Ahead of the release of her new book, #futuregen, Lessons from a Small Country, Business News Wales MD, Mark Powney spoke to former minister Jane Davidson about her role in the creation of the act, and the opportunity for Wales and act in the future.
Listen below or see the post on Business News Wales’s website.
Business News Wales MD, Mark Powney spoke to former minister Jane Davison about her role in the creation of the act, and the opportunity for Wales and act in the future.
A video about the One Planet Development scheme in Wales. OPDs have emerged as a solution to some of the problems facing people without huge financial resources who want to live and work on agricultural land. This film takes two examples of OPDs in south-west Wales and includes an interviews with Matt and Charis Watkinson of Beeview Farm, Erica Thompson, a climate scientist who runs an OPD in a cluster of small-holdings near Whitland, and Jane Davidson, a former member of the Welsh Senedd and the main promoter of OPDs and the unique Well-being of Future Generations Act which makes Wales a world leader in sustainable, regenerative development.
CIEEM Autumn Conference 2019 After Dinner Speech
Delivered by Jane Davidson on 19 November 2019 in Llandudno, Wales
Noswaith dda i chi gyd, good evening to you all.
I thought I would meditate – in a very non-political way considering the election currently underway – on the challenges and opportunities that the increasing crises we currently face offer us.
In this conference, you’re focusing on maximising biodiversity through planning and strategic land use. I’m really interested in the use of land in a climate constrained world, and particularly about getting species’ voices heard in infrastructure planning;
· how can we generate net biodiversity gains?
and
· where and how should the ecologist voice be heard in policy development to be most effective?
We’re all trying to find the right metaphor to unlock action appropriate to our times, to make people understand the scale of the challenges we face. In the last two weeks I’ve been asked to make inputs on health, food, climate emergency and now biodiversity.
Patient Planet
In each sector, the concern is clear. If we were to consider our planet as a patient, health professionals would quickly diagnose that ‘Patient Planet’ was critically sick with an escalating fever, difficulties breathing, a faltering circulation with metabolic acidosis and a toxic status, failing liver and kidney functions, a pale and blotchy skin indicating signs of shock and a rapidly declining mental state.
From the perspective of the planet’s doctor, we would need urgently to send ‘Patient Planet’ straight to critical care for emergency resuscitation and stabilisation. From an evolutionary perspective, in many respects human systems can be seen as a microcosm of the Earth’s living biosphere. After all, an increase of temperature of 3-4°C is a medical emergency and risks fatality in humans. The new discipline of Planetary Health aligns the health of human civilisation and the state of the natural systems on which it depends – its proponents describe it as a discipline that is future orientated, upstream facing, equity committed, systems based, solutions driven – recognising that no one discipline can do it alone.
This is I believe a really important message – even if not one that I could use on the doorstep! If we are going to take more sustainable decisions, then we have to take more factors into account. And that is in every discipline, not just health.
Food
In relation to food I am particularly interested in the journey of an almond nut. I love almonds! I usually have a packet in the car for long journeys. They are often to be found in my bag at work.
We are being encouraged to eat more fruit, nuts and vegetables. I’m told that moving away from meat and dairy as protein is already increasing the nut consumption of the middle classes – not least through drinks such as the soya almond latte to which I was recently introduced by my nephew and niece in north London.
So, let’s look upstream to where the nuts that I love so much come from. The largest producers of almonds in the world – 80% – is the Central Valley in California. Now, a single almond requires a gallon of water to produce. Almonds in California already use more water than Los Angeles and San Francisco put together and the Central Valley is increasingly water challenged. The pickers have to take bottled water with them as there is no safe human water supply across much of the area. So, we are being told to eat more nuts assuming an infinite supply, when we have a finite and probably shrinking reality.
If I brought this metaphor home to Wales, only 3% of fruit and vegetables consumed in Wales is grown here – and on only 0.1% of the land. I don’t know the figures for other parts of the UK – this figure came from a PhD student and had to be verified as we don’t generally collect data in this way, but if we faced security of supply issues tomorrow, as a nation we would struggle to tackle the gap between potential need and potential supply – and that is as a small nation with a small population.
Climate Change
In relation to climate change, we are now witnessing flooding at unprecedented levels on our TV screens – for 14 days now there have been calls to build more defences, with politicians of all colours wading their way through floodwater; authorities being blamed for failing to defend buildings on flood plains – and of course they are guilty, but their crime lies primarily in allowing buildings on flood plains to be built in the first place – and that crime goes on.
