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CREDO Research: Interview with Jane Davidson, author of FutureGen: Lessons from a Small Country

‘A big saviour for me was nature’

I live in a small village on the west coast of Wales. From the moment the pandemic started it was quite extraordinary how our sense of community and agency grew.

Even though I’ve lived here a decade, I’d never experienced it to such an extent.

I felt really wrapped up in the community here - looked after. There was a very strong and satisfying sense of connectedness. Providing the warmth of a tribe.

The pandemic has given us a real picture of human cooperation. We should celebrate that when humans, as a social species, cooperate, they can achieve greater outcomes.

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Good Governance: One Planet Standard: time to step up on sustainability governance - Jane Davidson

Back in 2007, after the Welsh General Election in May, I was given the post of Cabinet Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing in Wales. It was a huge brief with responsibility for all aspects of nature and the environment, as well as climate change, energy, planning, marine and buildings.

Although I'd lobbied hard for such a portfolio to be created, I had no notion it would be given to me. In many ways it seemed like a double responsibility - ministerial and personal. How could I be a minister with the responsibility for tackling climate change in Wales without also being a minister who demonstrated in my daily life a reduction in emissions?

Being given this brief led directly to a transformation of my own lifestyle. We had discussed it previously as a family, and had already started to make decisions: not flying for holidays, increasing our use of public transport, eating less meat, driving more fuel-efficient cars, growing more fruit and vegetables (organically, to avoid pesticides), but had no plans to do anything beyond that.

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Frontiers in Sustainability Journal: Factoring Future Generations Into Universities' Strategic Intent: Could a Law Help?

Wales is the first country in the world to have put into law the protection of future generations through its Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015; the first country to have a legal mechanism through the Act to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals and the first country to have put the Brundtland definition of sustainable development into law. What does this mean for the values taught in Welsh universities, and how can the university role be repurposed in the interests of future generations? Building on her research for the book #futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country which was published this year, Jane Davidson, who, in her previous role as Minister in Welsh Government, proposed what is now the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, will explore the opportunities from this new values framework to transform the university sector, in particular, the student experience in Wales, and whether there are further lessons that would be valuable elsewhere.

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Irish Tech News #FUTUREGEN Review: LESSONS FROM A SMALL COUNTRY by Simon Cocking

In #futuregen, Jane Davidson explains how, as Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing in Wales, she proposed the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015—the first piece of legislation on Earth to place regenerative and sustainable practice at the heart of government. Unparalleled in its scope and vision, the Act connects environmental and social health and looks to solve complex issues such as poverty, education and unemployment.

Davidson reveals how and why such groundbreaking legislation was forged in Wales—once reliant on its coal, iron and steel industries—and explores how the shift from economic growth to sustainable growth is creating new opportunities for communities and governments all over the world.

#futuregen is the inspiring story of a small, pioneering nation discovering prosperity through its vast natural beauty, renewable energy resources and resilient communities. It’s a living, breathing prototype for local and global leaders as proof of what is possible in the fight for a sustainable future.

#futuregen Lessons from a Small Country, reviewed

This is a positive and interesting book, who knew Wales was doing so many positive things. We are fans of CAT, the Centre for Alternative Technology, and Wales has some beautiful locations, but this book is a great guide to a conscious and intentional strategy to plan for the future and make Wales a more sustainable place.

Jane Davidson, the author, does address concerns and questions about whether Wales is too small to offer relevant insights for other countries around the world. However in many ways it is the New Zealands, Singapores, Finlands and Israels among others that are leading the way in innovative approaches to dealing with climate change and making our planet a better place to live. Davidson explains how they have identified, addressed and planned to get Wales to a better place.

In many ways during this recent lockdown period it has been a clear demonstration that local and small are actually the smartest way to identify what the issues are, and to create locally appropriate solutions. #futuregen is an inspiring case study, and a smart read for other locales, small countries, and even large ones to move forward in a positive and sustainable way.

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Oakville News: #futuregen Book Review by Chris Stoate

See the article on Oakville News’s website here

Ever since reading Jane Jacobs’ wonderful little book, Systems of Survival, many years ago, I have developed a clearer and clearer view of the roles of the public and private sectors.  The private sector’s commercial ethos is about meeting needs and wants, with innovation, industry, service and trade, in order to  improve standards of living and quality of life.  The public sector’s guardianship ethos is about protection and preservation: ensuring the sustainability of society including the activities of the private sector. It means environmental foresight and fostering social cohesion among other things, along with security.  

To strike this balance is not easy. It involves using taxes and regulation to ensure sustainability without stifling present day innovation and prosperity. Of course, there are overlaps and gray areas when you get down to cases, but broadly speaking the private sector is about wealth generation, while governing should be about creating equality of opportunity and ensuring that wealth generation can continue for future generations.

So, I was delighted to discover the ground-breaking initiative of the Welsh government, which enacted The Well-Being of Future Generations Act.  Jane Davidson was the prime mover of this legislation. She was Wales’ former Minister of Education and Minister of the Environment, Sustainability and Housing, and is the current Pro-Vice Chancellor Emeritus, University of Wales Trinity St. David, and associate faculty at Harvard University.  

