Take the long view

Stories

Taking the Long View in Wales

By Nick Aveling

Welsh Commissioner for Future Generations Peter Davies launches a report on climate change at an event in Cardiff Bay on February 18  Photo credit: Sustain Wales

Welsh Commissioner for Future Generations Peter Davies launches a report on climate change at an event in Cardiff Bay on February 18
Photo credit: Sustain Wales

You’ll forgive Peter Davies if he sounds a tad cautious. In March 2013 – after more than two years of late nights, early mornings and coffee less sipped than shot aboard speeding commuter trains – the Welsh Commissioner for Sustainable Futures will finally learn what the world thinks about Wales’ new proposal for a radically far-reaching Sustainable Development Bill.

Until then, though, Davies would like to make one thing clear: “I don’t want to oversell what we’re doing.”

It’s an understandable concern. But despite Davies’ prudence, a growing number of international experts are equally keen to make sure the bill isn’t undersold. According to them, the Welsh proposal goes further than any before it, putting sustainable development at the centre of government in Wales – and Wales at the centre of a global movement to change the way democracy works.

The proposal itself, meanwhile, is almost anti-climactically simple. Wales will create an “independent sustainable development body” to set and monitor long-term targets, and to help make sure those targets are met. With its sights set firmly beyond the next election – and indeed the next elections, plural – the body will publish progress reports, work with public and private stakeholders, and advocate on behalf of future generations in the fight against ‘short-termism’.

So far, this is neither new nor radical – New Zealand established an environmental parliamentary commissioner in 1987, and similar institutions of varying influence and sincerity have since followed in Albania, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, The Philippines and Malta.

What makes the Welsh proposal different, said Davies, is its pledge to make good on an unusual constitutional promise that dates back to dawn of Welsh devolution. “There was a clear desire in 1999 to mark ourselves out as being different in terms of governance, and one way of doing that was thinking about the long-term,” he said. “It was written into the Government of Wales Act that the Welsh government would have a legal duty to promote sustainability through all its programmes and policies.”

In formalising that legal duty, and backing it with a purpose-built independent watchdog, the Welsh Sustainable Development Bill is unique in history. If the bill becomes law, not a single piece of legislation will be able to pass through the Welsh National Assembly without first passing the sustainable development smell test.

Before any of that, though, the thing has to be written.

Sandor Fülöp is Hungary’s former Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations. During his litigious four-year tenure as the country’s “green ombudsman”, Fülöp’s office kept public water utilities from being privatised, barred a golf-course from being built on quality cropland, and, in a case he’s particularly proud of, stopped the Hungarian Ministry of Defence from building a potentially dangerous radio tower on a hill overlooking Hungary’s fifth biggest city. In a world short on examples of claws-and-teeth governance for future generations, Fülöp’s is an oft-repeated name.

Pictures of a hill overlooking the city of Pécs, where Hungary’s Ministry of Defence planned to build a potentially dangerous radio tower. Fülöp fought for two years to stop the tower from being built, eventually winning his case in the Hungarian Supreme Court  Photo credit: Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, Hungary

Pictures of a hill overlooking the city of Pécs, where Hungary’s Ministry of Defence planned to build a potentially dangerous radio tower. Fülöp fought for two years to stop the tower from being built, eventually winning his case in the Hungarian Supreme Court
Photo credit: Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, Hungary

“Independence – this is the comparative advantage (over governments and the private sector),” he said. “Paradoxically, too much authority will weaken us because it makes us part of the system. We should be independent, listen to every stakeholder, and clarify the situation.”

Fülöp saw his office “de-ranked” in early-2012, for reasons he said he still doesn’t understand. As part of the move, his role was subsumed under a new chief commissioner, whose approval was required before Fülöp could launch any new initiatives.

Marcel Szabó, who replaced Fülöp last year, agreed the “office changed to some extent”. “But we’re still a half-step ahead of most others…. ‘Green ombudsman’ is still the common name, and now, if I can achieve the support of the (chief commissioner), he actually gives a little more weight to future generation claims.” So far, added Szabó, not a single one of his proposals has been halted.

Either way, it’s unlikely a similar scenario would play out in Wales. For one, said Fülöp, the proposed Welsh body is “organically, cautiously built, with lots of connections in government and civil society” – a luxury not afforded in Hungary, where the commission was imposed from above. “This makes it more resistant to individual attacks from business and elsewhere,” he said.

What’s more, both bodies have different methods – Hungary’s litigative, Wales’ collaborative. Even more fundamentally, they also have different definitions of sustainable development.

“The critical thing about this is that it isn’t just an environmental body,” said Davies. “This is a body to look at sustainable development, which includes economic and social factors like poverty and obesity.”

Halina Ward is Director of London-based NGO the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, which is preparing to launch a Manifesto for Democracy and Sustainability on 28 February calling for politicians to “take the long view” and plan “in ways that respect the Earth’s natural limits”. Davies, Fülöp and Szabó are all signatories.

“On its own, Wales’ independent body can’t overcome politicians’ tendencies to always eye the next election”, she says. “But it’s a reminder that it’s in our collective interest to think about future generations.”

World Future Council Director of Future Justice Catherine Pearce agreed. “A lot of people are looking at Wales for a lot of different reasons,” she said. “What they’re trying to do there is pretty profound.”

Or at least it will be. First, the Sustainable Development Bill needs to be tabled in autumn. With weeks worth of reading, research and revision ahead of him – Fülöp alone sent six pages of meticulous notes – it’s no wonder Davies is playing it safe. Best case scenario, he said, the bill will be passed next year before being rolled out in 2015.

In the meantime, the world will be watching – especially Beppe Lovoi, a Sustainable Development Officer at the New York-based United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Hot off the heels of last year’s Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Lovoi’s office is preparing a summer 2013 report on the issue’s “most cutting-edge thinking” for the UN general assembly. If member states are sufficiently impressed, it could lead to the establishment of Commissioner for Future Development at the UN level. Wales, he said, will “definitely” feature.

Sounding cautious as ever, Davies describes Wales’ work as “very much a part of the post-Rio+20 agenda.” In two years’ time, if all goes according to plan, the world’s agenda might best be described as post-Welsh.

 

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