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Opinion

Our next First Minister must make the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act central to everything they do

12 Mar 2024 5 minute read
Left: Vaughan Gething – Right: Jeremy Miles

Beth Winter, Labour MP, Cynon Valley, Professor Calvin Jones

We do not inherit the world. We borrow it from our children.

We have reached an existential crisis point. The biggest challenge we have ever faced. In February, global warming exceeded 1.5C across an entire year for the first time. February 2024 was the warmest on record in the England & Wales, with yet another extremely wet winter leaving communities flooded and crops lost.

If we continue on our current path, The planet itself risks becoming unliveable in a few short decades.

At the same time, the cost-of-living crisis is widening economic inequality in Wales, poverty is increasing, life expectancy is falling.

Trade off

There isn’t a trade-off between living standards and ‘net-zero’ as some would have it, this is all one crisis. Capitalism is not delivering for working class people in Wales. Capitalism is burning through our natural resources faster than we can replenish them.

In a climate assembly organised by Beth Winter back at the time of COP26, Prof Calvin said: ‘Capitalism is bust’.

If capitalism’s purpose is to deliver ever greater profits to a shrinking minority of the super-rich, it is not bust, it is working extremely well.

But it’s clear that the existing economic orthodoxy has not served the Welsh working class well over the last 100 years. Quite the opposite, Wales’ natural strengths have been a focus for extractive companies from elsewhere.

Poverty and deprivation

In south Wales the coal was dug out by Welsh miners, but the profits extracted out on English rail. The legacy of Welsh coal for central London is abundance, extreme wealth, and extravagant buildings. The legacy for the south Wales Valleys is over 2000 coal tips scattered across our hillsides, coupled with some of the highest levels of poverty and deprivation in the UK.

That extraction continues to this day in different guises. In Cynon Valley, the wind farms atop our hills are owned by the Swedish state, with the profits from our weather being extracted. Meanwhile the sandstone that makes up the steep valley sides is extracted by a German multinational, the profits driving away along the Heads of the Valleys Road in big lorries.

Extracted like the young people who leave our areas to ‘get on in life’ and instead contribute to other communities.

An economy that works like this, is not one that serves the people of Wales.

For decades, countries like ours have pursued growth at all costs, often regardless of the wellbeing of its citizens. We cannot continue trying the same thing and expect new results. What we must argue for is not growth for growth’s sake, but prosperity.

We can raise the living standards and life expectancies of the Welsh working class without continuing to chase ever-increasing GDP.

The alternative.

We need an economy that puts people, and the planet first. Before profit, before GDP, before growth.

This is not a new idea. The world-leading Wellbeing of Future Generations Act (WFGA) passed by Welsh Government reframes prosperity so that it does not include GDP, instead aiming for an ‘innovative, productive, and low carbon society which recognises the limits of the global environment’. The Act boasts that this is one of the ways ‘Wales is doing things differently’.

Manifestoes

It is a shame not to see that reflected in the manifestoes of Jeremy Miles or Vaughan Gething.

Unlike Gething, it is welcome that Miles makes repeated reference to the WFGA throughout his manifesto, but he also makes clear his main priority in Government; ‘growing the economy’.

This is in total contrast to one of the “greatest achievements” of the act, “fundamentally changing the way Wales measures success, evaluating progress based on well-being, rather than GDP.”

The WFGA has made an impact in Wales, for instance contributing to the ‘Llywbr Newydd’ green transport strategy, but the Act’s progress has been infuriatingly slow.

Too often Welsh politicians pay lip-service to the act, whilst continuing to define success in terms of ‘growth’ and ‘GDP’. Indeed, both Miles & Gething make mention of pursuing ‘green growth’ in their manifestoes without at all dealing with fact that under our current system, more growth – green or otherwise – means more consumption, more materials to waste and more emissions.

Critical

This is a critical time for the planet, for Wales, and for the WFGA.

If we are to deliver on the Future Generations Act – to be healthier, more equal, more interesting, more innovative; with higher levels of wellbeing and more environmental sustainability – we need to envision, and then build a Wales that looks completely different to Wales today.

That will require leaders who genuinely embrace this shift in mindset and prioritise being a good ancestor over GDP growth today.

Our demand on the next First Minister is that they make the WFGA central to everything they do in office. That means making the wellbeing and prosperity of the Welsh people their main priority, not growing the economy. Replacing growth with ‘green growth’ is not going to cut it.


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Dai Rob
Dai Rob
8 months ago

Excellent article both!
Strong words indeed from a Labour MP!! Da iawn! 🙂

Keith Parry
Keith Parry
8 months ago

If the new First Minister has any sense he will ignore these absurd “We are all doomed” Climate Alarmists with their worthless forecasts. He will scrap Net Zero targets and defund the armies of Eco-parasites who are on the public pay role.. Then our country might prosper and living standards rise ending poverty.

Dai Rob
Dai Rob
8 months ago
Reply to  Keith Parry

No wonder your one-man-ego-trip, party fails to garner any support & no wonder your electorate kicked you out, last time around Parry.

Keith Parry
Keith Parry
8 months ago
Reply to  Dai Rob

People are discovering what a con and economic disaster all this Net Zero Nonsense is.

Johnny Gamble
Johnny Gamble
7 months ago
Reply to  Keith Parry

As you have quite rightly said Keith only one word for it.Nonsense

Richard Davies
Richard Davies
8 months ago

A great article from Beth Winter and Prof. Calvin Jones.

Beth is one of the really good labour mps, there are only a few of them and there will be none if Mr keir starmer has his way!

Mozart
Mozart
8 months ago

The only thing central to everything Mr Chips does is lining his own pockets with dubious back handers and bringing his office into disrepute

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
8 months ago

That great moralist and Wizard of UK Michael Gove is going to define ‘extremism’…

I would like to know what both Gething and Smiles have to say?

James
James
8 months ago

Oh my goodness!! Just realised that a Labour MP wrote this article! Why I am I not surprised! It genuinely scares me that people like Beth have managed to be voted in. It doesn’t say much for her constitutes if they have voted her in? What on earth are you talking about capitalism for? I suspect because Beth is a total Socialist. Two words, Beth, Pen Rhys! Nothing wrong with capitalism, you work hard, you earn money. The issue today is coorperatism, and it worries that you have the two mixed up! It’s coorperatism that has devastated and devasting the… Read more »

Linda Jones
Linda Jones
7 months ago
Reply to  James

Such naivety

James
James
7 months ago
Reply to  Linda Jones

Explain…….

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