Is it strong to be calling this an emergency? The question was raised by the Town Council.
We discussed this at the BRACE meeting this week and the answer we came back with is yes.. emergency is absolutely the right term as immediate action is called for.
Also Climate Emergency has been officially declared by the Welsh government, so it would be wrong to call it anything else. The Office of Future Generations who have identified Climate Emergency and loneliness and Isolation as two key challenges facing our population currently.
What is clear to us that these are intrinsically related and in tackling the climate and biodiversity emergency we can rebuild communities and reconnect people together through taking collective responsibility for repairing our damaged environment.
The Welsh government have identified and are funding 10 key areas to begin to tackle this emergency
Climate change is the greatest threat facing future generations. On 29th April 201 9 Welsh
Future Generations Commissioner for Wales
Government declared a climate emergency. This follows the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) latest report saying we have 12years to avoid climate breakdown
A week later the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
Future Generations Commissioner for Wales
findings highlighted that nature is declining globally at unprecedented rates, the rate of species extinction is accelerating with a million species under threat, with grave impacts on people around the world.
The steps the government are taking at the moment do not appear to match the declaration of a climate emergency – last year my assessment of the budget showed that only around 1 % of the Welsh Governments Budget was being spent on de-carbonisation.
Future Generations Commissioner for Wales
We are lagging considerably behind other countries across the world and indeed the UK in a number of key areas such as investment in public transport, active travel, energy and re-greening our land