Tir – Land.
Very few of us have access to considerable areas of land, yet land, and how we use it is critical to our sustainability both now, and in the years ahead.
The population of Cymru is estimated to be a little over 3.1million people and the size of Cymru is often used as a comparison, but just how big is Cymru?
The land area of Cymru is 2,628,779 km2 or 2,077,900 ha. Agriculture accounts for 80% of land use 50% under ‘permeant grass’ & 20% under rough grazing. Arable only accounts for around 9% of land use. Forestry and woodlands make up around 15%-20%, with woodlands on farms accounting for more than 3%. The ‘built environment’ makes up almost 5% which includes land spoiled by industrial wastes, but which can be great for biodiversity. Many uses are integrated with others e.g. forestry on farms, or renewable energy.
Yet we’d need 2.5 planet earths if everyone on the planet wanted to live like we do in Wales today.
As a consequence we’ve passed world leading legislation, and undertaken some quite controversial consultations. The Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act came into law in 2015, and the approach pioneered here has been picked up and replicated around the world. The Environment (Wales) Act quickly followed in 2016, announced a plan to reach net-zero by 2050 in 2021 and undertook a ‘deep dive’ into renewable energy in 2022.
Meanwhile in Scotland the question of land for sustainability, and who has access to that land, was considered to be so essential that the Scottish government passed a succession of legislation under the auspices of Land Reform (Scotland) between 2003 and 2016. This included a community right to buy land and communities in Scotland now own well over half a million acres of land for the purposes of sustainable development.
There is a broad consensus amongst climate scientists that we need to reach net zero by 2035 and a mounting body of evidence that even this may be too late. Don’t look up! Yet there is growing disquiet over the imposition of renewable energy infrastructure on our landscapes’ and communities, and the consultation on the sustainability of farming led to some of the biggest protests that the Senedd has seen to date.
When it comes to the question of how we’re all meant to live in Cymru sustainably we’ve barely touched the copa’r mynydd.
If we’re going to do so in harmony then we all need to come together and agree what that future might look like.
So just how should we be managing land in Cymru so that we can all live sustainable here together?
- Is the push to cover the landscape in solar farms, wind farms, and carbon offset tree planation’s the answer?
- Should we all be eating far less meat and reducing stocking levels to meet local needs?
- In a nation dominated by poor quality uplands, can agroforestry feed the population?
- What role can our rural & urban communities play in managing land more sustainably?
- What can we learn from the land use of the past, that can help us shape the future together?
Ken Moon Chair, Tir Pontypridd
Ken is a sustainable development practitioner and works as Sustainability Futures Coordinator for the Office of Heledd Fychan MS, provides mentoring support to Community Organisations & Social Enterprises for Egin, Cwmpas, DTA Wales & Interlink. He is also an occasional writer, speaker, and land rights activist, and has come together with other residents of his home town of Pontypridd to buy land for community use