Wales should be making its own decisions on climate change, rather than Brussels and London, Gwlad candidate Gwyn Wigley Evans told a climate change hustings in  Machynlleth.

He accused other General Election candidates – except the Liberal Democrat who did not attend –  for the Montgomeryshire constituency of failing to properly represent the will of local people on ‘greening Wales’.

“We are hamstrung by directives from central government telling farmers how to manage their land,” Gwyn told a packed meeting at the Plas organised by ecodyfi.

“Already our county has been blighted by imposing huge windfarms on rural communities with no benefit from them, and more being considered already, which is no way to win people over or to build a sustainable rural economy.

“We should be telling them what to do; they should not be telling us, the people of Wales deserve the right to have a proper say on all of our futures,” said Gwyn.

“And only a truly independent Wales political force can do that – which is why we have launched GWLAD GWLAD.”

Unlocking Wales’s renewable energy potential is one of the key elements of the party’s manifesto, but is opposed to onshore wind generation because of the disruption it causes to landscapes and communities.

“There has to be local benefit from all of the possible options on green energy, to date the big business which is benefiting from the massive Government payments has given local people only chicken feed payments.

“We firmly believe in community, a bottom up decision making process where it is local people who make the decisions on every development, including the doubtful re-wilding project on our already green and food producing hills which provide jobs and support a farming community which traces back to the Bronze Age,” Gwyn said.

Gwlad Gwlad is a newly-formed pro-independence party, launched in August 2018, which argues for Welsh independence, stressing the importance of giving communities and individuals freedom to run their own lives, without heavy-handed centralisation of the economy characterised by the Labour-dominated Welsh Government in Cardiff Bay.

The party is also putting forward candidates in Cardiff Central and the Vale of Glamorgan – other constituencies where Plaid Cymru has decided to stand down, effectively denying people in those constituencies an opportunity to vote for a sovereign state of Wales.