O’r Mynydd i’r Môr / Summit to Sea

I grew up during the miners strike’ as the daughter of a miner. I often wonder how the mining communities might have evolved, and risen to the challenge of necessary change, if they hadn’t been hit so hard with mass pit closures. It is after all so much harder to recover from that, where everything has been taken away, including a whole way of life.

The Summit to Sea project provides an amazing opportunity for mid Wales to lead the way. There are so many avenues that this project can explore which I hope will boost the local economy and provide stability for some of the communities that have experienced the decline of some livelihoods in the area.

Reforms as a result of Brexit open the door of possibility for agricultural, rural and coastal communities. While these changes create a period of serious financial uncertainty they also create opportunity to engage with the debate about what landscape management should look like for the future.

Communities thrive on connections: what they do together cements relationships and ensures that they are greater than the sum of their parts.

I hope that this project will enable communities to grow and be strong, stimulating vital services such as public transport links, strong education provision and economic reasons for people from this unique place to stay in the area, to work and to live.

Most people live and work on the land. It’s important to see that what happens on land can affect the marine environment, and start looking at it as a whole.

This project will have a strong focus on local livelihoods and the economy, which I think is essential to get that balanced approach and to ensure that you’ve got resilience and protection for both ecosystem and economy.

For me, that’s the key to make it successful long term: actually looking at all elements – culture, livelihood and Welsh language heritage – you’re looking at the whole thing.

It’s about bringing people together, and I think it will be really interesting and exciting to see how that develops.

But aside from the excitement there are also uncertainties and challenges, such as losses of biodiversity across the landscape and fragmentation of important habitats coupled with an increasingly difficult economic and policy situation which is putting pressure on the viability of making a living from the land. Summit to Sea is a hopeful development and an opportunity for bringing voices together.

Encouraging conversation about land use amongst a more diverse group of people is good because lots of people have got a stake in the survival of these habitats and of local culture and heritage.

It’s important that this place is recognised as ecologically and culturally significant.

The work I do is to help to restore ancient woodland – providing advice and support to landowners. Woodland restoration brings benefits both economically and ecologically.

For example, I work with woodland owners and small-scale contractors who are locally based to bring these neglected woodlands into management. Many ancient woodlands were planted with conifers in the 20th century. These sites need to be carefully managed in order to safe guard and strengthen their biological diversity. Also, the soils within ancient woodland are really important. These woodlands have never been ploughed or disturbed and so the soil retains a seed bank from the pre-plantation woodland along with a greater fungal diversity.

By managing these sites carefully, we can protect the genetic heritage of our local woodland ecosystems and at the same time create work for local contractors.

Farmers and landowners, they’re very concerned about maintaining their presence in the area. Collectively, as communities and families. They see the present time as changing times, with all the threats and opportunities presented by Brexit, and also Common Agricultural Policy reform.

I think what’s really important with the Summit to Sea project is this sense of ownership.

From my point of view, it’s not just to do with the environment, or ecology, or wildlife, it’s very much to do with the human ecology, and community, and culture.

That resonates very much for me in Wales because, as somebody who’s from Wales, I’m a Welsh speaker, all my relatives are Welsh speakers and I’m from a Welsh speaking community.

I think that has to be valued equally as much as the environment. I think one supports the other.

It’s so important to make sure that local people are the key beneficiaries for this. 

Things which bring more money into the area are really necessary. There is still a problem with young people moving out of the area because of a lack of opportunities.  

It would be good to have the young people seeing the Dyfi Valley as an exciting place where they can earn a living – and a good living. That way, things like the local culture, the Welsh language, will also be safeguarded as well.

It’s the sheer scale and ambition of the  O’r Mynydd i’r Môr / Summit to Sea project that excites me. There’s a long historic connection with the sea around Cardigan Bay, from old legends, through shipbuilding locally to current wildlife tourism. If we can connect projects on land, show how they influence the sea such as through better water quality and marine environment with thriving wildlife, we can stop seeing the sea as ‘separate’ and integrate it into a sustainable future for wildlife and people.  

Although historically there was a larger fishing industry in this area, it’s now much smaller and mainly small family boats. By directly involving fishers in co-management of the area we can all work together to improve the environmental quality of at least part of Cardigan Bay, improving sustainable fishing opportunities, increasing the wildlife and tourism opportunities. This in turn could help develop a local market. Too much fisheries policy has been imposed from a distance with little understanding of the local environmental and economic conditions. A locally managed sea would be better for all.