Here in Wales, some local authorities are still allowing planning applications to go ahead despite concerns from Natural Resources Wales (NRW). Between 2016 and 2018, over 2,000 new homes were allowed in undefended areas at risk of flooding – a huge rise from previous years. Allowing building contrary to NRW’s advice should make such buildings uninsurable by the developers or make the local authority carry the risk. This cannot be acceptable in light of the evidence of our changing climate. I’m pleased a review of national planning policy on the issue is also underway and I hope that CIEEM and others will put in strong responses about what is acceptable in a climate constrained world and the Welsh Government will respond in the spirit of its declaration of a climate emergency.
Legislation
In Wales, we now have a triple lock of legislation to protect the environment:
· The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act - which redefines prosperity in law as “low carbon, generating decent work and tackling climate change”. This is aligned with a legal definition of resilience which “maintains and enhances a bio diverse natural environment with healthy functioning ecosystems that support social economic and ecological resilience and has the capacity to adapt to change for example climate change”. It was the commitment to this legislation that effectively stopped in its tracks the motorway extension that would have detrimentally affected the Gwent Levels.
We also have:
· The Environment Act with its purpose of the sustainable management of natural resources
· The Planning Act – under which the draft National Development Framework (NDF) falls – the consultation on that closed last Friday.
I think we have a way to go before the legislation delivers on all its intention – but it is good legislation, and of course legislation is much more enduring than policy. Legislators need your help as ecological experts, both in responses to consultations but more importantly in building the evidence base. And demonstrating what can and should be done.
Planning and Development
The NDF states: “Sustainable growth will involve setting an ambitious strategy for achieving biodiversity and green infrastructure enhancement in our urban areas. Effective and innovative nature-based solutions to the challenges of urban form, design and density will be required in order to reap the well-being rewards of living and working in exemplar, future-resilient settlements”.
Sounds great – until you see where the proposed areas of growth are… Perhaps some more thought is needed as NRW, as the executive agency of Welsh Government replies “we are aware that the identified main areas of growth also include, or are in close proximity to, locally sensitive environmental considerations including; areas of flood risk, statutory nature conservation designations, protected landscapes, water bodies that are under pressure”.
So, some way to go – but I hope that the recent climate and biodiversity emergency declaration by the Welsh Government will enable it to be stronger as a result of this consultation response.
But I am very pleased that the NFD includes:
· An intention to ensure the enhancement of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience through the national level of strategic planning. This will elevate the important contribution that nature-based solutions can make through the planning system.
· That nature-based solutions should be promoted in national planning policy as the preferred approach within planning-decisions (with scheme promoters having to demonstrate why nature-based solutions are not taken forward within relevant schemes.) The exception must prove the rule in this case otherwise the words will be meaningless; this is a key area where we need your help.
· And that there will be a new national forest – a key opportunity to create a valuable new, probably distributed – asset for supporting biodiversity and delivering wider ecosystem services for the nation’s benefit.
The Need for Change
The Welsh Government, National Assembly for Wales and most local authorities in Wales – including Conwy, where we are now – have all declared climate and/or biodiversity emergencies, but the real action is yet to follow.
I wonder if the gap between commitment and action is that we have forgotten how to intervene at the most basic level of human survival?
To illustrate the point, I want to go back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that was first drafted in 1943 – the date is significant.
At the base of the pyramid are our most fundamental human physiological needs – air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction.
Above them lie our community ‘safety needs’ – highly topical territory at the moment as this is what elections focus on – personal security, employment, resources, health, property.
Above that lie our personal support needs – friendship, family, intimacy, sense of connection
Above that comes esteem – respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom
Above that, at the top of the pyramid comes self-actualisation – i.e. to be the most that one can be.
To achieve self-actualisation without having your physiological, safety, love and belonging and esteem needs met would be hard – some might say impossible. It is interesting that the pyramid was crafted during World War II – a time when the whole of society was having to re-evaluate and rebuild itself – when access to the most fundamental elements for human survival – clean air, clean water, food, shelter, health and education were deemed the most important elements to construct a post-war society – and one that was consciously fairer too. Are we approaching the time when we can acknowledge current economic systems are not working? Where the pressure on nature is too great to sustain? After all, only last week, we had the Financial Times in a wrap-around banner asking if capitalism needs a reset!
Perhaps that is the nature of what our thinking needs to be now – a total reset to get back to what matters; to take immediate action to look at our fundamental needs and ensure our access to them; which means taking all the action necessary to sustain this single planet of ours for the future. That means fundamentally putting the environment and the survival of species at the heart, the very base of what we do.
