SoNaRR 2025: “This is not just a warning about the future. It is a reckoning with the present.”

New NRW Chair calls for major systems change to save nature at launch of major report

Wales must fundamentally rethink how it heats homes, grows food, travels, and uses land if it is to avoid deepening climate and nature crises.

This is the urgent call to action issued today by Neil Sachdev, the new Chair of Natural Resources Wales (NRW) as he prepares to welcome Wales’ decision-makers to the launch of a major new report on the state of the nation’s natural environment.

Published under the Environment Act, to inform discussions in the run up to the Senedd elections, NRW’s State of Natural Resources Report (SoNaRR) 2025 lays bare the pressures Wales is placing on the natural world. The report is an assessment of how sustainably Wales is managing the natural resources we use, tracking the health of our waters, the air we breathe, our land and seas, our towns and green spaces, and the plants and wildlife that hold our ecosystems together.

While some progress has been made since the last report in 2020, our third assessment unequivocally shows Wales’ natural environment remains at a critical tipping point.

The evidence from SoNaRR 2025 shows that nature across the country is under sustained and intensifying pressure, with ecosystems struggling to cope with the combined impacts of climate change, pollution, habitat loss and unsustainable land use. Almost one in five species now faces extinction, only 40% of water bodies achieve good status, and ecosystem resilience remains low across much of the country. Wales is also currently using more than its fair share of global natural resources.

Peatland restoration, air quality legislation, the Sustainable Farming Scheme and the Wales Metal Mines Programme are examples of targeted interventions that are beginning to address long-standing environmental challenges.

Yet Wales is still consuming and degrading natural resources faster than they can be replenished. The report underlines that the pressures are systemic, embedded in how we heat our homes, how we travel, how we grow and consume our food, and how we build and invest.

At a launch event in Cardiff, NRW and the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner have come together to urge policymakers to use SoNaRR’s evidence to rethink how Wales’ food, energy, transport and land systems work, and develop bold, transformative policies that can restore nature, strengthen resilience and build a fair, regenerative economy.

The co-produced Bridges to the Future chapter provides a roadmap for the systemic change Wales needs across food, energy, travel and the built environment. Set out against a ‘Five Bridges’ framework, it offers practical ways to turn evidence into action, close the gap between policy and everyday life, align national priorities with local delivery, and invites every sector to the table to play their part.

The Five Bridges to transformation are.

1.    Redesign everyday systems

2.    Restore nature as essential infrastructure

3.    Build a regenerative economy

4.    Realign governance for the long term

5.    Deliver a fair transition

Speaking at the launch, NRW Chair, Neil Sachdev will say:

SoNaRR has shown us that the most damaging pressures on nature are not confined to environmental policy. They are built into how we heat our homes, how we travel, how we grow and consume food, how we use land, and how we invest in places.

If Wales is to remain a place where people and nature thrive, we must change the systems themselves - not just manage their impacts. 

SoNaRR is the diagnosis, but Bridges to the Future is our shared response. At this pivotal moment, and ahead of the Senedd elections, we are asking leaders across all sectors to step forward, share responsibility and work in partnership with us to deliver the scale of change that Wales needs.

At the launch at the Sbark / Spark Innovation Campus at Cardiff University, Neil will set out the call for systems change in a panel session alongside the Deputy First Minister for Wales, Huw Irranca-Davies MS, Derek Walker, Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, and Elspeth Jones, Nature Guardian for the National Infrastructure Commission Wales.

Derek Walker, Future Generations Commissioner for Wales said:

Nature is one of our most powerful allies in creating better lives for all of us – preventing flooding, reducing pollution and protecting our health. 

Without urgent, coordinated action across the public sector to halt and reverse the dangerous decline as laid out in Wales 2025 State of Natural Resources Report, we are quite literally putting lives at risk unnecessarily. 

Nature solutions are all around us – as seen across Wales from Swansea’s green roofs to seagrass restoration across the country, and everyone in every public service needs to play a role to unlock the power of nature – in budget planning to land management and how we look after our buildings. 

The consequences of a Wales without adequate nature to sustain us, will fall hardest on the most disadvantaged people, and be an unimaginable burden to hand onto future generations.

Deputy First Minister with responsibility for Climate Change, Huw Irranca-Davies said:

I’d like to thank Natural Resources Wales for this report which gives us a robust assessment of the challenges facing our natural environment. Its findings will play an important role in the development of our future natural resources policy in Wales.

Protecting and enhancing nature is essential for people today, and for future generations. The people of Wales have made real progress – but we need to go further again.

This report sets out how we can work together to respond, strengthening action to restore nature, tackle pollution and build resilience to climate change. The Welsh Government will lead this work alongside partners across the public sector, business and communities to turn evidence into meaningful action.

Neil Sachdev added:

Our report shows that restoring nature is a whole-society challenge. It demands collective ownership – across public bodies, businesses, communities and citizens. Those who argue otherwise need only look at the environmental and climate impacts we have seen in our communities, land and rivers over the last decade.

This is not just a warning about our future; it is a reckoning with our present. If we act now, with urgency and shared ownership, Wales can lead - not just in ambition - but by delivering the scale of transformation the nation needs. If we don’t, the next SoNaRR will simply document deeper loss, higher costs and narrower choices.

The State of Natural Resources Report (SoNaRR) 2025 is available here. The Bridges to the Future briefing for policy and decision makers will be available here on 29 January 2026.