Jane Davidson has written a remarkable account beginning with her personal path to “living lightly” as she calls it, and of the development and passage of The Well-Being of Future Generations Act, and of what the Act has meant to governing in Wales.  The book is called #futuregen:  Lessons from a Small Country, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2020.

“What Wales is doing today, the world will do tomorrow.” - Nikhil Seth, UN Assistant Secretary General

It has always seemed to me that the most profound ideas often seem beautifully simple and obvious.  What struck me most about the project of the Well-Being of Future Generations Act is how clearly non-partisan it is:  no one can argue that we should provide for the well-being of current and future generations.  

We can argue about whether health care should be provided publicly, privately, or both; if it is good to have students pay for their own post-secondary education; and if market forces alone will preserve shrinking resources or if taxes or regulation is required…but good government means thinking long-term.  All parties know this even though as a practical matter electoral considerations and imminent crises drive most decisions.  It is not easy to think beyond the next time the government must face the public at the polls.  The public is busy with its own immediate needs, wants and worries. Long-term considerations are often addressed in banal if high-sounding promises, rather than in the meat of legislation.

What Wales has done is to make thinking about future generations the law.  Who could argue that this should be the guiding principle of governing in every country in the world?

Getting the Act passed was a feat of determination and political skill. The book is a fascinating read for anyone wondering what is actually involved in creating legislation.  Getting it passed was only the first step.  The key to making the Act really mean something was to align the machinery of government, the civil service, around the Act as not simply one of many competing priorities, but as the guiding principle that must inform every government decision.  The paradigm shift Wales achieved should be a model for every country on earth.  

In the face of the ecological degradation which we are barely coming to terms with, The Well-Being of Future Generations Act provides for a re-ordering of government priorities and a mission-driven approach to government that could not be more-timely.  Jane Davidson was behind that paradigm shift in Wales. She describes the fascinating journey to making her vision of government as guardian of sustainability into a reality in #futuregen:  Lessons from a Small Country.  

In my own view, if government were to follow the principles enacted into law in Wales, the private sector would be liberated to maximize our well-being and quality of life.

Some of the debates we have about shareholder versus stakeholder corporate governance, which risk entrusting profit-seeking enterprises with the future of the planet and either undermine or let government off the hook, would be moot. It would allow  the private sector to get on with maximizing shareholder value by innovating and meeting the needs and wants of its customers. In turn the government could focus on its role in ensuring sustainability through environmental protection and social cohesion (the Seven Generation model the first Canadians followed, and the Peace, Order and Good Government which were Canada’s founding principles), as well as help the private sector flourish with as light a touch as is consistent with the guiding principle of  The Well-Being of Future Generations.  

The book is an undramatized account of the unglamorous business of making real change. It should be required reading for everyone working in government. The Act is a template for governing towards a world in which future generations profit from the wisdom and foresight of their predecessors, rather than suffering from their focus on short-term self-interest.  The passage and implementation of the Well-Being of Future Generations Act is a game changer. #futuregen:  Lessons from a Small Country is a remarkable contribution by this purpose driven political leader and thinker.

Europe Now Journal: Editor's Pick - November 2020

#futuregen. Lessons from a Small Country
By Jane Davidson
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Recommended by Elizabeth Jones

Jane Davidson’s #futuregen is an eloquent and deeply personal handbook for democratic governance in the twenty-first century. In six chapters, Davidson reflects on her twin passions for the natural environment and social justice, and how she channeled that energy into groundbreaking 2015 legislation for the Welsh nation: The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act that mandated that all government plans, whether for a new road, educational institution, airport, or housing development must be sustainable―defined as “the maximization of well-being over the long term (56).” The consideration for future generations into the practice of politics, begun in 1992, was a long uphill climb. Davidson stresses that this framework allowed campaigners to sidestep the false choice of either bolstering the economy or reviving Wales’ biodiversity and the partisan bickering and inaction bred by such dichotomies. Davidson, now a smallholder in West Wales and Pro-Vice Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, is the former Minister of Education and Minister of the Environment, Sustainability in the Welsh Government. She shares credit for the Act with mentors and collaborators, the most important which were ordinary Welsh citizens who answered the question: “what sort of country do you want to see in future?” Dubbed “the Wales we want,” the 2011-12 initiative took its cue from the United Nations’ “The World We Want” dialogues about global sustainability and how it can be achieved. Davidson’s success at nudging a range of skeptical government actors for their support is deeply indebted to the voices of young Welsh citizens, environmental scientists, and grassroots social justice advocates who offered hopeful, and specific, visions for the future. She argues that the campaign was as much a cultural as a legislative endeavor, and that thinking and acting sustainably needs to become matter-of-course rather than seen as a series of tiresome hurdles.

