Contribution to ‘Ecolibrium Now: The Earth in Balance a Creative Tapestry in Support of Ending’, a book by artists, writers, poets, farmers and others who support the creation of a new international law to protect nature from Ecocide.
In my personal life, we grow most of our own food, we run our well insulated house on our own wood, we recycle, we compost and use renewable energy. But my individual and privileged life choices – because I had the income to make these changes – do nothing to change the systemic problems that face our generation. Although I firmly believe that the personal and the political should go hand in hand, my individual actions, even if multiplied a thousand times over, woukd not secure a better future for others.
So how do we make beneficial change for people and planet? At the end of the day, it comes from systemic action, either by governments (eg setting up the NHS) or where systemic public support becomes irresistible (eg civil liberties). The politics of nudge - small incremental improvements year on year - are utterly insufficient for the challenges ahead. Once you look at the earth as a single complex system, the global challenge is to maintain the optimal conditions for life. Taking a systemic approach also enables us to understand the interaction and the effect of action of one part of the world on another. John Rawls, the American philosopher adds another layer by focusing on inter-generational justice, where each generation should do unto future generations what they would have wanted past generations to do unto them.
Despite thousands of politician hours across the world being spent in making global commitments to tackle climate change and repair our damaged ecosystems, no one country has set or met the climate or biodiversity conservation challenges. Rather than strengthening the world commitments, in each area binding commitments have been replaced by non-binding strategic targets going forward to 2020 which also are unlikely to be met. The conferences carry on with their consequent emissions and there been no public outcry about the failure of government leaders to secure a safer longer term future for humanity. Business as usual and the systems that underpin it continue.
Attempts to use the language of business to make the argument, eg the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (the TEEB study) in 2010, have briefly flourished and then been largely forgotten although we do now have a global standard basis for natural capital accounting as a result. Various estimates establish the cost of biodiversity and ecosystem damage potentially at 18% of global economic output by 2050 – or between 2-6 trillion US$ pa. In the UK alone, I’m told, pollination without bees (and far more inefficiently) will cost us in the region of £435m pa.
With every indicator pointing in the same direction, the world stands as if paralysed. Nobody seriously believes that voluntary agreements will deliver, and yet that is the current trend. Collective action of the scale and pace needed requires legal underpinning as with the previous Kyoto Protocol. In 2012, the Earth Summit in Rio should have given the world a legal institutional framework for sustainable development and the green economy including appropriate monitoring and accountability in our common interest, and an international environmental court, but it failed to do either. Polly Higgins’ campaign to establish “Ecocide” as the fifth crime against humanity focuses on the need for enforceable, legally binding mechanisms in national and international law to hold to account perpetrators of long term severe damage to the environment. As an ex barrister who fully understands the importance of systems, Polly is a powerful proponent of changing the territory: establishing the fifth crime against humanity will inextricably link our futures with the health of the planet.
This link between people and planet really interests me. When the new, devolved Welsh Assembly came into being in 1999 it had a new and unique duty to promote sustainable development in the exercise of its functions. This was seen as extremely innovative and exciting duty, representing a new kind of democracy. It was supported by members of all parties. But there was no definition of sustainable development. Broadly there was support for what is usually known as the ‘Brundtland’ definition
"..development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
But interpreting this in a way to influence all government decisions in Wales was hard.
It would be fair to say the duty inspired some different and radical policies, eg the innovative Wales for Africa programme as a contribution to millennium development goals, the commitment to fair trade which saw Wales become the first Fairtrade country in the world, and the development of high level indicators on the economy, social justice, environment, the ecological footprint and wellbeing in recognition of the need for metrics against which real performance can be measured.
