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

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.