SoNaRR 2025 SMNR and biodiversity assessments

SoNaRR is our assessment of the sustainable management of natural resources in Wales. It is a comprehensive and unified evidence base which is used by Welsh Government, public bodies, and other groups to inform policy, planning, and wider decision-making.  

In SoNaRR 2025 we use four interlinked aims as a framework to assess Wales’s progress towards SMNR. These aims focus on stocks of natural resources, ecosystem resilience, healthy places for people and a regenerative economy. 

There are 8 broad ecosystem assessments and 3 key natural resources (air, water and soil) assessments. These use evidence that describes: the drivers of environmental change and the resulting pressures on the individual ecosystem and natural resource; the state of each natural resource and ecosystem; and the benefits they each provide to us. This underlying evidence can be explored on our evidence portal.  

We also pull together evidence from these ecosystem and natural resource assessments, along with other national evidence, to describe progress against these aims at an all-Wales level. 

Click on the links below to read the key messages and summaries for each of our 
assessments, or download our report to read the assessments in full. 

All Wales aims assessments  

Aim 1: Stocks of natural resources are safeguarded and enhanced 

Aim 2: Ecosystems are resilient to expected and unforeseen change 

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

Aim 4: A regenerative economy with sustainable levels of production and consumption 

Biodiversity assessment 

Natural resource assessments 

Air  

Soil 

Water 

Ecosystem assessments 

Coastal margins 

Enclosed farmland 

Freshwater 

Marine 

Mountain, moorland and heath 

Semi-natural grassland 

Urban 

Woodlands