Guest election blog – Plaid Cymru by Gill Lewis

Gill Lewis is a children’s author, vet and environmental campaigner.

She writes books about animals and our human relationship with the wild world. Her books have won the US Green Earth Book Award (twice), German Prize for Environmental Youth Literature and she has been awarded the Little Rebels Special Commendation for her contribution to political/radical children’s fiction.

She has been a regular supporter of Hen Harrier Day and has written two books about the driven grouse issues – Sky Dancer and Eagle Warrior. Lewis founded and judges Hen Harrier Action’s Young Wild Writer Competition.  

Lewis’ next book Rescue at Seal Bay (Published August 2024) explores the disturbance of breeding and young seals at tourist hot-spots and the importance of raising public awareness to protect vulnerable sea life.

It’s generally accepted that most people get less rebellious as they age. I am a political Benjamin Button, aging in reverse, getting angrier and more politically vocal with the years. As a teenager I was politically naïve and disinterested. I have selective amnesia (or possibly suppressed shame) about my first vote back in 1987 when I may have voted Tory. We all have regrets. Since then, I have voted Lib Dem and in more recent elections given the Green Party my vote.

Since moving to West Wales almost three years ago, I’ve been interested in Welsh politics and how the Welsh Government and Senedd Cymru influence change at local level to affect the environment and local communities. However, Westminster still holds sway over many areas that have not been devolved to Wales and much criticism has been levelled at Westminster for not understanding the needs of communities in Wales. This has been exemplified in the Levelling Up schemes administered by Westminster and criticised by the First Minister as an “incoherent mess with very little planning, consultation or economic logic,” and “through ineptitude and indifference, the UK Government has wasted the opportunity to deliver meaningful change Wales desperately needs to see.”

We have seen the effects of this near where I live, where a UK Levelling Up grant has part funded a private enterprise that will expand unregulated adventure tourism at an SSSI and Special Area of Conservation. This will allow adventure tourism to run roughshod across rare biogenic reef, scramble on cliffs with no minimum distance from nesting seabirds and disturb breeding seals and their young. This will be catastrophic for biodiversity at a site of highest ecological importance. There was no community consultation or engagement. Indeed, the local community has been fighting to protect the biodiversity of this area for over two decades, but the community voice has not been heard.

So would Plaid Cymru, which seeks to gain more independence for Wales, enable more decision-making that affects Wales to be made in Wales? Could Plaid Cymru allow our community to protect the biodiversity here for future generations and for the many visitors who come specifically to see the wildlife? And importantly, will Plaid Cymru put biodiversity and climate at the heart of its policies?

At first glance the manifesto looks promising, but it’s what is missing that leaves me with a sinking feeling that Plaid might talk the talk, but in reality, when it comes to making real change, they won’t have the vision, the bravery or policies to walk the walk.

What I like:

• To ensure environmental justice there primarily needs to be social fairness and justice across society. Plaid sets out in its manifesto that, through demanding fair funding and a fairer tax system, it will aim to reduce poverty, and improve healthcare, education, transport, affordable housing and funding of the arts. It promises to improve rural community amenities, infrastructure and internet coverage.
• We have finite resources on a finite planet and need to move away from putting economic growth in terms of GDP.  It is refreshing to see Plaid state; “recognising the climate and nature emergency in which we find ourselves, we need to think beyond economic growth in terms of GDP and we call on the next UK government to consider adopting alternative ways of measuring the economy.” This is quite a bold statement and, like the Green Party, recognises that economic growth drives over-exploitation of resources.
• Plaid would introduce a Business, Human Rights and Environmental Bill which would mandate private companies to conduct due diligence in supply chains.
• Under the Climate Change and Energy heading on the manifesto, Plaid makes the bold statement that “Plaid Cymru recognise that the climate and nature emergencies are the biggest threat to mankind on a global scale and reaffirms our commitment to reaching net-zero targets in Wales by 2035 and reversing biodiversity decline by 2030.”
• The school curriculum should equip young people with an understanding of climate challenges. I’m encouraged to hear this, as putting climate and nature recovery at the heart of education is key for future generations to prepare to adapt at a societal level for the challenges that lie ahead.
• Plaid Cymru opposes new sites for nuclear power stations, opposes new licenses for oil and gas, opposes new open cast coal mines, and would maintain a ban on fracking.
• Stronger enforcement of protection of SSSI. This is to be encouraged. Currently over 60% of protected sites in Wales are in an unfavourable condition. I find it incredulous that Natural Resources Wales actually agree a coasteering concordat on a site of SSSI and Special Area of Conservation where people are allowed to climb directly below and within 10m of nesting razorbills, causing disturbance. I would hope that Plaid Cymru would ensure protected sites are truly protected and not just exist as paper parks.
• Support a science led plan to ensure nature loss is firmly in reverse as soon as possible and ensure substantive recovery by 2050.
• With trust in politics at an all-time low, it’s good to see that Plaid Cymru will make it a criminal offence for an elected politician to intentionally mislead the public. 

