Introduction
Please forgive this standard introduction to people who are coming new to my blog for the first time. I intend to use my website as a repository for information linked to my #futuregen book, so hopefully it will become a resource for campaigners and activists as well as policy professionals and parliamentarians. The book itself contains the links to documentary resources covering the journey from the start of the National Assembly in 1999 to the passing of the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act in 2015 and its subsequent implementation.
So far on this site you can access the inspirational essays in advance of the book from Satish Kumar – ‘Forewarned’ - and Lord John Bird – ‘The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act - and Future Generations Commissioner - and why we need it worldwide’. You can hear from the key Welsh Ministers who had a direct responsibility role between 1999 and 2015 in developing the sustainability journey and/or components of the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act and the government officials and advisers who took the unique ‘duty to promote sustainable development’ in the Government of Wales Act 1998 and translated that into the central organising principle and ecological footprint reduction that characterised ‘One Wales, One Planet’ in 2009. The journey then moves to the key government agencies, with contributions from those who took on their current roles after the Welsh Government acquired its powers to make primary legislation in the areas for which it is responsible in 2011.
Today, we hear from some of the most significant contributors to the debate over the whole period: Alan Netherwood who has tracked the sustainable development agenda in Wales from its onset and is still doing so; Anne Meikle and Jessica McQuade from WWF, the most significant individual contributor organisation to the Welsh journey, particularly from its publication of the visionary ‘One Planet Wales’ in 2007 and George Marshall from Climate Outreach who undertook the first national environmental narratives project of its kind - now replicated around the world - developing a bilingual toolkit of distinct Welsh narratives and images for sustainability and climate change to support the legislation. Finally, last but very much not least, the eponymous Andy Middleton, who has challenged me and others at every available opportunity to do more and faster.
I will notify the specific contributors when your contribution is published, and feed back to you directly if I receive any comments linked to your contributions.
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Dr Alan Netherwood, Effectiveness Reviews author, Netherwood Sustainable Futures
Successful delivery of the act would see a public sector, commissioner’s office and government that focuses not on platitudes or process, or general commitments to the future well-being of current citizens, but truly represents the interests of unborn generations through advocacy, governance and decision-making. Until it achieves that, I don't believe that it will underpin long-term sustainable development in Wales, but merely repackage dominant agendas and unsustainable approaches to public policy delivery and spending. It needs to significantly adapt normative approaches, organisational cultures and governance structures, not just reinforce them. Clear, unambiguous added value for future generations in discourse and delivery.
Anne Meikle, Director, WWF Cymru
Since the passage of the Act, the world, including Welsh Government, has recognised that we are facing a climate and ecological emergency. This means we only have 10 years to ensure our grandchildren have a future worth living.
The Act is a great aspirational framework for making better decisions. But, we have such a short time left to reverse the environmental collapse that we must ask how can we speed up these changes that we have begun so that we take no more unsustainable decisions?
As a first step, we must do no more harm to the environment.
We must change the way we do things, the way we plan our transport, our economy, our health service, to stop the harm and restore our world – our life support systems. Or our children and grandchildren will not thrive.
The Act alone cannot make this happen.
This needs leadership – from all political parties and from others who have influence – business leaders, religious and community leaders.
Decision-makers must feel confident that the people of Wales want this to happen, so we need to hear their voices, including those usually excluded – the young, the marginalised.
We also need to challenge those leaders who are doing the wrong thing – those who quietly lobby for everything to stay as it is now because it suits their personal interests.
We need the law to help this challenge, to ensure consequences for those who will not take more care and make bold change.
We also need new law to guarantee citizens’ rights to challenge decisions and to have their cases investigated by an independent watchdog with teeth.
It must become politically, economically and socially unacceptable to destroy our children’s future through destroying their environment.
