Donate Now
Home » What we do » Working with the Welsh government and the Assembly » One Planet Aspiration conference 2011

One Planet Aspiration conference 2011

WWF Cymru’s conference brought together leading experts such as climate scientist Sir John Houghton, Will Day, Peter Roderick, and Peter Davies, Commissioner for Sustainable Futures.  

Speakers at 2011 One Planet Aspiration Conference in Cardiff

The conference looked at the challenges of climate change and resource scarcity, and the opportunities to deliver sustainability in Wales.

WWF Cymru also launched its report, Embedding the ‘One Planet’ Aspiration in Welsh Government 2011, which sets out how the Welsh Government can deliver on its bold commitments to a greener Wales.

The report found that that the Welsh Government has made a ‘commendable start’ to tackling Wales ecological and carbon ‘footprints’ but that the next five years are ‘crucial’ for new ministers to delivery on that aim.

 Speaking at the conference, the Minister for Environment and Sustainable Development, John Griffiths AM, announced his personal commitment to propose new legislation to strengthen the Welsh Government’s duty on sustainable development and extend it to the public sector.

The Minister said:

"The legislation we propose will help further our ambition for Wales to be a sustainable, one planet nation, and will build on the significant progress made by the last administration.

Anne Meikle

 Anne Meikle, Head of WWF Cymru, welcomed the Minister’s announcement. She said:

“The message from our One Planet Wales conference was one of urgency to deal with the challenging agenda of reducing Wales’ carbon footprint and ensuring that sustainability is firmly established across all areas of government and the public sector. The speakers, which included world leaders in climate science and global resource trends, demonstrated that it is critical the Government delivers on this in the next five years."

The Minister also paid tribute to the work of WWF Cymru. He said:

“WWF Cymru’s work has been so important in setting the agenda and debate around sustainable development. It sparked off so much of the activity of the last few years and guided what the Government actually adopted.”

The last government set out its ‘One Planet’ vision, of Wales using only its fair share of the earth’s resources. At present, if everyone in the world lived as we do in Wales, we would need around two and a half planets to sustain us.