Working for Future Generations
I’ve been on a journey over the last 20 years to do everything I can to put future generations as the central organising principle of the organisations I have worked within, whether that is government, the public sector or the university sector in Wales. And although my focus has been on people, it has been on the right for humans to live in harmony with Nature as was outlined as a principle in the first Earth Summit in Rio da Janeiro in 1992.
I want land to be managed for the wider ecosystem services it can deliver, including carbon storage, water quality, flood management, landscape quality and connectivity for wildlife to adapt to climate change – and therefore halting the loss of biodiversity and creating a greater number, range and genetic diversity of wildlife with a greater understanding and appreciation of our interdependence with the other species with whom we share the planet.
I want the marine environment to be managed sustainably on an ecosystem approach, with an ecologically coherent, representative and well managed network of marine protected areas.
Technically such protections should be able to be delivered by environmental legislation, and indeed they could be with coherent enforcement and compliance; but life is a series of trade-offs and politics more than most, particularly when the democratic mandate is shaky. Only Scotland in the UK’s recent history has a single party majority government. All other parts of the UK have had to grapple with the challenges of coalitions and different priorities which can mean contradictory policies being delivered by coalition arrangements.
But we also need a stronger ecological voice to call out the transgressors, putting government and public services in the spotlight. David Attenborough in his 90s and Greta Thunberg in her teens have probably brought more people to understand the loss of nature and the failure of leadership than anyone else in my lifetime – such is the power of social media and the power of what people believe is wrong.
Understanding Limitations
How can we seize this moment for nature? Donella Meadows, in her revolutionary book Beyond the Limits argued in 1992 – the same year as the Rio Earth Summit – that society had gone into overshoot – a state of being beyond limits without knowing it; “we are overshooting such crucial resources as food and water while overwhelming nature with pollutants like those causing global warming” and that “a sustainable future will require profound social and psychological readjustments in the developed and developing world”.
I used to believe we didn’t know it, but I’m not so sure now. Perhaps governments of the day somewhat cynically passed the responsibility down the line to future generations. In 1992, Earth Overshoot Day – previously known as Ecological Debt Day (the day in the year when humanity’s resource consumption exceeds the Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year) was mid-October – so already by 1992, we were overusing the Earth’s capacity by 2.5 months; in 2019, it’s July 29th. In 27 years, we have lost a further 2.5 months. In broad terms, that’s nearly a month being notionally lost in each decade. I know it’s only a tool, but it’s a tool that warns us that carrying on with business as usual, means within 70 years there could be no replenishment – and some of the younger among you could still be alive then. But even here there is hope – which is the year where the trajectory was stemmed? Where there was no increase? 2008. The financial crash was good for our longer-term future. Tackling our consumerism and the unicorn of infinite growth is key for us and future generations. That should influence how you vote as ecologists!
Interestingly in 1992, Donella Meadows thought that a rational, scientific, data-led approach to a peaceful restructuring of the ‘system’ to a sustainable society – i.e. using the rational tools scientists use in their everyday lives – was possible. She felt that there might also be the need for softer tools such as “visioning, networking, truth-telling, learning and loving” but did not know how important they may be.
By 2004, in Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, she makes it clear “these five tools are not optional; they are essential characteristics for any society that hopes to survive over the long term” and that “each of these exists within a network of positive loops. Thus their persistent and consistent application initially by a relatively small group of people would have the potential to produce enormous change – even to challenge the present system, perhaps helping to produce a revolution.”
Leadership
Professor Jem Bendell (University of Cumbria) is a founder of the Deep Adaptation Forum and of Extinction Rebellion. He and others have recently started an open Professions' Network in the Deep Adaptation Forum; this is an international space to connect and collaborate with other professionals who are exploring implications of a near-term societal collapse due to climate change. There is no need to wait for your fellow professionals to wake up to our predicament. Through this free forum you can join regular webinars, seek advice and co-create shared resources for your field of expertise.
Deep Adaptation invites us to reflect on four questions:
· Resilience – what do we most value that we want to keep, and how?
· Relinquishment – what do we need to let go of, so as not to make matters worse?
· Restoration – what can we bring back or rediscover to help us through these times?
· Reconciliation – with what and whom do we need to make peace as we come to understand our mortality?
I know you’ve been talking about leadership today and it feels to me as though these four questions can create a new kind of leadership where people can come together in thoughtful conversations and act collaboratively; leadership that tells the truth, even when it’s hard, leadership that can involve people everywhere, to make a plan together, with a sense of urgency, and a relentless focus on the radical and practical actions we need – a new version of leadership more capable of tackling the global crisis in front of us.
