Welsh Government Proposes Ecosystem Approach

The Welsh Government recently published for consultation a Green Paper setting out proposals to introduce an integrated ‘ecosystems approach’ to managing the environment in Wales.

The proposals would mean that the three regulatory regimes in Wales – land-use planning, pollution control and nature conservation – would be integrated and the environment managed as a whole. The objective is to ensure that decisions that affect the environment can be taken with a better understanding of their impact on ecosystems.

The ecosystem approach is defined by the Convention on Biological Diversity as ‘a strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes nature conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way recognising that humans with their cultural diversity are an integral part of ecosystems’.

The proposals set out in the consultation include the simplification, and integration, of the wide range of different designations, management plans and regulatory consents – such as permits, licences and other authorisations -that currently exist and cover a wide range of activities that affect the environment.

The consultation concludes that there is significant scope to streamline current regimes to focus on getting better outcomes for the environment as a whole. The Welsh Government will be commissioning work to identify opportunities to bring together existing regimes to allow for single permits or consents. In many cases this simplification could also see a much wider use of risked based measures.

The consultation also proposes the introduction of integrated local resource management planning. This would provide a spatial context for the management of natural resources. This will be taken forward initially through a series of area pilots. The results of these pilots will be used to consider a future framework for local resource management in Wales.

Any future local resource management plans would be established in the context of national targets and objectives. A single spatial framework for national resource planning in Wales would bring together existing spatial policies in the environment – including those in renewable energy, flooding, water quality and resources, waste infrastructure, landscape and nature conservation – to resolve any conflict between the different plans and to integrate the outcomes of each more closely. Alongside a new National Infrastructure Plan this spatial framework will set out strategic priorities for major infrastructure for Wales. The Welsh Government aims to scope a national resource management plan in 2013.

The consultation also includes proposals to simplify the environmental governance. One of the main proposals is to create new single body bringing together the Countryside Council for Wales and the Wales functions of the Environment Agency and Forestry Commission.

The approaches being proposed complement the First Minister’s commitment to legislate to embed sustainable development as the central organising principle of the Welsh Government. Changes to adopt the ecosystem approach will be underpinned by the introduction of a new Environment Bill in 2015 and a Land-Use Planning Bill in 2016.