Wales makes green future law
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| Electric narrowboating in the Brecon Beacons, Wales. Photograph: Alamy |
Wales today laid out radical plans to make it one of the most energy- and resource-efficient countries in the world within a generation.
The government development plans, which are legally binding, are far in advance of anything planned for England or Scotland and would see it become energy self-sufficient in using renewable electricity within 20 years and reduce waste to zero by 2050.
The proposals would make Wales one of only three countries in the world legally bound to develop “sustainably”.
“We intend to reduce by 80-90% our use of carbon-based energy, resulting in a similar reduction in our greenhouse gas generation,” said Jane Davidson, the Welsh environment minister, launching the sustainable development scheme at the Guardian’s Hay festival. “We are committed to making annual 3% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from 2011,” she added.
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Mlebourne faces a dry future
Sugarloaf Reservoir this month. Photo: Justin McManus
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Wildlife corridors ramp up biodiversity
Research by a North Carolina State University biologist and colleagues shows that using landscape corridors, the “superhighways” that connect isolated patches of habitat, to protect certain plants has a large “spillover” effect that increases the number of plant species outside the conservation area.
The study found that corridors caused such a wide range of “spillover” beyond the patches – to more than the area of the patches themselves – that the results were a surprise, says Dr. Nick Haddad, associate professor of biology at NC State and a co-author of a paper published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He adds that the finding has broad implications for conservation efforts – most importantly that the benefits of landscape corridors, the strips of habitat that connect isolated patches of habitat, extend well beyond those borders.
“Most conserved areas are small – two-thirds are less than one square kilometer – so the spillover effect with corridors gives a larger conservation bang for the buck,” Haddad says. He adds that exotic or invasive species of plants showed no signs of spillover effect.
Wales plans for energy self-sufficiency with renewables in 20 years
Wales plans for energy self-sufficiency with renewables in 20 years
Ambitious, legally binding plans ‘set an example for the rest of the world to follow’, says Jonathan Porr
- guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 May 2009 15.41 BST
- Article history
Electric narrowboating in the Brecon Beacons, Wales. Photograph: Alamy
Wales today laid out radical plans to make it one of the most energy– and resource-efficient countries in the world within a generation.
The government development plans, which are legally binding, are far in advance of anything planned for England or Scotland and would see it become energy self-sufficient in using renewable electricity within 20 years and reduce waste to zero by 2050.
The proposals would make Wales one of only three countries in the world legally bound to develop “sustainably”.
“We intend to reduce by 80-90% our use of carbon-based energy, resulting in a similar reduction in our greenhouse gas generation,” said Jane Davidson, the Welsh environment minister, launching the sustainable development scheme at the Guardian’s Hay festival. “We are committed to making annual 3% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from 2011,” she added.