Such leadership will have certain characteristics. It will:
· be genuinely curious, inquiring and open about where possible solutions might come from – not advocating more of the same – prevention;
· collaborate with other leaders wherever they are – from the grassroots to established positions, young people and elders;
· appreciate the importance of diversity, involving people with different perspectives into respectful dialogue, keeping the concerns of the whole system in view;
· focus squarely on the actions needed for the long-term, sticking with the challenge of working through real tensions and dilemmas; and
· learn fast, in cycles of action, reflection, learning and adaption – integrating all the above.
What interested me here was that the five ways of working mandated in the Wellbeing of Future Generations’ (Wales) Act – prevention, collaboration, integration, long termism and participation are all inherently necessary in new ways of leadership. They are the way we should be making decisions, decisions which factor in long-term consequences.
This is about convening new conversations – bringing leaders together from different professions and sectors to share what they know and what we can do; in Wales all public services are required to deliver on the five ways of working. The Public Services Boards here – the collaboration of all public services working together at local and regional levels – have only two organisations that have a statutory voice at every discussion – the Welsh Government and NRW – so your opportunity as ecologists is clear to use your evidence base to help NRW influence all parts of Wales in terms of support for Nature.
Education
We have to educate for new ways of working. I particularly welcome a new accredited NRW course – ‘Introduction and Application of Sustainable Management of Natural Resources and Well-Being’.
· 1,400 NRW staff have now attended the introductory course with approximately 100 staff registering to be accredited.
· NRW has worked with qualifying body Agored Cymru, partnered with Groundwork Wales who provide internal verification support.
· The units of learning have been woven into NRW’s induction programme for all new members of staff to hear and learn about its core purpose with an option to follow up the accreditation offer.
· The units of learning will soon be available on Agored Cymru’s database of qualifications for any Agored Cymru registered centre to access. NRW will provide some bespoke courses and train the trainer guidance to support its external partners to deliver the units to ensure that the content is consistent and recognised.
Who should take such a course? How do we extend the reach of ecologists to influence policy? Cascading learning is critical here. We did something similar at my own university in relation to creating an accredited course on the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act that can be taken by both students and staff to enable them to better participate in thinking more sustainably.
Taking Action
There is a moment now when the threat to humans is being understood in relation to our effect on nature hence the declaration of climate and biodiversity emergencies – but the action is not yet clear.
There is a moment now when campaigners young and old have influenced the debate – Chris Packham’s followers virtually doubled after he featured in the Extinction Rebellion days of action. By the way, in a tweet yesterday he pointed out that 22 million people didn’t vote at the last election, saying “if we don’t register to vote, we’re leaving decisions affecting our wildlife to someone else, and we all know where that’s got us”. Please make your voices heard on 12th December 2019.
Conclusion
I want to close with an excerpt from a paper from this week’s Ecological Citizen, ‘The biodiversity crisis must be placed front and centre’ by Joe Gray and Eileen Crist. They say it so much better than I ever could!
“In this historical moment, wherein the awakening of a collective awareness of humanity’s overreach is at our fingertips, we must not miss the opportunity to look hard and look long at nature’s occupation and its irreversible impoverishment of life as we know it. This haemorrhaging of biological abundance and diversity is not just occurring but accelerating – and it would be, even if the by-product of burning fossil fuels did not happen to amplify the greenhouse effect on planet Earth.
All told, the coming years are arguably the most significant in human history, with nothing less than the fate of the Earth and humanity at stake. The destruction of life’s variety, complexity, and abundances – the biodiversity crisis – is on course to be a tragedy of scale that ushers in a depauperate and desolate era. Much of the manifold beauty of the current radiation of life with which we share Earth is being rapidly erased. This is an unfolding ecocide that remains an enormous (albeit invisible) injustice to the non-human world and bodes a bleak future for human life and self-understanding. That humanity has yet to comprehend the ethical and existential gravity of the biodiversity crisis reveals the blindsiding bankruptcy of human supremacy – and of the mostly unquestioned ‘right’ of human dominance within, and domination over, the natural world.
There is an ever-more-urgent need to awaken society and policy-makers to life’s devastation, to the ongoing inequity toward the more-than-human world and to the imperative to end biodiversity collapse in our time. The biodiversity crisis must be placed front and centre.”
As a patron of CIEEM I have a duty to be part of that argument, but we need to do this together.
So “screw your courage to the sticking place and we’ll not fail”.
Article for Touchstone architecture magazine published by the Royal Society for Architects Wales
The Welsh niche planning policy on One Planet Developments (OPDs) is contained within TAN 6, ‘Planning for Sustainable Rural Communities in Wales’. It was launched in July 2010 at the Royal Welsh Show to an audience of farmers and rural business representatives. The policy provides opportunities for affordable zero carbon housing on agricultural land in return for new zero carbon land-based enterprises. It is the only national policy of its type where pioneers can demonstrate zero carbon living and actively counteract rural depopulation.