In its first ten years, the Welsh Government honed its thinking on sustainable development culminating in the publication of “One Wales One Planet,” in 2009, where the Government sought public support for a more sustainable Wales was being described as a country which
• lives within its environmental limits, using only its fair share of the earth’s resources so that our ecological footprint is reduced to the global average availability of resources, and we are resilient to the impacts of climate change
• has healthy, biologically diverse and productive ecosystems that are managed sustainably;
• has a resilient and sustainable economy that is able to develop whilst stabilising, then reducing, its use of natural resources and reducing its contribution to climate change;
• has communities which are safe, sustainable, and attractive places for people to live and work, where people have access to services, and enjoy good health;
• is a fair, just and bilingual nation, in which citizens of all ages and backgrounds are empowered to determine their own lives, shape their communities and achieve their full potential.
Perhaps more importantly, it articulated a collective commitment from all ministers to use sustainable development as the central organising principle of government and made an explicit commitment to bring down Wales ecological footprint to its fair share within the lifetime of a generation.
To make sustainable development real, it must be outcome focused. In order to test whether the political commitment to have sustainability at the heart of government policy making was delivering different outcomes through the civil service, the Welsh Auditor General decided to investigate whether the concept was adequately embedded in the government’s own business practices – and found that it wasn’t.
Separately, WWF Cymru commissioned a piece of independent research looking at ministers’ policy commitments and whether they were actively delivering on the overarching agenda. Even in my areas of work as Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing, we were found wanting, although for the first time, key policy decisions were taken in Wales on waste, on carrier bags on climate change, on retrofitting housing, on sustainability requirements in planning, on introducing Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship into the Welsh curriculum were directly linked to sustainable development and were inherently different from decisions being taken elsewhere in the UK.
Two key lessons came out of this experience. First, that the duty was not being delivered consistently; and second, that that the existing legislation from the Government of Wales Act, although innovative, was inadequate to guide policy makers..
Mark Twain once said, if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always had” and that is no longer good enough.
My last political act prior to leaving Government in 2011 was to propose, that the commitment to put sustainable development at the heart of government should be a key manifesto commitment. I’m delighted that this was accepted and in its manifesto for the last election, the Government party outlined its vision for
" a sustainable Wales to become a ‘one planet’ nation by putting sustainable development at the heart of government; creating a resilient and sustainable economy that lives within its environmental limits and only using our fair share of the earth’s resources to sustain our lifestyles."
That commitment is now being taken forward. The First Minister of Wales announced in 2011 that the Government of Wales would,
“Legislate to embed sustainable development as the central organising principle in all our actions across government and all public bodies.
and to monitor that externally:
this legislative commitment will be monitored externally by a new independent sustainable development body for Wales following the demise of the UK wide Sustainable Development Commission .
‘The Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill’ was published in July 2014 and as I write has just commenced its committee cycle.
Like Polly Higgins, I believe that the interrelationship between people and planet is so important, it needs protecting in law. Prior to my introducing the legislation on recycling which has seen Wales come from behind to outperform the rest of the UK, we had voluntary agreements and targets with the local authorities; prior to my introduction of our carrier bag charge, the retailers’ voluntary agreements couldn’t reduce bag use by 50%; the charge reduced it immediately by 90% and has brought much needed income to the voluntary sector. Some things need legislation, because they are of wide public benefit but will not be achieved by individual action without a legal basis – smoking and seatbelt legislation come to mind.
If sustainability is our best defence, it needs to be championed by the democratic classes and supported and protected by the law. When times are fiscally tough, public services retreat to the delivery of their statutory responsibilities. Making the future more resilient for people and planet seems to me to be at the heart of responsible government at all levels. The Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill must have teeth if it is to enable Wales to develop socially, economically and environmentally just policies for future generations. The Bill will need to create meaningful legal obligations, supported by monitoring and review mechanisms which impose significant consequences for failure. The Bill needs to be at the heart of the democratic process in Wales; the big vision of a sustainable future that helps the Government take decisions that are consistent with its principles.
We won’t know what the Bill will look like until it has been through its democratic processes, but assuming its core principle remain unchanged, I would expect future governments to be having some very serious discussions about what it means to live within environmental limits – and who knows? Perhaps in the future, Wales could use its legal commitment to future generations to be at the forefront of eradicating ecocide.