30 members. So, what do you see as the main risks and opportunities for the environment after the election? Very much asking you to look into the crystal ball there.

Joe Wilkins: Yeah. Well, I think, like we said at the very beginning, Welsh politics I don’t think has ever been in such an unpredictable state, even since the Senedd was set up many decades ago. We now are in a place where this new electoral system – not only will we see more MSs just in terms of numbers, but I think just the way we’re going to go about electing them with the closed party lists and the more closer to proportional representation than we’ve had in the past – I think it’s going to create a system where it’s going to be more important than ever to make sure nature is on the minds of all parties and is as cross-party an issue as it possibly can, because I think we will likely see coalitions.

You know, again, not saying for certain, but I can’t see this system perhaps allowing for a majority unless things change, as they might do. Seven months is still quite a long time in politics. But I think whatever the by-election result is, is kind of going to be a test bed if you want, or a microcosm of what the next Senedd term will be, because it’ll necessitate working between parties.

So, I think the next few months are vital because we are not probably going to have the certainty of having Labour as the governing party. You know, I think over the last 25 years, it’s always been almost a certainty that Labour would be the biggest party in the Senedd. And so, we are facing quite an unpredictable circumstance. And like I said, I think it’s that getting nature on as many parties as possible’s manifesto, because I think we’ll see with the new system, perhaps even a greater spread of parties as well across the political spectrum, and how we make sure that nature and climate and sustainability, social justice, all of these issues are right at the forefront.

So, when they are talking coalitions and when they are talking agreements, they’re all saying that nature is not something that should be dropped. We don’t want one or two parties to be flying the flag for nature and then the others sort of say, well actually, if you’re coming into coalition with us, we want this dropped or we want this. And I think that’s where we come into making sure that nature is mainstreamed as possibly as it can and showing that actually investments in nature, investments in sustainability aren’t just environmental issues. They are health issues, they’re transport issues, they’re energy issues, they’re community cohesion issues. And if we can invest in those, actually nature investment is a huge positive and is a good way of bringing them all together. It’s very much a societal sustainability issue as well.

Ruth Chambers: And have we seen any of those party manifestos yet, or are they still to come?

Joe Wilkins: They’re still, as far as I’m aware, very much in the process. We’ve just been to the Plaid Cymru Conference and so we’ll be working out exactly what will be coming with them and how we make sure that, again, nature is across the political spectrum.

So hopefully in the next few months – well, next few weeks – we’ll have a lot more clear idea of their party manifestos. And then obviously from about Christmas onwards, we’ll be ramping up to, you know, kind of trying to get the message out. And then from March onwards, we enter the dreaded pre-election period where we’ll see how it goes. But before then, we have a lot of work to do. And it’s always having that eye on the very short-term work but having that eye as well to that medium-long term and making sure that environmental, nature, climate aren’t seen as one party’s manifesto or aren’t seen as one party’s legacy. We want them to be seen as a cross-party issue that many people in Wales care about.

Ruth Chambers: Such important work and talking of the pre-election period, which is when the Senedd basically will shut down for business, all legislation will need to be passed by then. I want to now bring us on to take a look at a really important bill that’s going through the Senedd at the moment.

For short, I’m going to call it the Environmental Governance Bill. It’s got a slightly longer title than that, but it will do three really important things in the main. So, number one, it will bring environmental principles like the polluter pays into the Welsh policymaking process. Number two, there’ll be a new sheriff in town, if I can put it that way. So, a body to make sure that in the future, Welsh ministers and public authorities follow environmental laws. It’s not a catchy title, but it does what it says on the tin, and the Office of Environmental Governance Wales, or OEGW for short, as it will be called, will be set up over the next couple of years.

Number three, the bill as we’ve mentioned will also lead to new nature targets, although they won’t arrive for another 36 months unless we can persuade the Welsh government to speed things up. So, it’s a really important bill. We’ve been waiting for it for seven to eight years and it will close that gap in oversight that really has existed since Brexit.