Nine years on – how effective has it been? There are now 41 registered dwellings in Wales across 8 local authorities, with 10 agreed in the last year. A One Planet Council provides support and training to planners and prospective applicants. Following many initial planning refusals, excellent applications now pass through planning without hindrance. In the newly created School of Architecture at UWTSD Swansea, students do coursework on OPD building design; at the Carmarthen Business School, a new online Postgraduate Certificate in One Planet Governance commences this autumn, and is already attracting international applications. The policy is supported by the legal definition of prosperity in the Wellbeing of Future Generations’ (Wales) Act as ‘an innovative, productive and low carbon society which recognises the limits of the global environment and therefore uses resources efficiently and proportionately (including acting on climate change)’
So the verdict so far must be ‘good in parts’, even if slower than I might have hoped. Application numbers and knowledge are growing each year despite the lack of promotion of the policy. Disappointingly, more sustainable housing and land use opportunities are not yet in the mainstream as the planning system and building regulations are not yet fully aligned with the low carbon agenda. So the pioneers are still needed: pioneers in Welsh Government and local authorities to drive Low Carbon Delivery Plans throughout all their areas of responsibility and pioneers on the land to continue to demonstrate how to live one planet lives. And me? I think I need a chat with some young farmers – back to the Royal Welsh Show!
The world in a precarious condition and nations are struggling to find a collective solution for a sustainable future.
The world in a precarious condition and nations are struggling to find a collective solution for a sustainable future. Regarded as one of the UK's leading en...
Article for Natur Cymru
For years I’ve thought that if people understood the need to make changes in their lives to tackle climate change, or any of the other big challenges of our generation, they would do so if they really understood the consequences. I have tried to play my part in creating policy and legislation which will contribute towards more responsible outcomes for people and planet, but the challenges grow and somehow we seem incapable of the appropriate action.
In Wales we have seen some innovation through regulation in the National Assembly eg the dramatic reduction of plastic bags through the introduction of the charge, better recycling outcomes by far than other parts of the UK and most of Europe, and most recently the requirements in the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 for all public services to improve the social, environmental, economic and cultural wellbeing of the people of Wales in everything they do. This is a very welcome and hugely ambitious new law, not least since Welsh Government itself has to comply with its own legislation.
I hope that implementing the Act will lead to better governmental decisions being made in the longer term, focused on real needs. At a basic level, clean air, clean water, shelter, secure energy and food are primary needs. Yet all are under threat. Here in Wales, a largely rural country famed for more sheep than people, we grow only 3% of the fruits and vegetables needed to sustain the Welsh population on less than 0.1% of the land. On that basis, we could meet 100% of our needs on 3% of the land, yet there is as yet no proposal to take such a step. Looking to our basic securities in uncertain times should be at the heart of all policy making.
I believe it is the primary role of governments to look after their people. We have seen governments in the past in the UK, particularly immediately after the 2nd World War, legislate for the whole population with ambitions about full employment, education for all, the establishment of the NHS, protection of natural resources, support for the family through the provision of council housing for all who cannot afford to access it themselves. We have seen similar ambitions for a safe, secure and environmentally responsible EU. This seems to me to be the proper response from governments in a civilized world; to enable their people to have a safe and secure base from which to build a sense of belonging, gain the respect of others and create societies which at ease with themselves.
The challenge of course is immense. A society focused on wellbeing is going to demonstrate very different criteria for success to the traditional consumerist measures of success: respect on the basis of the size of your house, the amount you earn, the car you drive, the number of holidays you take abroad. Such measures of success are unsustainable as they encourage greater consumerism and greater inequality.
So how do we make beneficial changes for people and the planet? Ultimately it comes from action by governments and people and there is some cause to be hopeful even as we look into the BREXIT void. The 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals are supported by 193 countries. John Rawls, the American philosopher, talks about inter-generational justice, where each generation should do unto future generations what they would have wanted past generations to do unto them. In Wales, uniquely, the National Assembly has now passed visionary legislation which aims to do exactly that - the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act. At its launch, the UN said ‘what Wales does today, the world will need to do tomorrow.’
What might success in terms of the new Act look like? A society focused on wellbeing should be safe, (enabling new freedoms for children and adults to engage with nature), secure, (providing for humans’ basic needs re food, clean water and clean air) provide meaningful employment, (in society’s and future generations’ interests) protect our resources, (for the public good on land and in the sea), be moral, (ethical and fair) support families, (to live low carbon, ethical, one planet lifestyles in homes made from the most sustainable materials) and which advocates health and wellbeing for all (physical and mental).
