Ever since reading Jane Jacobs’ wonderful little book, Systems of Survival, many years ago, I have developed a clearer and clearer view of the roles of the public and private sectors. The private sector’s commercial ethos is about meeting needs and wants, with innovation, industry, service and trade, in order to improve standards of living and quality of life. The public sector’s guardianship ethos is about protection and preservation: ensuring the sustainability of society including the activities of the private sector. It means environmental foresight and fostering social cohesion among other things, along with security.
To strike this balance is not easy. It involves using taxes and regulation to ensure sustainability without stifling present day innovation and prosperity. Of course, there are overlaps and gray areas when you get down to cases, but broadly speaking the private sector is about wealth generation, while governing should be about creating equality of opportunity and ensuring that wealth generation can continue for future generations.
So, I was delighted to discover the ground-breaking initiative of the Welsh government, which enacted The Well-Being of Future Generations Act. Jane Davidson was the prime mover of this legislation. She was Wales’ former Minister of Education and Minister of the Environment, Sustainability and Housing, and is the current Pro-Vice Chancellor Emeritus, University of Wales Trinity St. David, and associate faculty at Harvard University.
Jane Davidson has written a remarkable account beginning with her personal path to “living lightly” as she calls it, and of the development and passage of The Well-Being of Future Generations Act, and of what the Act has meant to governing in Wales. The book is called #futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2020.
“What Wales is doing today, the world will do tomorrow.” - Nikhil Seth, UN Assistant Secretary General
It has always seemed to me that the most profound ideas often seem beautifully simple and obvious. What struck me most about the project of the Well-Being of Future Generations Act is how clearly non-partisan it is: no one can argue that we should provide for the well-being of current and future generations.
We can argue about whether health care should be provided publicly, privately, or both; if it is good to have students pay for their own post-secondary education; and if market forces alone will preserve shrinking resources or if taxes or regulation is required…but good government means thinking long-term. All parties know this even though as a practical matter electoral considerations and imminent crises drive most decisions. It is not easy to think beyond the next time the government must face the public at the polls. The public is busy with its own immediate needs, wants and worries. Long-term considerations are often addressed in banal if high-sounding promises, rather than in the meat of legislation.
What Wales has done is to make thinking about future generations the law. Who could argue that this should be the guiding principle of governing in every country in the world?
Getting the Act passed was a feat of determination and political skill. The book is a fascinating read for anyone wondering what is actually involved in creating legislation. Getting it passed was only the first step. The key to making the Act really mean something was to align the machinery of government, the civil service, around the Act as not simply one of many competing priorities, but as the guiding principle that must inform every government decision. The paradigm shift Wales achieved should be a model for every country on earth.
In the face of the ecological degradation which we are barely coming to terms with, The Well-Being of Future Generations Act provides for a re-ordering of government priorities and a mission-driven approach to government that could not be more timely. Jane Davidson was behind that paradigm shift in Wales. She describes the fascinating journey to making her vision of government as guardian of sustainability into a reality in #futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country.
In my own view, if government were to follow the principles enacted into law in Wales, the private sector would be liberated to maximize our well-being and quality of life.
Some of the debates we have about shareholder versus stakeholder corporate governance, which risk entrusting profit-seeking enterprises with the future of the planet and either undermine or let government off the hook, would be moot. It would allow the private sector to get on with maximizing shareholder value by innovating and meeting the needs and wants of its customers. In turn the government could focus on its role in ensuring sustainability through environmental protection and social cohesion (the Seven Generation model the first Canadians followed, and the Peace, Order and Good Government which were Canada’s founding principles), as well as help the private sector flourish with as light a touch as is consistent with the guiding principle of The Well-Being of Future Generations.
The book is an undramatized account of the unglamorous business of making real change. It should be required reading for everyone working in government. The Act is a template for governing towards a world in which future generations profit from the wisdom and foresight of their predecessors, rather than suffering from their focus on short-term self-interest. The passage and implementation of the Well-Being of Future Generations Act is a game changer. #futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country is a remarkable contribution by this purpose driven political leader and thinker.