So very important that it passes quickly and perhaps it’s strengthened, as there seems to be a growing consensus that it needs to be in a few areas. Joe, if you could improve one or two things about this bill, what might they be?

Joe Wilkins: Yeah, trying to pick out a few is difficult. I think if I can focus on the Office for Environmental Governance Wales as one thing, I think we’re having big discussions at the moment around a couple of things related to the office. But I think the first one is its independence will be a huge sort of question for us.

We were very lucky to share a platform and share a stage not long ago, and we were both talking about that wording at this stage is very important, because how independent this office is, I think will massively impact its effectiveness. And it does have to have, I would like it to see more independence from Welsh ministers at the moment, as it does feel that it’s going to be quite heavily swayed by Welsh ministers.

And going back to what we were saying earlier about the uncertainty, you know, we don’t want this to just become another body that doesn’t use its full strength because it’s afraid of upsetting its political appointees. And that’s where I think one of the big things I want to make sure over the next few months is that the office is as independent and as strengthened as possible to act on those, because I think we’ve seen in many countries around the world, you know, issues where these bodies that were set up to scrutinise government are now coming under attack and now questioning their role. And we’re realising that actually having it in law that this body is independent is more important than ever. I think that’s being highlighted over the last few months.

The other thing I’d like to say and see is as much clarity as we can on how individual people and community groups will be able to use this office for environmental justice, to make sure that they can actually take any people and hold people to account. We have seen this sort of missing since Brexit, and we have seen this missing in the last few years whilst other countries or other nations in the UK have had this. It’s felt like Welsh citizens have lost some of their agency, so I’m hoping that this office will not only fill the governance gap, but fill that sort of community empowerment agency gap that has been there and make sure that that process is accessible, affordable and reachable for people.

You know, there’s lots of stuff around judicial review and things like that, but I think it’s important that we have this open to community groups to actually take action if they’re seeing issues in their local area. So those are two things, but yeah, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you are thinking as well.

Ruth Chambers: Thanks, and I definitely would agree on both of those. So, what we found with the equivalent bodies in England and Scotland and Northern Ireland is that independence really matters. And the fact that there isn’t anything in the Welsh bill at the moment that protects the OEGW’s independence in the long term – and it must be an oversight, as far as I’m concerned, that’s how we’re treating it anyway – so it’s definitely been a number one ask for us in our evidence to the Senedd and then our engagement with the Welsh government. And we hope that they’ve listened and that they will bring forward some amendments to their own bill that just protect the body’s independence in the long term.

And that isn’t in any way suggesting that we don’t trust or value the work that the current set of Welsh ministers are doing. This is about durability in the face of exactly as you say, potential political uncertainty or unknowns. So, independence is really important.

As well as having a duty on Welsh ministers to respect independence though, I think I would like to see some safeguards for how the body gets its funding, because an easy way or a kind of less obvious way to undermine independence is to cut the funds. So, you cut the body off at the knees without doing anything too overt.

And also, again, as you’ve alluded to, who appoints the board, who appoints the chair, who appoints the other board members. And at the moment, that will be solely within the gift of future Welsh ministers. I think a better balance with the Senedd so that there is more of a joint approach to those appointments would really help.

I mean, on biodiversity targets, which is another crucial part of the bill, I’d highlight the timescale. So, you mentioned that at the moment, those first biodiversity targets, they won’t appear until 36 months – so that’s three years after the bill passes – in April, so that’s 2029. And yet we know from reports from environmental organisations, Senedd Cymru, Audit Wales, even the Welsh government’s own analysis, just shows how far off track we are at turning around nature’s decline. I don’t feel that Wales should wait another three years for those nature targets to come into being. So, speeding up that timescale will be really important.

And then the final thing I’d say – it’s often an overlooked part of the bill because it’s quite technical – but super important, and that’s building environmental principles into how policy is made in Wales. So, things like the ‘polluter must pay’ and that policymakers should try and avoid environmental damage from occurring in the first place.