It is with sadness that I write this for the last current edition of Natur, a magazine that has played an excellent role in bringing nature to the attention of the wider Welsh public and one I hope will return very soon. Life is tough everywhere financially at the moment, but I hope the Welsh Government is serious about its sustainability commitments and is prepared to put all its weight and influence behind the ambition of a sustainable nation, and in doing so protect both its people and our planet.
Contribution to Karen Eberhardt-Shelton’s book ‘A Women's Guide to Saving the World’ (2nd Edition)
For years I’ve thought that if people understood the need to make changes in their lives to tackle climate change or any of the other big challenges of our generation, they would do so. Most of my adult life has been spent in strategy development or politics, creating policy and legislation which I hope has contributed towards more responsible outcomes for people and planet, without any thought of supernatural intervention. But there is something very attractive about the idea of waving a magic wand to achieve a better outcome. What would be the best way of my using the wand as a tool for change? The challenge must be to use it in a manner that creates the context for real change without falling into the traps derived from our childhood stories about wishes and their consequences.
I’ve always tried to be a role model for what I believe in. I live in a refurbished barn in west Wales and attempt to support a “one planet life’ in which we grow most of our own food, run our well insulated house on our own wood, recycle, compost, and use renewable energy. Every year I try to reduce my carbon footprint - yet nothing I do at home will change the systemic problems that face our generation. Although I firmly believe that the personal and the political should go hand in hand and that we should lead by example, my individual actions, even if multiplied a thousand or million times over, would not secure an overall better life for future generations.
One of the key challenges for those of us who advocate one planet lifestyles is to sell the concept to our friends and families, neighbours and communities in a way that demonstrates a positive lifestyle change that enhances rather than diminishes our and their quality of life: how embracing this lifestyle will liberate you; how you will reconnect with nature; understand the seasons and where food comes from and the limitations of what can/cannot be grown or reared in your area. How can we offer a different, more sustainable future to our offspring if we don’t help them achieve the basics of life? Even in Wales, a largely rural country famed for more sheep than people, we only grow 3% of the fruits and vegetables needed to sustain the Welsh population on less than 0.1% of the land. I could use my wand to ensure that all Wales’ needs were met from its land base – this would lead to food security in an uncertain world -- something that could actually be put into practice by an enlightened government. Perhaps my wand needs to do something governments cannot do, and people cannot do on their own.
We’ve tried the collective government route. Thousands of politician hours across the world have been spent in making global ‘commitments’ to tackling climate change and repairing our damaged ecosystems, and still no one country has set or met the world’s climate or biodiversity conservation challenges. Even the Paris Agreement, created in December 2015 and launched in March 2016 has not changed individual countries’ commitments to focus largely on GDP. There has been no major public outcry about the failure of government leaders to secure a safer longer term future for humanity. Should I wave my wand to make governments deliver on their commitments? Would that be enough? On reflection, probably not, as I don’t just want governments to take action, even though collective action of the scale and pace needed requires legal underpinning – I want people to demand of their governments that they should act in their, and overall, long term interest.
I was reflecting therefore on what I believe is the primary role of governments to look after their people - a fundamental purpose that I think is in danger of being lost, particularly in the developed world. Mazlo’s hierarchy of needs puts physiological needs – such as breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis and excretion – at the base of everything human beings must satisfy – and which can be satisfied without government intervention. The next layer is safety – security of body, of resources, of employment, of family, of morality of health, of property. We have seen governments in the past in the UK, particularly immediately after the 2nd World War, legislate for the whole populations with ambitions about full employment, education for all, the establishment of the NHS, protection of natural resources, support for the family through the provision of council housing for all who cannot afford to access it themselves. This seems to me to be the proper response from governments in a civilized world; to enable their people to have a safe and secure base from which to build a sense of belonging, and move through actively gaining the respect of others on to creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice and acceptance of facts. Creating a society which is not prejudiced and acts on facts is perhaps a job for the wand.
The challenge of course is immense. Self-actualization as a goal for all to release creativity is a huge contrast to traditional consumerist measures of success: respect on the basis of the size of your house, the amount you earn, the car you drive, the number of holidays you take abroad, etc. Such measures of success are unsustainable, as they encourage greater consumerism and greater inequality – a survival of the fittest where all must aspire to belong to the elite and most will be left far behind.
