28^th January 2022

Your ref P-06-1231

Ms. Kayleigh Imperato

Deputy Clerk, Petitions Committee, Welsh Parliament By email only Petitions@Senedd.Wales

Dear Ms Imperato

Thank you for forwarding the Deputy Minister’s letter of 13th January 2022 to the Chair of the Petitions Committee, concerning the petition lodged by the students of Cardiff University School of Law and Politics Climate Change Grand Challenge Group on Rewilding, asking for ‘bee friendly’ bus stops - https://petitions.senedd.wales/petitions/244863.

Our thanks to the Committee for taking the time and trouble to consider and pursue the petition.

We welcome and are pleased to read in the Deputy Minister’s letter of the commitments made recently by the Welsh Government, including many since the petition was initially lodged. Progress appears to be being made.

You ask if we have anything further to add to the consideration of the petition.

We would simply suggest that the sooner green infrastructure - whether that is green-roofed buildings and structures, ‘wild’ verges, permeable surfaces, SUDS or bee-friendly bus stops - becomes the ‘norm’, rather than the exception, or simply an ‘add-on’, so much the better.

We would perhaps encourage and support the use by Welsh Government of regulatory changes, as opposed to planning policy changes, to enable us all to be more certain that green infrastructure is indeed embedded, as the Deputy Minister suggests it needs to be.

We look forward to the results of the Green Infrastructure Assessment currently being conducted by local authorities, which we hope will identify the very many opportunities out there to roll out more green infrastructure, including bee-friendly bus stops.

More generally, Cardiff University’s School of Law and Politics Climate Change Grand Challenge continues this academic year under a slightly different name - the Climate and Environment Project. This year students will be looking at three subject areas that they have selected - the electrification of transport in Wales, the making of land available for community tree planting in Wales and the

ease of re-use and recycling of packaging in Wales. We recognise that these are already areas of fast-moving change in Wales and we look forward to engaging further with Welsh Government over the next months and years.

Yours sincerely

Guy Linley-Adams

Lecturer in Law

Climate and Environment Project