Megan

My name is Megan. I'm 29, and I grew up on my dad's sheep farm outside Cardigan. I've always been drawn to the coast here – there's something about the way the sea shapes everything, from the cliffs to the weather to how we live. When I studied environmental science at Aberystwyth University, I knew I wanted to work on marine conservation. The ocean doesn't recognise borders, but it responds to everything we do to it. I wanted to be part of fixing that relationship. My rescue collie Bramble comes with me on coastal surveys now – she's better at spotting seal colonies than I am.

After university, I got a brief stint with the Marine Conservation Society. I loved the work, but when the pandemic hit in 2020, their funding dried up. Around the same time, Dad lost half his flock to flooding. The water came down from the hills so fast it didn't drain for weeks. Watching him rebuild made me more determined to work on climate adaptation. The signs were everywhere. We needed people trained in flood management, renewable energy, marine monitoring. The government kept talking about green jobs and Net Zero targets. I thought there would be pathways opening up everywhere.

I was wrong about that.

In 2021, I applied to Natural Resources Wales for their graduate conservation scheme. It looked perfect – exactly the kind of programme that should exist if we're serious about environmental protection. The application process took months. When they finally got back to me, they said: "The budget has been cut. We cannot afford to run that programme." The officer sounded genuinely apologetic. They said they'd had hundreds of applications for places that no longer existed.

I accepted it at first. Budgets get tight. Priorities shift. These things happen.

Then I tried the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Surely they'd have green apprenticeships, given all the announcements about clean energy investment. The response was polite but clear: environmental apprenticeship funding had been cut by 40% that year. "There is no funding," they told me. Again, it sounded reasonable. Difficult choices in difficult times.

I looked closer to home. Coleg Ceredigion was advertising a renewable energy training course – wind turbine maintenance, solar installation, the practical skills I'd need to work on the infrastructure we're supposedly building everywhere. I enrolled immediately. Two weeks before it was due to start, they cancelled it. "We cannot afford to run that programme," the college administrator explained. Not enough government funding to cover the equipment and instructors.

The pattern was becoming clear, but I still believed the explanations. Money was tight. Resources were limited. I'd have to find another way.

I started applying for environmental positions directly – anything from wind farm technician roles to conservation officer posts. Twenty-three applications across Wales. The feedback was always the same: I had the degree, I had the enthusiasm, but I lacked specific certifications. Marine monitoring qualifications. Renewable energy safety training. GIS mapping credentials. All the things I'd tried to get on the courses that had been cancelled or defunded.

It was like being told I needed a key to get the key.

Finally, I found a part-time role with RSPB Cymru. Not ideal, but it was environmental work, and they said they might be able to train me in marine monitoring – the skills that everyone agreed the sector desperately needed. On my second day, my supervisor sat me down. "We'd love to send you on the marine monitoring course," she said. "But we cannot afford to run that programme anymore. The training budget was the first thing to go."

That's when I started noticing the contradictions.

Walking through Cardigan one afternoon with Bramble, I passed the old Marine Centre building. It had been locked up for two years, ever since the marine biology courses stopped. But the building was still there. The equipment was still inside – I could see microscopes and water testing kit through the windows. The instructors were still living in the area. One of them, Dr. Evans, runs a coffee shop now because there's no marine education work.

I met three other environmental science graduates in the same coffee shop that week. All of us trying to get into marine conservation. All of us blocked by the same missing training. Sarah wanted to work on kelp forest restoration. James had written his dissertation on coastal erosion management. Anna spoke fluent Welsh and wanted to develop community-based conservation programmes. We were all there, ready to work, sitting around a table talking about opportunities that apparently couldn't exist because "there was no money."

That's when I started to understand what money actually meant.

I used to accept the excuse that "there was no money." I hear it differently now. The government that prints the notes and mints the coins told me it could not find enough of them to train the people who were standing right there, ready to work. But the people existed. The skills could be taught. The buildings and materials were available. All of them were sitting idle.

The excuse was not a fact. It was a choice wrapped in the language of impossibility. The government that issues the pound chose not to spend the pounds that would connect us to this work. That is a political decision dressed as an accounting problem.

I'm still here, still watching the coast, still ready to do the work. But now I understand that what happened to me wasn't bad luck or natural scarcity. It was a series of political choices made by people who had alternatives. They chose not to fund the training. They chose not to run the courses. They chose not to connect the people to the work, even though the climate emergency demands exactly that connection.

The real question was never about money. It was about whether the people existed, whether the skills could be taught, whether the materials were available. We did. They could. They were.

What I've learned is that this story isn't just mine. It's the story of every constituency where people and needs exist side by side while someone in Westminster says the cupboard is bare. The cupboard was never bare. It was locked, and they chose not to open it.