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Hybrid working: planning for the future
Hybrid working: planning for the future

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1.2 The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015

In the UK, the most developed approach to reducing carbon emissions is the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, n.d.a). It is seen as a world leading approach to protecting future generations and addressing climate change.

The seven wellbeing goals

To ensure that Wales is working towards the same shared purpose and vision, the Act has seven wellbeing goals that all public bodies must work towards achieving. These are outlined in Figure 4 and explained in Table 1.

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Figure 4 The seven wellbeing goals in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015
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A diagram showing the silhouette of Wales in the centre of a circle, which comprises seven segments. Each segment has one of the wellbeing goals noted within it: A Prosperous Wales; A Resilient Wales; A Healthier Wales; A More Equal Wales; A Wales of Cohesive Communities; A Wales of Vibrant Culture and Thriving Welsh language; A Globally Responsible Wales.

Figure 4 The seven wellbeing goals in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015
Table 1 Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 - Seven well-being goals

A Prosperous Wales

An innovative, productive, and low carbon society that recognises the limits of the global environment and therefore uses resources efficiently and proportionately (including acting on climate change); and which develops a skilled and well-educated population in an economy that generates wealth and provides employment opportunities, allowing people to take advantage of the wealth generated through securing decent work.

A Resilient Wales

A nation which maintains and enhances a biodiverse natural environment with healthy functioning ecosystems that support social, economic and ecological resilience and the capacity to adapt to change.

A More Equal Wales

A society that enables people to fulfil their potential no matter what their background or circumstances (including their socio-economic circumstances).

A Healthier Wales

A society in which people’s physical and mental wellbeing is maximised and in which choices and behaviours that benefit future health are understood.

A Wales of Cohesive Communities

Attractive, safe, viable and well-connected.

A Wales of Vibrant Culture and Thriving Welsh Language

A society that promotes and protects culture, heritage, and the Welsh language, and which encourages people to participate in the arts, and sports and recreation.

A Globally Responsible Wales

A nation which, when doing anything to improve the economic, social, environmental and cultural wellbeing of Wales, takes account of whether doing such a thing may make a positive contribution to global wellbeing.
Source: Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, n.d.a

The Act has a strong focus on how the goals will be achieved by encouraging public bodies and organisations to use sustainable development principles of long-term, prevention, integration, collaboration, and involvement, as depicted in Table 2 below.

Table 2 Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 - Five ways of working

Long-term: The importance of balancing short-term needs with the needs to safeguard the ability to also meet long-term needs.

Integration: Considering how the public body’s wellbeing objectives may impact upon each of the wellbeing goals, on their objectives, or on the objectives of other public bodies.

Involvement: The importance of involving people with an interest in achieving the wellbeing goals, and ensuring that those people reflect the diversity of the area which the body serves.

Collaboration: Acting in collaboration with any other person (or different parts of the body itself) that could help the body to meet its wellbeing objectives.

Prevention: How acting to prevent problems occurring or getting worse may help public bodies meet their objectives.
Source: Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, n.d.a)

Activity 3 Thinking about the possibilities for higher education institutions

Timing: 15 minutes

In the video below, Scott Stonham, Independent Sustainable Technology Analyst and author, shares the role higher education institutions (HEIs) could play in the future.

As you watch the video make a note of the following:

  • the strengths within your own organisation
  • areas that are of interest to you
  • how you might be able to make a difference in the future.
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Transcript: Video 3 HEIs for the future

