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Climate Change Commission for Wales: First annual report (21.02.12)
The Commission advises us on climate change, mobilises action, builds agreement across sectors and scrutinises and reports on progress.
It is the Commission’s view that Wales is on the right path towards tackling climate change. However, there may be scope to target additional emissions reductions in the residential, business, public, agriculture and power sectors.
The Commission has made recommendations in this report to help delivering emission reduction in these and other areas.
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This is the first annual report of the Climate Change Commission for Wales. The Commission seeks to advise Welsh Government on climate change, mobilise action, build consensus across sectors and scrutinise and report on progress.
The Commission recognises that:
• Climate science shows clearly that without immediate, radical and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions there will be severe consequences for human society and for the ecosystems and biodiversity that are essential to human livelihoods.
• Action on emission reduction now will substantially reduce long term costs, while early action on adapting to climate change will make us more resilient and less vulnerable to its impacts.
• As a nation Wales is living beyond its environmental limits, is over-reliant on fossil fuels and is emitting unsustainable levels of greenhouse gases.
• Wales is well placed to play a leadership role in a transition to a low carbon economy, which will have many benefits beyond tackling climate change – with secure long term energy supplies, better air quality, more comfortable homes and opportunities for business to thrive producing low carbon products and services.
• Government has a key leadership responsibility, but concerted action is needed from all parts of society. Only around one third of emissions reductions within the Climate Change Strategy for Wales are expected to come from policies solely under the control of Welsh Government.
• Welsh Government’s Climate Change Strategy and annual reduction targets are comparable with the more ambitious reduction plans globally. We need to ensure delivery of these targets while keeping the ambition levels of the targets under review.
• The Climate Change Strategy must be set in the context of our commitment to sustainable development. It must be delivered in a way which promotes social justice and recognises that those most vulnerable will be hardest hit by climate change impacts
It is the Commission’s view that Wales is on the right path towards tackling climate change, as recognised by the Committee on Climate Change in its recent review of progress in Wales. However, we agree with the Committee that there may be scope for the strategy to target additional emissions reductions in the residential, business, public, agriculture and power sectors. We hope that the recommendations in this report will contribute to delivering emission reduction in these and other areas.
The Welsh Government has set a clear and strong direction of travel for climate change action in Wales and there are many exciting and inspirational examples of organisations, communities and individuals making changes. It is early days for the Welsh strategy and in many cases the strategic groundwork is still only just being established.
When the Climate Change Strategy for Wales was first published, the Commission commented that it was a ‘starting point on which to build’ and the hard work certainly begins now. For the Welsh Government and its partners, developing and sustaining the political and organisational will to make climate change mitigation and adaptation a sustained priority for action is critical.
The Commission recognises five overarching and vital challenges ahead:
- Ongoing delivery on difficult decisions is needed to ensure clear and sustained low carbon and adaptive prioritisation within current investment programmes and within the context of increasing resource constraints and competing priorities.
- Coordinated early action is required to develop a low carbon, resilient economy.
- Full engagement of wider sectors in the delivery of the climate change strategy is needed, with clearly defined objectives and scrutiny.
- Measurement processes need to be established to assess progress against the targets for the existing strategy commitments, as well as wider sectoral contributions.
- Delivery will require structural change within public and private sector organisations, technological development and behaviour change.