The Welsh government has taken an interesting approach here and is to be commended in many ways because it’s opted to watch and learn from how the other jurisdictions have done it. And overall, the framework feels a bit more holistic than the other countries. But the one fatal flaw potentially, or at least a serious concern that we have, is that it will only cover environmental policy, not all policy.

So, we think that that could really be strengthened to cover all policy. So those are a few of the other things that I’d like to see. But did any of those chime with you?

Joe Wilkins: I think they all chime, but especially that last point. Because I think, as I said, I worked very closely on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. And obviously the big focus in the media and in the news was 30 by 30 Target 3, but there’s another one that I think holds a lot of power, and that’s Target 14, which is the one that obviously talks about mainstreaming biodiversity across policies, across frameworks. And I think that’s where a lot of power will come from.

And like you said, in the bill at the moment, there’s an emphasis on Welsh ministers and NRW, you know, special regard to these. But we know from experience that these other public bodies have quite significant sway in nature’s recovery. I’m thinking especially local authorities, national park authorities. You know, we do want to make sure that they’re held to that higher account as well.

But also, I think something that’s becoming more clear is the sort of debate around Westminster still-held reserved powers on the devolution case, and how will things work in that sense, when those jurisdictional lines are a bit more blurred, shall we say. And I’m thinking here things around energy, things around transport, and how they will make sure that there’s not a gap there for things to fall through for things that are not Welsh environment policy, but they’re English environment policy. There’s sort of other national policy and that gap that I think may exist. But I’d love your thoughts on that one as well. How do we work on things that are cross-boundary, not only just physically, but jurisdictionally cross-boundary?

Ruth Chambers: I mean, I’m glad you brought that up. And I think what Welsh government has said is that when this new body, the OEGW, is set up, then it will work with its partner organisations across the rest of the UK, especially with the OEP because Wales and England share a land boundary. But obviously the other bodies will be important as well and I’m sure that, you know, knowing the individuals who are part of those bodies or are likely to be part of those bodies, then there’ll be a spirit of cooperation and partnership.

But that only goes so far, doesn’t it? Because if there are legal accountability gaps, which we think there will be, then the bodies can’t cooperate if they’re forbidden by the law from going into those areas in the first place. And we’ve recently published some correspondence that we’ve had with the OEP, which shows just how potentially big that gap is. And it’s a really long list of authorities. It’s not just the three that the Welsh government regularly refer to – so Ministry of Defence, Network Rail and the Crown Estate – there’s a long list of energy and transport public authorities that could be acting in Wales, could fall within this gap, and yet it’s really not clear how this would be dealt with in the future.

So, I think later in October, we know that the Senedd Environment Committee is going to be publishing its first report on the bill, and I think we are hopeful that this might be one of the issues that they pick up on.

Joe Wilkins: Yeah, definitely. Like I said, given the timeframe that we’re working with, given the sort of election, trying to make sure that as much of the uncertainty for us is taken out as early as possible, I think is a lot of the work we’re trying to do. I know inevitably, as you know as well, inevitably there’ll be amendments once it’s passed, I’m sure there’ll be modifications, but if we can get it as tight and as strong as we can at this stage, I think that’s what across the environmental sector, that’s what we’re all pushing for. We’re not just trying to be fussy for the sake of being fussy. These are very important questions that need to be answered before we move into the next stage of it.

And like you said, it’s going to set the tone for the targets that will be made. And so we also need to make sure that it’s as strong as it possibly can be at this stage, and not always try and fix it post-assent.

Ruth Chambers: And one of the things that’s also on my mind is, while hopefully this bill will pass and it will be strengthened along the lines that we’ve been chatting about, almost all of the things in it will fall to the next government to deliver. That new government might be a coalition, as we’ve been saying. It will have other priorities as well as taking this bill forward. So the more that we can cement that timetable and that direction of travel, future-proof, if you like, the legislation now, the more that that will help set out a clear path for the next government so it knows that there is a real expectation from the Senedd of progress that needs to be continued.

