In the latest episode of ‘In Conversation with Jane Davidson,’ Jane speaks to Andy Middleton, CEO of TYF Adventure. Passionate about the environment, Andy founded TYF in 1986, and has since started other eco businesses. They discuss the relationship between sustainability and business, the freedom of entrepreneurship, the evolution of TYF Adventure and more
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.
Green Party Conference: The Future Generations Act
When we work together, our common ground becomes our path to progress. That is how we turn ideas into action, and action into lasting systems change.
That’s exactly what happened in Wales. It started as a radical idea, the first of its kind: The Future Generations Act, weaving together regeneration and social justice for generations to come. It’s time England followed suit.
Now? They have the ‘world’s first commissioner of the unborn’, responsible for delivering social, economic and cultural well-being for current and future generations.
How does it work? How do we measure impact on the future? Are mindsets changing in Wales? Is the act creating the systems change it set out to achieve? Why do we need an act for future generations? And what can England and beyond learn from Wales, as the Future Generations Bill is brought to Parliament?
Hiraeth Podcast - US Election: What did we learn from Biden's win?
The dust is far from settled on the US Presidential Election 2020 but the clear Biden victory suggests a revived (and welcome) role for coherent policy making at home and abroad for the next four years.
What does this mean for Wales, the UK and the wider world and what did we learn about America during the election? To discuss with Matt and Ceri is political scientist Dr Jac Larner - a specialist in political psychology and Fullbright Fellow - and Jane Davidson, former Welsh Government Minister and author of #FutureGen, the story of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act.
Festival of Ideas: Jane Davidson
Creating a better future means planning, action and change now. As Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing in Wales, Jane Davidson proposed the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 – the first piece of legislation in the world to place regenerative and sustainable practice at the heart of government. The Act connects environmental and social health and looks to solve complex issues such as poverty, education and unemployment. Since the act, the Senedd Cymru/ Welsh Parliament has appointed a Future Generations Commissioner.
Davidson reveals how and why such ground-breaking legislation was forged in Wales and explores how the shift from economic growth to sustainable growth is creating new opportunities for communities and governments all over the world. She talks about the changes that have resulted and are to come. As other countries and places look to introduce similar acts, Davidson offers an essential guide to getting this right and having an impact.
Chaired by Stephen Hilton, founder and director of Bristol Futures Global and formerly leader of Bristol Futures at Bristol City Council.
CUSP: Nature of Prosperity Dialogue with Rowan Williams, Jane Davidson, Roman Krznaric & Rebecca Willis
How can we nurture visions of the good life that preserve nature and protect the interests of future generations? Can new institutions help us to re-invigorate democracy? Can creativity inspire us to conserve what we love? How can we become the ‘good ancestors’ we would wish for our kids, in the world they will inherit? CUSP and FDSD are delighted to invite you to the latest in the series of dialogues on the Nature of Prosperity, hosted by Rowan Williams, 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.
RSA - Bridges to the Future podcast: How do we find new ways to tackle historic problems?
EPISODE SUMMARY
As the footballer Marcus Rashford has shown, it's not just the power of celebrity that can bring about real change but the way that an issue is framed and presented. This week Matthew meets three individuals - a charity worker, a politician and a social entrepreneur - to hear their big ideas to reframe arguments for progressive change, and to help solve complex issues such as child poverty and inequality.
EPISODE NOTES
Global crises cause big changes and reveal deep structural weaknesses.
In this special interview series from the RSA its chief executive, Matthew Taylor, puts a range of practitioners on the spot - from scholars to business leaders, politicians to journalists - by asking for one big idea to help build effective bridges to our new future.
Kirsty McNeill is an Executive Director at Save the Children. To find out more about their latest report, Covid's Kids: Repaying our Debt to the Covid Generation click here.
Jane Davidson is Pro Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Wales, a former politician, and now author #futuregen.
John Bird is an activist, social entrepreneur and co-founder of The Big Issue. He's is a member of the House of Lords.
You can read more about the Well-being of Future Generations Act by clicking here.
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.
In Conversation With Jane Davidson: Joyce and Nigel Gervis
In the latest episode of Jane Davidson in Conversation, Jane speaks to Joyce and Nigel Gervis of Ty Mawr Lime about their award-winning business – discovering how they've become a market leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of environmentally-friendly building materials and systems, discussing how the building industry in Wales is changing; and exploring the importance of bringing business into the country.
Thinking about Recovery—An Audience with the CUSP Advisory Committee
As UK and EU governments struggle to articulate the foundations for a fair, green recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, we explore what can be learned from recent debates about wellbeing, societal transformation and sustainable prosperity. For the last five years, our CUSP Advisory Team has supported, guided and inspired our work at the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity.
In this unique webinar, you hear their thoughts about this vital issue and engage with the audience in this vital conversation. Speakers are: Camilla Toulmin (CUSP AdCom Chair, Economist and former Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)), Alice Bell (Director of Communications, Possible), Jane Davidson (Pro Vice-Chancellor Emeritus, University of Wales Trinity Saint David), Katherine Trebeck (Advocacy and Influencing Lead, Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll)), Henrietta Moore (Director, UCL Institute for Global Prosperity), Oliver Bettis (Former Chairperson of the Sustainability Board, Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA)), Sian Ferguson (Trust Executive, Ashden Trust, JJ Charitable Trust and Mark Leonard Trust), Jeremy Oppenheim (Senior Managing Partner, Systemiq Ltd), Simon Sharpe (Deputy Director, UK Government’s Cabinet Office COP26 Uni); chaired by CUSP Director Tim Jackson.