What I don’t like:

• Despite recognising that the nature and climate emergencies are the biggest threat to mankind, Plaid appears to be appealing to the rural voters and has largely omitted any actual strategies to change and adapt the future of farming that ensure we reach the promised targets of nature recovery. Plaid criticises the Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme, but only offers vague promises of ‘demanding a more flexible approach’. 90% of Wales’ land cover is rural agricultural land, and with Wales being one the most nature depleted countries in the world, the lack of recognition of the importance of nature recovery across the land mass of Wales, shows a lack of vision and bravery at the outset. Rather than creating a meaningful plan to engage with farmers and incentivise nature recovery, Plaid has succeeded in kicking this can down the road for another year at least.
• Plaid will “introduce a broader approach to tackling bovine TB which includes controlling the disease in wildlife.”  Without specifics it’s impossible to know if this will be a holistic science-led approach or just a gun-wielding increase in the killing of badgers.
• No mention of protecting marine habitats and species.  
• In the short paragraph about protecting households from flooding as a consequence of climate change, there is only mention about investing in infrastructure. There is no mention of using natural defences such as restoring natural landscapes with the introduction of beavers above water catchment areas. Not only would this reduce flooding risk, but it would also enhance biodiversity. If implemented well, landowners could benefit financially from these strategies, and it would incentivise a change of landscape use.
• “Preserving Wales’s Natural Landscape – we believe the beauty of Wales’s natural landscape should be preserved.” I intensely dislike this term. It suggests a lack of understanding of the biodiversity crisis. A preservationist mindset is inflexible and fixed on a point in time. Historically, Wales has been heavily cleared of native tree cover and overgrazed. Industrialisation of farming practices over the past eighty years have accelerated biodiversity loss. We don’t want to preserve depleted landscapes; we need to radically change them to ones for nature recovery.

What I would like to see:

• There needs to be a bold vision to tackle nature recovery across Welsh landscapes. Some of the principles of the Sustainable Farming Scheme are sound, but the scheme has been criticised of being rushed through without clarity or consultation of the farming community and without sufficient financial incentives.
• Rural areas have borne the brunt of austerity cuts and loss of EU funding, and there is suspicion of political meddling and short-termism. Rural communities are deeply embedded to the landscape. Yet these communities have seen biodiversity crash within just four generations. My own great grandparents farmed in the shadow of Pen-y-Fan, when the landscape of Bannau Brycheiniog would have had much richer and varied habitats for wildlife. From hay meadows to hedgerows, my great grandparents would have heard curlews and corncrakes. We need the rural communities to be on board, to share a vision of a long-term future of farming to ensure we reach the promised targets of nature recovery. However, this can only be done if farming communities become a part of the narrative and have sufficient financial incentives for real long-term change.

So, will I be voting for Plaid Cymru?

Can Plaid truly offer more agency to rural communities and also present Wales on the international stage as a forward-thinking country which will tackle the climate and nature emergencies? Is the green haze that shimmers on the Plaid Cymru manifesto the beginnings of real grassroots change? Or is it political astroturf?

A vote for Plaid Cymru where I live is a tactical vote – so it’s certainly on the cards.

This is one of a series of opinion pieces on the political parties’ 2024 general election manifestos. They were commissioned by Wild Justice several months ago by approaching a wide variety of conservationists and environmentalists long before the date of the general election was known. Some people who originally agreed to write pieces found the date and short timescale impossible and had to back out. We did not know what they would write and their only brief was to pick one or two political parties’ election manifestos and tell us what they liked and didn’t like about their environmental policies. We didn’t tell people what to write and we haven’t edited what they wrote (except to squeeze things into a common format, to correct minor grammatical and spelling errors and typos). The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Wild Justice.