So how do we make beneficial changes for people and the planet? Ultimately it comes from action, by governments and people. The earth is a single complex system; the global challenge is to maintain the optimal conditions for life. John Rawls, the American philosopher, talks about inter-generational justice, where each generation should do unto future generations what they would have wanted past generations to do unto them. In Wales, the National Assembly has now passed legislation which aims to do exactly that, the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act, but as it has only been in place since April 2016, we have to wait to see its influence – and time is not on our side.
This made me think that if satisfying the conditions of Mazlo’s hierarchy led to more enlightened behavior and attitudes, perhaps my wand could dramatically short-circuit the process and transport us all straight to a state of self-actualisation. This might seem an attractive proposition superficially, but arriving without undertaking the journey loses the learning inherent in all personal development.
So where should we start? I return again to what I feel should be the primary purpose of government and what people should be able to call on their governments to do – which is to make them safe enough in body and soul to be able to progress through love and belonging, to esteem and self-actualization.
My (low carbon) wand is ready for action to transform society into my personal Utopia; a society that is safe, (enabling new freedoms for children and adults to engage with nature); secure, (providing for humans’ basic needs re food, clean water and clean air); provides meaningful employment, (in society’s and future generations’ interests); protects our resources, (for the public good on land and in the sea); is moral, (by which I mean ethical and fair); supports families, (to live low carbon, ethical, one planet lifestyles) in one planet homes (made from the most sustainable materials); and which advocates health and wellbeing for all (physical and mental).
In such a society, I hope people will be able to reach their own full potential of self-actualization, because then they will have a strong base from which to make their individual and collective journeys. Wand, let it be done!
Dr Jane Davidson established INSPIRE in 2012 to lead a system-based approach throughout UWTSD to deliver educational pathways promoting learning, environmental and social responsibility meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Through INSPIRE, the whole university’s operations are now subject to Key Performance Indicators to measure progress on changing its culture, campuses, curriculum and its relationships with communities.
Prior to establishing INSPIRE in 2012, UWTSD had no previous history of involvement in sustainability. Now, three years on, INSPIRE has won the Guardian Award for Sustainability in HE in 2013, the Soil Association Gold Catering Mark for its support for local producers in 2014 – and in 2015, UWTSD rose from 113th in the UK and a 3rd class degree, to a 1st class degree and 8th in UK and 1st in Wales in the People and Planet University League.
1 There needs to be university wide commitment from the governors, staff and students to effect systemic change
2 There need to be metrics to measure the success of the initiative that work within the culture of the university and enable regular reporting at key meetings e.g. Senate, University Council, Senior Directorate and Senior Management Team
3 There need to be opportunities for staff and students to re-interpret the commitments in their own discipline settings.
British Academy blog from Jane Davidson prior to Energy debate on 14/10/15
The UK has an unusual relationship with energy policy and delivery. On the one hand, we have the most liberalised energy provision in Europe, with energy generation having been sold to the market two decades ago – mostly to other countries’ national providers; on the other hand, the UK Government retains control of energy policy to have ‘a single market and regulatory system’ and a ‘unified planning regime’. In reality that disappeared in a puff of smoke when differential devolution of powers to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales took place in 1999. Interestingly, in the sixteen years since devolution there has been no serious discussion across the four nations about how to optimise energy generation – and particularly renewable generation - in the devolved context.
The four countries of the UK now have very different energy consenting powers. Scotland has seized the opportunity with a clear policy focused on renewable energy, using its planning consenting powers and its ability to offer Renewable Obligation Certificates to developers. It has ambitions to be providing 100% carbon neutral energy by 2020 and already produces 26.9% of the UK’s renewable energy.
Wales by contrast only produces a 7.9% contribution. It has the least logical energy settlement of the four countries and there are probably only a handful of people outside politics who know that Wales’ energy powers are only up to 50 megawatts on land (about 10 big turbines) and only 1 megawatt at sea (not even a demonstration project). Since the key driver of the development of energy infrastructure projects is a long-term and stable regulatory environment, it is understandable that the economic opportunities from renewable energy, which Wales has in abundance, have gone north to Scotland.
Energy is contentious. Every source has a negative aspect, whether that be visual (wind/solar), toxic (nuclear), contribution to climate change (fossil fuels) or untried (fracking). Yet, as a society we continue to want more energy. Whilst we might understand intellectually the consequences of continued fossil fuel burning on our current and future climate, governments are concerned at all costs not to interrupt supply to a society dependent on electrically charged technology.
A resilient response to such a challenge would be to have a grand plan for maximising renewable energy across the UK and educating the public about energy efficiency. Wales has great scope to develop further its renewable energy resources as part of its commitment to resilience and living within environmental limits under its new world leading Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 which requires all public services to take account of the needs of future generations in all policy making. However, the agreed devolution of enhanced Welsh energy consents up to 350mw on land and sea will need to wait for a new Government of Wales Act to be implemented and no date has currently been set.
