There should be no doubt about the scale of action needed to adapt to the climate emergency the Chief Executive of Natural Resources Wales (NRW) said today (15 March) as the environment body welcomed the Welsh Government’s financial commitment to strengthening the nation’s flood and coastal defences.
The Minister for Climate Change, Julie James MS has outlined a range of projects that will be supported over the forthcoming year as part of the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management, 2022-23 programme of investment.
With 1 in 8 (around 245,000) properties in Wales are at risk of flooding, the commitment will enable NRW to progress its plans to build and maintain flood defences across key flood risk areas across the nation.
The announcement comes in the weeks following the publication of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which underscored the urgency with which the world should act to mitigate against climate impacts.
Extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent and more severe in Wales in the future. Just four months on from COP26, where world leaders committed themselves to rapid action on climate change, the scale of the task is deemed more urgent than ever.
Across the whole of Wales, 73,000 properties at risk of flooding already benefit from NRW’s flood defences.
Pending relevant permissions and approvals, the schemes earmarked to benefit from the flood programme 2022/23 include:
New projects
Ongoing projects
Funding will also be available to help progress detailed appraisal work and flood risk project development work in Tenby, Llangefni, Porthmadog, Liswerry Pill in Newport, Aberdulais and in Bangor on Dee.
NRW will also receive funding to continue its substantial improvement project on its Flood Warning and ICT systems and other related services such as the flood forecasting and telemetry systems. This will help progress some of the actions outlined and the lessons learnt in the reviews of the February 2020 floods when NRW called for a seismic shift in how Wales responds to the climate emergency and manages its future flood risk.
The funding settlement will also enable NRW to progress important mapping and modelling work to inform future potential flood schemes and coastal adaptation planning. It will also support the delivery of many smaller projects across Wales including maintenance to the hydrometric work and the refurbishing and repairing of its network of flood defence structures.