George Marshall, Founder of Climate Outreach
Government tends to regard sustainability as a technical and economic issue and forgets that all policy, even in one-party states, are ultimately underpinned by a public mandate built on trust. This is especially true of environmental issues where so much responsibility lies with individual lifestyle choices. In our age of political polarisation, this mandate must be broad based, built on the shared values and collective identity that cross society and bring people together.
It follows that there is no single narrative for sustainability: there are a multitude, tailored to each distinct culture and validating the traditions found in every county that connect people to land and nature. Ultimately people must embrace sustainability not to ‘save the planet’ or for some pragmatic economic reason, but because they believe that such action is a non-negotiable sacred value and irreducible expression of who they are.
In 2012 the Welsh Assembly commissioned Climate Outreach and a team of 10 researchers to explore the exceptional connection that Welsh people have to landscape, community and their ancient language. From focus groups across Wales we developed a bilingual toolkit of distinct Welsh narratives and images for sustainability and climate change to support the legislation. We even challenged the placeless United Nations ‘sustainable’ jargon and recommended alternatives drawn from the Welsh language that held real cultural resonance. https://climateoutreach.org/resources/sustainable-development-narratives-for-wales/
This was the first national environmental narratives project of its kind and is now being replicated around the world (https://climateoutreach.org/resource-type/global-narratives/). As we move forward, it is essential that all governments follow this example, challenge technocratic policy language and adopt language that weaves sustainability into their national stories.
Jessica McQuade, Head of Policy and Advocacy, WWF Cymru
Welsh civil society fought hard to ensure the essence of sustainable development, agreed through the Rio United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development was integrated into the Well-being of Future Generations Act. It recognises that unless we start living within our local and global environmental limits, our efforts for social and economic development will be futile as our life support systems collapse.
In 2015 when the Act was passed, the inclusion of the requirements for economic development recognising the ‘limits of the global environment and [that] therefore uses resources efficiently and proportionately (including acting on climate change) and becoming a nation which ‘maintains and enhances a biodiverse natural environment with healthy functioning ecosystems’ was very progressive and world leading. However, in the interpretation of the Act and its delivery in the last five years, this strong environmental dimension has mainly been lost. We have predominantly seen a social sustainability agenda dominating the narrative and delivery priorities.
In 2020, when we are seeing the impacts of nature and climate collapse all around us, young people are on the streets calling for attention to be given to this issue. It is time for the Well-being of Future Generation Act to be used to deliver its original intention - enabling Wales to develop, ensuring well-being for its citizens, in a way that is no longer breaking the environmental systems it relies on. The legislation we uniquely have in Wales provides the legitimacy for politicians and decision-makers to make bold changes to support the recovery of nature and climate. We need to use the Act to push forward this agenda now, so we are effective in securing the well-being of future generations.
Andy Middleton, Chief Exploration Officer TYF, previously Deputy Chair, Cynnal Cymru
How far could Wales go?
Ambition
Waves turned to surging white at the base of vertical cliffs and conversation torn by swirling wind make for an interesting classroom. Running an adventure-based business on the west coast of Wales and time spent as a desert rescue volunteer, lifeboat crewman and lifeguard taught me about risk, safety and how to best prepare for challenging conditions. Since I hung up those yellow lifeboatman’s boots, sharing that learning with leaders in business and public sector has been a vital part of my work every day.
As a board member of environmental charities and government organizations, I realized that rather than being designed to deliver resilience and safety, public-sector risk management and environmental approaches have been shaped by a ‘less bad’ and incremental improvement mindset for decades and have never been revised to deal with the seismic, systemic risks of biodiversity and climate collapse. The focus on ‘tick box’ standards meant that leaders invested little time in examining how strategic risk might shape their future. Questions of what appropriate ambition might deliver if they set out to create thriving ecosystems are pushed into second place by the familiarity of overseeing existing governance frameworks – which guarantee the slow death of nature, legally, slowly, and by the book.