Davidson’s attention to moral suasion in enacting sweeping political change is at once pragmatic and idealistic. She is justifiably proud of the Welsh model for making sustainability mainstream and points to the Act’s many ripple effects, both as a template for other nations, including the UK, and in the Welsh projects undertaken since the Act passed. Among the most exciting of these is Project Skyline, the plan to transform three valleys in South Wales from environmentally ravaged and impoverished former mining communities into vibrant and sustainable ones by 2050. Launched in 2019, the initiative rests on collective ownership of the land, where residents “had no difficulty in instinctively balancing the goals of the Well-Being of Future Generations Act” (150). #futuregen is an ambitious book because Davidson expects governments and citizens alike to roll up their sleeves and follow the Welsh example, no matter where they live. She shows us how to begin our journey toward sustainability at the individual, community, regional, national, and global levels.

See the review here

Intergenerational Foundation: Book Review - #futuregen

When Jane Davidson was Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing in Wales from 2007 to 2011 she became a leading architect of the groundbreaking Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act (2015). In her new book, #Futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country, she tells the story and relays her vision. Our reviewer, IF Research Intern Hugo Till, is impressed

#futuregen is a book of many interwoven narratives. On one level, it is an account of how Wales became the first country to enshrine the rights of future generations into law, on another it tells the story of how the Welsh Assembly found its feet and asserted Wales’ place as a pioneer for environmental and social sustainability, and on another, it recounts a deeply personal tale of Jane Davidson’s own role in these events.

She offers us a timely reminder that for intergenerational justice, as with so many issues, “the political has always been personal and the personal, political.”

Radical and robust

But the personal touches do not obscure the radical potential of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act. In a world where taking “long-term action” often means nothing more than setting distant targets and letting your successors sort it out, Wales’ example of placing legal obligations on all public bodies to “carry out sustainable development, including a requirement to set and publish ‘well-being objectives’, [and] to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to meet those objectives” stands in stark contrast.

The strength of the Act, Davidson explains, is that it goes beyond mere “tinkering around the edges”, but instead demands a complete reappraisal of how we perceive our world, and what we should value.

#futuregen argues that the climate and sustainability crises are really just symptoms of a broader “crisis of perception”, whereby “large institutions subscribe to the concepts of an outdated worldview, a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with our overpopulated, globally interconnected world.”

Redefining goals, global and local

To this end, the well-being goals mandate a break with the paradigm of extractive capitalism and the “unicorn of unrestricted growth”, redefining prosperity as “low carbon, delivering within environmental limits and capable of generating decent work”.

Davidson is right to argue that such measures – which go beyond encouraging government and corporations to pursue their current goals more sustainably, and instead seek to redefine these goals and change the culture of our institutions – are now necessary across the globe to secure a future.

But despite Davidson locating the Act in a broader sustainability movement for global and systemic change, she also emphasises that part of the Act’s strength is how it attends the particular character of Wales and the strength of Welsh communities.

The act is not about tying the hands of democratically elected governments and surrendering power to faceless bureaucrats tasked with enforcing the regulation. Rather, it seeks to change the culture of government and its relationship with civil society, and to empower local communities to build the futures that their grandchildren will want.

Skyline

Davidson recounts how the framework that the Act provides was instrumental to Skyline, “a community land-stewardship project to look at what would happen if the community were given back their surrounding land in perpetuity.”

It challenges the privatisation of nature whereby land “is managed by national and international corporations with little direct economic benefit to the local community” (and with very large environmental costs), and instead reasserts the stewardship of Welsh people over their surroundings, “reconnecting communities to a landscape so that it can provide income, jobs, a place of social and cultural activity and a better home for nature.”

But crucially, in each of the three valleys where Skyline was trialled, the process was steered by community leaders who emerged over the course of the projects. Thus each project began to reflect the particular “history, meaning and potential of each place”. This was the almost poetic wish list that arose from a public consultation with the people of Ynysowen in the Merthyr Valley:

The skyline is for looking at

The skyline is the Taff trail

Flowers, lakes and litter bins

Lampposts and benches

There might be fairies

There are magic mushrooms

I want round trees not pointed ones

Playgrounds, camping and fire pits

More wildlife

Flowers and gazebos

Spiders

Thus the project realises one of the central goals of the Act: to give local people the right to imagine their own futures. Whether the Act has the regulatory teeth to allow people to realise these futures remains to be seen, as Davidson admits.

Windows of opportunity

Davidson reflects on the importance of “the right time and place for whole system change”, and the advantages of using a disruptive moment, which in Wales’ case was the birth of the Welsh Assembly.

Perhaps the massive disruption caused by COVID-19 provides a similar opportunity. As Davidson explains, “We know now that governments can act – and quickly – when faced with an emergency that they must address. We must next encourage them to respond similarly to the existential threats of climate change and nature degradation to current and future generations.”

Lord Bird’s Future Generations Bill, currently awaiting its second reading in the House of Lords, builds upon the momentum of the Welsh Act to “embed long-termism, prevention and the interests of future generations at the heart of UK policy making”. This UK-wide Bill has to opportunity to be even more ambitious than the Welsh Act, since it can take advantage of powers that are not devolved to regional government. In particular, it promises to hold not only government departments but large corporations to account for unsustainable practices.

In #futuregen, Jane Davidson tells a delicately personal story but with global ramifications. In a world where control over the future seems to be increasingly slipping from our grasp, it provides a bold vision for a better tomorrow as well as a strategic map for getting there.

Read the review here