NRW report on the Pathway to a Sustainable Future for Wales

On the 27 January 2021, the official launch day for SoNaRR2020, our Chief Executive, Clare Pillman, shares with us her thoughts on SoNaRR2020, and the pathway to a sustainable future for Wales. ​

​"Wales's natural environment is our most precious inheritance, pivotal to our identity as a nation and, as has come into sharp focus over the last year, central to the health and well-being of our people and our economy.

"Protecting the environment for future generations is one of the greatest challenges of our time. As we look towards taking a greener pathway out of the global Covid-19 pandemic, we must also seize the opportunity to re-imagine how we use our natural assets to address the dual threats from the climate and nature emergencies.

"Today, we off​icially launch the second State of Natural Resources Report (SoNaRR2020) – a milestone publication which aims to inform the steps we and government must take in our endeavour to defend our environment in Wales. It illustrates some of the key challenges, priorities and opportunities for the sustainable management of natural resources (SMNR) and has at its heart the ambition to bridge the gap between where we currently are and where we need to be.

"SoNaRR2020 includes the traditional registers summarising the pressures, impacts and our assessment of different ecosystems – from our seas to our mountains and from farmland to urban areas.

"But it also goes much further than that.

"It also explains how the well-being of both people and planet are intertwined, setting out how Wales could deliver environmental change through transforming the systems we all use to support our lifestyles. It suggests that redesigning the energy, transport and food systems could help society to live within its environmental capacity and address the pressures causing the nature and climate emergencies we all face.

"If we take one of these systems as an example, we can explain how we can use the evidence in the report on all levels of decision-making. We can re-assess our own individual actions; organisations can reflect on how to make pro-environmental behaviours the easiest choice, and government can make large scale changes through policy."