Wales has renewable sources in abundance with waves, tides, water and wind being amongst the best in Europe. What is universally agreed as a major economic opportunity for Wales that could contribute towards the wealth, resilience and sustainability of the nation, is currently in limbo, particularly since the recent shock FIT reduction announcement by the UK Government. However, Wales is still an industry leader with the largest off shore wind farm in the world, Gwynt y Mor, and is on the threshold of also being the world leader in tidal energy with the innovative Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon project currently in the system. Wales’ energy fuelled an industrial revolution 200 years ago and can again in the future with newer, greener technologies. The ‘Zero Carbon Britain’ work led by a team at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales has demonstrated unequivocally that, with the right UK Government backed policies and investments, we could achieve low or zero carbon emissions before the second half of the century with existing technology and without harming economic or social development. If Germany and Sweden can do it, surely we can too?
The British Academy session in Swansea on 14th October 2015 will look at how we connect the moral, financial and economic decisions that we need to make about the costs of generating energy; what influences people to change their energy behaviour and how far we can create alternative models of generating energy locally. This debate is hugely important for all our futures and what demands we make of our governments, particularly in the run up to the UN global conference on climate change in Paris this December. As John Rawls the American philosopher said, ‘Do unto future generations what you would have past generations do unto you’. Come along and have your say.
Article for "The Environmentalist" Magazine
John Rawls, the American philosopher, talks about inter-generational justice, where each generation should do unto future generations what they would have past generations do unto them. Yet my generation has done the opposite, leaving young people in the UK in 2015 substantially poorer financially than we were at their age, living in a more fearful world and with a rapidly degrading environment. The ‘right’ response – global agreements on climate change for example – is too big to contemplate, even when encouraged as a prudent fiscal measure by the Governor of the Bank of England. We are instead caught perpetually in a virtual Rubick’s cube, where solutions elude us because achieving them is too complex.
Perhaps it is time to re-simplify. Those who have impressed me most in my life, have been people of conviction; people who live according to their values and principles, not people who say one thing and do another. For me, with the acquired wisdom of nearing retirement age, it is becoming increasingly simple; as Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. My mission – for as long as I can remember - has been to encourage those I work with to believe that we all have a role in the delivery of this pithy instruction. If we are going to make beneficial changes for people and the planet, ultimately it starts with us all considering the way we live and our actions in leading by example, individually and collectively – and we all need to be leaders now.
I’m lucky. I’m privileged to work in a university; no ivory tower but a regional amalgamation of old and new in beautiful south west Wales – from its roots in Lampeter, the oldest university in England and Wales after Oxford and Cambridge - via its long established campus in Carmarthen to a new city centre neighbourhood university in Swansea with the sod being cut imminently. I lead on integrating sustainability principles through everything we do with the university’s full support. We educate and train primarily those living in our region by aiming to deliver tangible benefits for learners, employers, industry and communities by integrating the principles of ‘employability’ and ’sustainability’.
When I was taken on in 2011 to establish a university institute for sustainability’, I made one condition – that if we were going to advocate sustainability thinking, we had first to become a leader and beacon of excellence ourselves. This has required an intense systemic and systematic approach over 4 years to change our culture, our curriculum, our campuses and our wider community relations. But now, we can see results; the external accolades we win each year help keep the governors on board but it is the internal changes that count – the empowering of the passionate staff and students; the new activities; the 60+ sustainability link contacts in every School and department; the contested places on the Sustainability Committee; the new sustainability led curriculum in every programme on offer. Everyone who has led these changes is a leader in their own right and more are springing up all the time. How better to educate tomorrow’s community leaders than to give our students effective sustainability skills?
In April 2015, legislation I proposed in 2011, the new “Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act” passed into law requiring all public services organisations in Wales to take into account the needs of future generations. When times are fiscally tough, public services retreat to the delivery of their statutory responsibilities and short-termism which is unsustainable. As a university, having ensured that we are already exceeding the requirements of the Act, we are now ready to help others deliver on their new duties making the future more resilient for people and planet – at least in Wales.
I live in a refurbished barn where we grow most of our own food, run our well insulated house on our own wood, recycle, compost, and use renewable energy. I try to reduce my carbon footprint every year, but know that my individual actions, even if multiplied a million times over, would not secure a better life for future generations. But I remain optimistic. We may not get a deal on climate change in Paris in 2015, but there is a groundswell of passionate staff and student leaders in universities across the UK and the world who can and should make demands of their institutions to be at the forefront of change.
