SoNaRR 2025 Aim 3: Wales has healthy places for people, protected from environmental risks

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This webpage is part of the State of Natural Resources Report 2025

Wales’ natural resources deliver immense health, wellbeing and cultural value, yet exposure to hazards and access to nature remain unequally shared and unevenly distributed. The sustainable management of natural resources (SMNR) approach emphasises integrated solutions that advance public health and cultural well-being, protect biodiversity, restore ecosystem resilience and underpin regenerative economic activity.

Since the SoNaRR 2020 assessment, Wales has taken important steps to strengthen protections and improve its management of natural resources to support healthy places. These include the Environment (Air Quality and Soundscapes) Act 2024, which addresses air pollution, and the Agriculture (Wales) Act 2023, which promotes nature-based solutions for farmers.

The nation has committed to the global ‘30 by 30’ biodiversity target and invested in local flood-resilience projects under the National Strategy for Flood and Coastal Risk Management (2020). Natural Resources Wales has also directly contributed through targeted grant programmes, co-productive work with Public Services Boards, and initiatives such as Natur am Byth.

Despite this progress, Wales still faces significant challenges in creating “Healthy places for people, protected from environmental risks.” These include:

  • Poor health outcomes linked to the environment, with chronic diseases made worse by air pollution, low physical activity and limited access to nature.
  • Climate and nature emergencies that affect health, where flooding, biodiversity loss and degraded ecosystems undermine our nation’s resilience and well-being.
  • Persistent inequities, with deprived and marginalised communities facing higher exposure to hazards, poorer physical and mental health with fewer opportunities to benefit from green and blue spaces.

This 2025 assessment builds on the foundation of the 2020 report and adopts a One Health approach: “a holistic framework recognising the interconnectedness of human, animal, and ecosystem health.” This approach aligns with the mission-based priorities set out in the Future Generations Report 2025.

Vision

That every person in Wales lives in an environment that nurtures their health, every community is resilient to environmental risk, and natural resources are managed so future generations inherit ecosystems that are healthier, more biodiverse and more valued than today. This can be achieved through:

  • Health protection: Reduce air, water and soil-borne hazards, and impacts of climate change. Prioritising communities where risk and deprivation coincide.
  • Health improvement: Promote daily access to green and blue space, mainstream green social-prescribing, access to nature and active-travel for health benefits.
  • Cultural benefits & equity: co-design, interpret and fund nature projects as part of ‘place-making’ so every community feels welcome and represented.

Delivering these actions advances all seven Well-being of Future Generations goals and contributes to progress against the National Indicators for: Healthy life expectancy (Indicator 2), Air quality (Indicator 4), Dwelling safety (Indicator 31), Flood risk (Indicator 32), Mental well-being (Indicator 29), Greenhouse-gas emissions (Indicator 41), and Ecosystem health (Indicator 43).

Key messages

  • With the appropriate management, Wales' ecosystems can protect us from many environmental risks such as flooding, heat stress and pollution. These nature-based solutions (NbS) can deliver multiple benefits simultaneously by building climate resilience, restoring habitats and ecological corridors to support nature recovery, and cutting pollution, all while proving more adaptable to climate change than grey infrastructure.
  • Across the UK, green and blue spaces help avoid an estimated £6-8 billion in NHS costs every year through the health benefits of outdoor recreation and physical activity. In Wales alone, health gains from recreation and tourism in nature are valued at over £320 million annually, highlighting the critical role of nature in supporting well-being and reducing pressures on health services.
  • Biodiversity and ecosystem resilience are the engines of this system. Wildflower grassland, salt-marsh and broadleaf woodland all multiply pollinators, boosts soil life and strengthen our resilience to climate shocks as well as improving our health and well-being. This integrated approach means that restoring habitats not only slows the biodiversity crisis but simultaneously creates green jobs, improves air quality, and builds the ecological corridors that underpin ecosystem resilience.
  • Welsh landscapes are more than simple ecosystem goods and services factories, they are touchstones of our identity. National Parks are officially recognised as part of Wales’ cultural fabric and laboratories for sustainable living. Dark-sky reserves now attract visitors to stargaze in the same hills that nurture the Welsh language and folklore, turning environmental quality into cultural and economic value(s). Protecting nature therefore also protects stories, language, and sense of place.
  • At the same time, our ecosystems operate as a nationwide life-support system, locking away million tonnes of carbon, filtering air pollutants and trapping agricultural run-off pollution every year.
  • Well-designed nature-based solutions amplify these benefits: restored peatlands and floodplain wetlands sequester CO₂ while flattening flood peaks, native woodlands shade urban heat while intercepting particulates and ammonia, and vegetated swales trap micro-plastics before they reach our rivers and coasts.
  • Protecting and enhancing natural capital is therefore not only a cultural duty, it is preventive medicine, climate insurance and economic common sense rolled into one.

Read the full Aim 3: Wales has healthy places for people, protected from environmental risks assessment in our State of Natural Resources Report 2025.

Read this assessment



Evidence needs

While Aim 3 sets a clear ambition for 'Healthy Places,' our ability to operationalise this is constrained by a fragmented evidence base. We can currently identify opportunities for nature-based solutions, but we lack the longitudinal evidence required to quantify their actual impacts on health and resilience. This leaves decision-makers navigating complex trade-offs without a clear map of the risks or benefits.

Bridging this gap requires moving beyond static, process-based evaluations toward systemic monitoring and evaluation that links ecosystem health directly to socio-economic outcomes. We need to prioritise multidisciplinary research, specifically between environmental and public health bodies to quantify the specific benefits of nature exposure on well-being.

Finally, we must formalise citizen engagement/involvement not just as a data source, but as a reality check, ensuring our metrics reflect actual community “lived” experiences rather than abstract indicators.

Key evidence sources

Explore some of the evidence we have used to inform our assessment:

Case studies

Citizen science to monitor coastal change

Collaboration between NRW, Wales Coastal Monitoring Centre and Local Authorities to implement CoastSnap, a citizen science project to enable coastal visitors to contribute photographs to record coastal change. The project aims to engage coastal users in understanding coastal change as well as contributing data.

CoastSnap - Citizen Science and Coastal Change

Local Places for Nature Programme

Local places for nature is not prescriptive in what it supports. It promotes a bottom-up approach where activity is community led. It aims to create areas that support nature within communities, in particular urban and peri-urban areas; encourage a greater appreciation and value of nature; create more green spaces, honouring our commitment to do so; and support wider biodiversity objectives.

Local Places for Nature Programme | GOV.WALES

Strategy for Ocean Literacy in Wales

An Ocean Literacy working group under the Coasts and Seas Partnership has developed a Strategy for Ocean Literacy in Wales. Work is underway to secure resource to support further engagement around and delivery of actions under the draft strategy.

Natural Resources Wales / UK’s first ocean literacy strategy launches in Wales

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