Lessons from Wales' Well-being of Future Generations experience
Aotearoa NZ doesn't have a great record of long-term thinking, so we need to look elsewhere - not for templates, but for inspiration
Aotearoa has a history of timid and fragmented futures thinking
Over the last decade in Aotearoa there have been sporadic calls to establish a “Ministry of the Future” or a “Futures Commissioner”. I’ve previously suggested (now behind a paywall) that a Ministry is the wrong approach. Mainly because it is unlikely to look closely at politically unsettling issues, and could become just another bureaucracy. In the current political climate, a Minister of the Future would likely be outside of Cabinet, with a narrow mandate and little influence.
Aotearoa previously had a Planning Council (1977 to 1990) and a short-lived Commission for the Future (from 1978 to 1982). The latter’s demise was attributed to it being an annoyance to Robert Muldoon, the Prime Minister of the day. Malcolm Menzies provided a brief history of these, and subsequent local futures initiatives. He noted that most futures programmes here have often been short-lived and
“… often become bogged down in topic-based approaches which may capture attention, but inevitably become political and present-centred.” Malcolm Menzies
We shouldn’t settle for just a Futures Commission
Nonetheless, renewed calls for a Parliamentary Commission for the Future here are being made. That would be a necessary and positive step, but it won’t be sufficient to create a lasting longer-term thinking culture.
A Commission has the risk of putting most of the responsibility for long-term thinking on a small organisation, who may only be able to “name and shame” short-sightedness. An effective Commission needs to be part of a larger system.
Unlike the recently deceased Productivity Commission, a Parliamentary Commission is harder to disestablish, because it isn’t there just by the grace and favour of the government of the day. But its reports and recommendation can still easily be ignored.
It’s worthwhile looking elsewhere at how other countries are enabling longer-term thinking. Wales provides a good source of inspiration and lessons.
Wales’ Well-being of Future Generations focus
A decade ago, Wales established a Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, which included the creation of a Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. The first Commissioner, Sophie Howe, visited Aotearoa in 2023.
Jon Alexander, as part of his series of “In search of authentic hope” posts on Medium, recently highlighted some of the achievements of Wales’ Future Generations approach. He drew, in part, on Jane Davidson’s 2020 book #futuregen. Lessons from a small country
Some of the achievements have been:
Greater investment in renewable energy and housing retrofits
Considering climate impacts in new transport and urban design projects
Creating a connected network of forests and woodlands
Creating more local and sustainable public service procurement practices
A new curriculum to support learners to become “ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world”
Changing the Auditor General’s role so that it looks beyond just public sector financial performance.
The Act provided a mandate for the Welsh government to assess its performance not just in terms of GDP, but also with regard to health, prosperity, resilience, communities, language and heritage, equality, and Wales’ role in the world. It also set out expectations of ways of working for the government – giving greater emphasis to prevention, participation, collaboration, and integration.
Aotearoa has a “Living Standards Framework” but well-being isn’t proscribed in an overarching piece of legislation. So, unlike the Welsh Act, it’s subject to political and Departmental whims.
Alexander highlights that the Well-being of Future Generations Act is an “Act of the people, not just the parliament.” It’s not a top-down approach, but about “government working with people.”
Creating the impetus
To create the Welsh Act there was an extensive series of community discussions:
“a distributed, networked national conversation called The Wales We Want. … this saw people asked about the Wales they wanted to leave behind for their children and grandchildren, and to consider the challenges, aspirations and ways to solve long-term problems to create the Wales they want by 2050.
There were hundreds of events across Wales, spawning themed conversations such as “The Wales Women Want,” “The Llanelli We Want,” “The Energy We Want,” “The Wales Young Farmers Want,” and more. All this served to set the pattern, not just of consulting people, but involving them and instilling ownership of a new vision for Wales …”
That’s not an approach common here, or elsewhere. Making legislation is usually largely an internal government process, shaped by Ministers and perhaps external reference or lobby groups. The public are typically able to have a say late in the process.
Ceding central control
For future-focussed ideas we typically have the government set up a high profile event – such as the Knowledge Wave Conference in 2001 – or commission a group of experts to “come up with good ideas.” Maybe with some regional events or a submissions process to gather views from communities. Out pops a report, some press coverage, a few selective projects, and then … nearly everyone goes back to their day jobs. Repeat every few electoral cycles.
So, improving long-term thinking isn’t just about setting up a new body. As Alexander emphasises, it requires governments to cede control and have trust in the populous. We still seem to be a long way from that here.
In Wales, Jane Davidson, a former Minister of the Environment, Sustainability & Housing is credited with getting the ball rolling for the Well-being of Future Generations Act. In our current cost-cutting environment, the emergence of a similar Cabinet champion emerging here in the next few years seems unlikely.
A weakness in Aotearoa is that we often look first to central government to take the initiative. But that is too passive, given the challenges we face. Another is that for a small nation we create silos very easily.
Connect from the bottom upwards
So a key challenge to overcome is to work from the community level upwards to create a broader future generation constituency that the government will find harder to ignore or sideline.
There are community, iwi, and sector futures initiatives happening away from government. For example, the Ōtautahi Futures Collective, Pure Advantage’s Recloaking Papatuanuku, Rewiring Aotearoa, and Tokona Te Raki. There will be many others too, often starting from casual conversations and community group chats. But there are no collective national conversations, as has occurred in Wales. We remain fragmented, and often ephemeral, long-term thinkers.
Wales’ future generations work is just one model of how to change a system. A source of ideas and inspiration, not a template. And Alexander notes that Wales’ sustainability work is still subject to push-back from some groups and interests, both within and outside the country.
The opportunity for Aotearoa seems to lie in connecting the pockets of community and sector futures thinking together to create a more collective view of the futures we want. That won’t be easy, and the conversations and discussions won’t always be amicable, but it’s preferable to waiting for government to take the lead.
Futures thinking in Aotearoa will prosper not from and through a Commissioner but through community connections. What should we be doing to make that work?