Climate Change blog - how Wales is protecting future generations through legislation
Following our Autumn Conference 2022, ADEPT’s Hannah Bartram reflects on the powerful presentation given by key note speaker Sophie Howe, Future Generations Commissioner for Wales.
Appointed in 2016 and with a remit set out in law to be ‘the guardian of the interests of future generations in Wales’, Sophie is the world’s only Future Generations Commissioner. The Guardian has even described her as the ‘World’s first minister of the unborn’ and while Sophie is not actually a minister, the sentiment resonates.
You could say that the Covid-19 pandemic was a ‘black swan event’, a situation that came out of the blue and took us by surprise. Sophie questioned whether that label really fits considering a global pandemic was No. 8 in the global risk register in 2019. And what about extreme weather episodes? Numbers 1, 2 and 3 on the register are associated with climate and ecological breakdown, and as we have continued to damage our planet since the UN published its evidence framework for climate change in the 1990s, they aren’t really a surprise either.
Sophie talked about indigenous communities and their principles around thinking to the next generation. The Iroquois tribe in particular lives by the seventh generation principle, which means that all decisions made by its leaders track and consider the impact they will have in seven generations time. Our current systems prevent us from adopting this approach because our budget and political cycles are too short term.
As Sophie set out, it’s quite a bleak outlook if we don’t start doing things differently. She referenced Toby Ord, an expert in existential threat from Oxford University, who says that there is a one in six chance that humanity won’t survive beyond the end of the century. He also says that the world spends more on ice cream than our governments do on foresighting and taking on board future trends in decision making. Economy first, environment last is failing us and will fundamentally affect our survival on this planet. This doesn’t mean that growth is all bad, particularly if it is done within boundaries as we saw at the ADEPT Spring Conference with Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics model. Everything we do and all the decisions we make must sit within the doughnut shape, ensuring no one falls short on life’s essentials while at the same time not overshooting our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems.
Doughnut Economics aligns well with Wales’s Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. Passed in 2015, the Act requires all 48 public bodies in Wales to demonstrate that decisions on what is needed now don’t compromise the needs of future generations. It sets out seven long-term interconnected wellbeing goals. These were developed with the people of Wales as part of the national conversation, “The Wales We Want’, in which people were asked ‘what is the Wales you want to leave behind for your children and grandchildren?’.
Each public body has had to set objectives against each of the seven goals, which means they have to work beyond their traditional remits. For example, a traditional way of looking at the goal for A Healthier Wales would be to see it as the responsibility of the NHS. However, the World Health Organisation tells us that 35% of what makes a difference to the life inequality gap – living in the north of Cardiff, Sophie can expect to live 15 years longer than people living three to four miles away in the south of the city – is whether or not you live in poverty and can put food on the table. Living conditions, air quality and access to nature accounts for 29% of the gap, while 19% is down to communities, their relationships and how cohesive they are. This is why it is everyone’s responsibility in Wales to deliver these goals.
Alongside the goals are five principles that all public institutions must adopt, demonstrating how they have considered the long-term impact of the ways they work and the decisions they make, to prevent problems occurring or getting worse. Working together, including the involvement of citizens, is vital as no one organisation can solve this on their own.
Sophie’s role is independent to the government and it is her job to challenge how it is implementing the legislation. For example, there were plans to build a new relief road on the M4 around Newport to deal with congestion. Sophie intervened and asked the Welsh government how the new road was in line with the goal for A Prosperous Wales to reduce carbon emissions and act in the interest of climate change, as well as the goal for A Resilient Wales in terms of ecological resilience – the new road would go through a nature reserve described as the Welsh Amazon.
She also challenged how it would meet the goal for A More Equal Wales, when 25% of the lowest income families in that region don’t have access to a car. It also went against the goal for A Healthier Wales, considering 60% of the adult population is overweight. As a result of Sophie’s intervention, the First Minister cancelled the scheme and set up a commission to look at the alternatives through the lens of meeting the seven wellbeing goals. The commission came up with a different package around public transport investment and active travel.
Having the power of legislation to protect the interests of future generations is what makes Sophie’s role so unique in the battle against climate change. As she said ‘it makes us think, plan and act today for a better tomorrow’. While we might not have these legislative capabilities in England, what would change if we adopted and applied these principles? Should we be using them to inform our thinking as local authorities? It was a much discussed topic at the ADEPT Autumn Conference and certainly gave us a lot to think about going forwards.
Further information
- For more information on the Future Generations Commissioner, visit the website.
- President Mark Kemp provides an overview of November's ADEPT Autumn Conference here.