I’m just reminded that when we shared the platform a few weeks ago at that Climate Cymru event, it was really refreshing because quite often I find myself in rooms full of – I’m not going to call them policy wonks, but I might, and you know, present company included in that – I don’t always spend time or have the luxury of spending time where there are schoolchildren or younger people in the audience. That was really what that event was all about. And certainly the calls that I heard were loud and clear from those groups. You know, they want environmental action to continue, to speed up and not to get tossed aside in political battles or uncertainties.

It feels like we’re entering this kind of big political unknown, which can definitely bring anxiety. I feel that myself, but equally it feels that hope and positivity and courage, we’re going to need those more than ever. It’s a big question, but maybe a good one to finish on, but how can we keep that positive spirit going?

Joe Wilkins: Yeah, that was a really incredible event. And I think some of the questions that I was getting asked – like you said, it’s so lovely to hear from schoolchildren, from university students who haven’t felt that they need to sort of tone down their dreams and their ambitions. You know, they’re very much like, well it makes sense, why are we hurting the environment? You know, there’s none of that sort of, well, we have to consider this, we have to consider this. And it was just very refreshing, like you said, to be in a room of people going, yeah, we will stop this and we will restore nature.

And I do think genuinely a lot of it is community. I think even within the environmental sector and the policy wonks, getting together in an event like that was so powerful because I think we all kind of get sometimes bogged down in the nitty-gritty of our work, which is what we need to do. But taking a step back and being able to talk to one another and say, actually, this isn’t just optimism without realism. This is generally very achievable and it’s very achievable in ways that bring people along with us.

We’re starting to see that with some of the conversations around land management, with property development, all of these sorts of things, that actually nature can play a big role in that. And sometimes I feel very positive when you have a conversation with a developer who’s saying, well, actually I am going to start implementing swift bricks, or I’m going to start using sustainable drainage systems. And I know it’s only little things and it might not seem that big on the sort of policy scale, but I think having those conversations with people that sort of reaffirms that it’s very doable.

And yes, we’re facing these mammoth tasks and yes, I feel anxious and eco-anxiety most days in some form because we’re just dealing with it. But having those conversations with people who are like, you know, I’m making a change as much as I can, it does keep me positive that if we can create a policy landscape and a legislative landscape that enables people to do this and doesn’t constantly act as a barrier, we can achieve it.

And I know then there’s big questions about sustainable finance and all of those that come in. But I feel like there is a shift in, at least locally in Wales. I’m not sure about on the global scale, but at least in Wales, I do feel optimistic that there’s a shift happening. But as you say, with an election seven months away, I think that will be a kind of crucial moment for us moving forward.

But doing what we can to stay positive and celebrating those little wins – you know, the fact, and it’s not even a little win, the beaver announcement is a huge announcement – and making sure that we do take time to go, yes, okay, we’re moving in the right direction, is what I would say to people. We think so much about the big issues and that’s where we have to think, but sometimes those local little wins are what keeps us going. And hopefully this environmental governance bill will assist us to have more of those wins and more of that positivity.

Ruth Chambers: Thanks Joe, and let’s hope we get lots of little and lots of big wins, this side and the other side of the election. Thanks so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your contribution.

Joe Wilkins: Oh, thank you – diolch yn fawr. It’s been lovely to chat and yeah, I’m excited to see where the next few weeks and months take us.

Ruth Chambers: Thanks for listening to this episode. Keep checking in as we’ll continue to bring you specialist interviews and highlights from our events here on your podcast feed. You can subscribe on your favourite podcast app, or you can follow us at Green Alliance on LinkedIn and Bluesky. We encourage you to use the hashtag Green Alliance Podcast to join in on this conversation and to share thoughts, questions and ideas. See you next time.