The Well-Being of Future Generation Act’s requirement for organizations to maximize their contribution to all seven well-being goals through ‘five ways of working’ has created a unique opportunity for leaders and their teams to ask very different questions. The Act has given officers permission to reflect on the risks that they are meant to be managing, what options they have and what appropriate ambition would look like if they paid serious attention to risk and resilience rather than lip service.
Collaboration
My early days as a non-exec Director at Cynnal Cymru were both rewarding and frustrating. Reward came from sharing optimism and experiences with a group of seasoned and committed colleagues, and from opportunities emerging as our government started listening differently and planning for change. Frustration came from the narrow sectoral backgrounds of many that we worked with, making it hard to think more ambitiously or work in different ways. Collaboration is key, but the understanding of other people’s language, framing and the gifts they can offer was, and is, all-too-often missed. The Act’s requirement for organizations to ‘include, collaborate, take a long-term view, integrate and focus on prevention’ addresses the reasons why there’s a problem in the first place – a lack of those five things across the board. The collaboration element is central to the process of starting any discussions about system-level change.
Vision
The perennial cycles of budgets and incremental spend increases leaves its mark on people’s ambition to set bold visions – it’s all too easy to wind goals back to a point where vision is set based on known resources and know-how rather than the intention to fix the root cause of systemic challenges. The Act created a mandate and an opportunity to bring sectors together to imagine a future that’s worth reaching. Much of my time at Cynnal, on the Countryside Council for Wales, the Board of Natural Resources Wales and through TYF Adventure has been spent helping people lift up eyes and hearts and setting out for a future that is bold and special. The Act gives all active citizens in Wales the chance to aim as high as they can.
How far could Wales go?
When awareness, bold action and curiosity are used to the full, breakthrough change blossoms. Imagining a future where that happens in Wales, shifts the Act could catalyse might look like this:
Wales becomes the world’s first B Corp economy, with every provider of goods and services to the public sector required to demonstrate how they are working collaboratively to maximize their contribution to all seven well-being goals. B Corp’s Business Impact Assessment is used to help businesses learn and lead change through the way that they run day-to-day operations. Welsh Government estimates that the additional, pro-bono benefit from their shift to purpose-based procurement created £1 billion of value to Wales’ communities every year.
Wales’ food is reinvented to a re-localised ‘Hippocratic’ system where land use, food production and nutrition are managed for the health of current and future citizens. Regenerative practices are fully adopted by the agricultural community, helped by supermarkets and processors working closely with farmers to ensure that soil and biodiversity are recovering in every field farmed. The adoption of an initial ‘25 per cent local’ approach across Wales creates nearly 20,000 new jobs and re-engages younger people with working with food and land.
Education delivery is shaped by cross-party commitment to give every child an unshakeable confidence in their ability to shape a better world, with skills and know-how built by wrestling with the real-world issues that matter to them, their families and communities. Business and Public Service Boards’ provision of engaging and challenging briefs ensures that pupils see clear connections between what they learn and the difference it makes. It takes less than 10 years for young people to perform on a par with their Nordic counterparts, proving that impact learning can connect hearts, minds and results.
Health professionals, business and third-sector organisations finally manage to break down silo walls to shape shared, ambitious long-term goals on prevention that start to effectively address the root causes of long-term challenges. Dramatic increases of active and reflective time spent in nature, scaled up across Wales, reduces the cost of mental-health support by over £700m a year.
Mapping the proven impact of innovative solutions to physical and mental well-being challenges worldwide across known local issues helps leaders and practitioners leapfrog the tick-box actions that, though they demonstrate progress, sap energy from the transformation needed for systems change. Improvement is made in 80 per cent of challenge areas by learning from and adapting solutions already used elsewhere.
When government, business and the third sector work with ambition and set goals bold enough to match the scale of challenge ahead, the compass for change will be set. The Well-being of Future Generations Act is the planner that will make bold journeys possible.
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#futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/futuregenerations-lessons-from-a-small-country/
Jane Davidson
28th June 2020