SCOTT STONHAM:
The challenge of sustainability within higher education institutions. This, like most things, where there's change, there's opportunity. So, I think on one hand, you can look at the higher education sector from different perspectives, of course. On one hand, that need for information, for that need for research, that need for kind of pulling together brightest minds to come up with solutions, and answers, and explore these ideas. That's absolutely an opportunity.
There's so many things that we just don't know. And so many things that we're not even aware. We don't know of, yet. That it's the journey through sustainability, is a never ending one. And it starts off with a huge amount of uncertainty.
These are, as well as that opportunity of uncertainty, we've also got to, how do we deal with that uncertainty? How do we manage that? How do we communicate it?
And there's kind of-- there were three-- When early on in my life, we went through some troubles, and we said with our child, as long to get through this, we needed to have three, we need to look at three C's, certainty, clarity, and consistency. And if you can look at those three C's, then it would be difficult, but you'd get through it. And I think we're in that situation right now, where all of those three C's are a little bit vague and ambiguous, and kind of all over the place.
So, the challenge is, how do we manage that in order to get to that opportunity? Also, the other big thing is pace. If we had an infinite amount of time to deal with uncertainty, then it would be-- we could deal with it. But we don't. Things are moving faster and faster.
We just need to look back over the last five years, in terms of what we see, in terms of the climate around us. The pace is accelerating, not just in terms of the climate impact, but our lifestyles have been moving ahead at an exponential pace. The economy is going through some difficult times right now. It too is moving at ever accelerating pace, the changes in it.
The demands of the employers are changing at breakneck speed. So, the other challenge we've got is, how do we deal with all this uncertainty? How do we prepare for the future, for both the institutions, and also, most importantly, obviously, the students and the academics moving through this faster than we did yesterday?
And this is the slowest point in time where we need to make a change. Everything else is going to be faster. So we've got to deal with that.
And there's kind of techniques we can look at how we deal with that. But most importantly, I think, deal with, get comfortable with uncertainty. And if we're all comfortable with it, that's a good place to start. The other aspect to think about when we think about the opportunity and the challenges for higher education, is if we think about the SDG's one of the things that I haven't mentioned yet, that I do like about them, is how if you think about them, they're all on a spider's web. You can't pull one without impacting another. So, they're all so interdependent and interwoven.
It's life. That's what life is. You can't just decide that you're going to fix climate.
You can't do that, because you have to fix all these other things, or you impact all of these other things as well. And for me, what that does is that really highlights the skill sets we need to think about in the future. And the skill sets need to be broad enough to be able to understand the impact across these different things.
So, you can look at these skills kind of cross-cutting skill sets. You've got to have those skills that are all about systems and critical thinking. So understanding the complexity, dealing with information overload, and being able to kind of challenge, it's always been done like this, that status quo.
So, looking at that, you've got to be able to anticipate these outcomes, these interactions, these consequences. And then, actually build the strategies, to not only implement it, but to deal with these things, if and when may they actually happen. And beyond that, as we're challenging the norms, and being more aware of how you react, your place, your impact, and those around you as well. But ultimately, with things changing so fast, with so much uncertainty, we need to be really good at adaptation, and problem solving faster, and more efficiently, and importantly, collaboratively than we've ever been, I think.
So, if we're looking at higher education institutions, and some of the challenges, and opportunities that lay ahead of us right now, I mean, there are those broad kind of cross-cutting challenges are not specific to sustainability, funding, and politics, all of those kind of things. We've got new challenges that have kind of come up in the last few years, I think, as well, when we start thinking about, what did COVID bring to the situation? How did that change teaching? How did it change how we work together? How did it change staffing issues?
There is a lot of opportunity here, I think, because universities are in a very good place to tap into that need for information, and understanding, and new knowledge when it comes to dealing with that uncertainty. They are also in a really strong place to create, and guide, and mould, and develop those skills that we need to solve some of the critical issues we've got today, let alone tomorrow. They're also tremendous melting pots.
So, bringing that collaboration together and coming up with those ideas for solutions that are definitely not silo problems to solve. All of these things require that different thinking, that diversity in mindset, as well, that we need to bring to it. So I think sustainability, when we think about sustainability, we think about, again, through these things, the interconnectedness, the interdependence, the interwoven nature of all of these challenges we have to bring.
And for universities, you're in a very good place to put all that together, and to leverage those skill sets that you have. So, challenges, I think challenges are there already. Sustainability is another kind of challenge on top of that. But there's plenty of opportunities that come through that too.
All of our lives have changed quite a lot in the last couple of years. And the lives that really are significantly different, I think, to most of the lives, our parent's lives. In just a generation, things have changed remarkably. And just in the last two years, or three years, things have changed even more. It's all part of that exponential, or part of that exponential journey.
I think in the next 30 years or so, 20 years, 30 years, as we reach those key milestones in our global challenges, we're going to start to see changes happen much more rapidly. We have to. There's the things that we have to change more rapidly, and the things that are just going to change more rapidly anyway, i.e., the environment.
Some of the things that I think we will see from the environmental, the digital, and the social point of view, is we're going to start to understand that we're going to have a better understanding that everything we do has consequences that we didn't previously understand, or even, we weren't previously aware of, primarily, to do with climate to start with. But I think that will change as well. We'll start to see the intertwined goodness of these things playing through.
It will get easier. I believe. I'm a stubborn optimist. It will get easier.
We're right at the beginning of this collective journey. Lots of people have been doing it before us before, we sit here and talk about it. But right now, there's a huge momentum in this direction for very important reasons.
And it's difficult for a lot of us. But it will get easier. The challenges that we have right now, is we're trying to make decisions, we're trying to make changes without the information, without the toolsets, without the direction. Those tools, the information, and direction will come.
We will see from a reporting point of view, and a-- yeah, reporting point of view, and an information awareness point of view, these 25 or so different standards we have right now over time, they're going to come together somehow. And we'll start to see that reporting become easier. And when that reporting becomes easier, and more transparent, then that information will pass on to the individual and the buyers, so it becomes easier to look at product A and product A, and product A and product B, or service A and service B, and say, you know what? For the same price, I'm going to take that one, 'cause that's going to do-- be better for the environment and actually support my local community.
But again, that will only come when we have the right reporting structure, and the right mechanisms to be able to make those judgments, and those decisions are not automated, and in a scalable way. So, I think I think there some of the big things we will see. Will we see us all living in moss-lined buildings with urban farms. Maybe that will happen.
Will we see these dystopian futures of technology controlling our lives? Yeah, I think it already is controlling our lives in many degrees. But I think we'll start to understand more about how we can control it, and the bounds, and the limits that we must put in place, and collectively understand around those technologies, in order for it to do benefit for as many different aspects of our lives as we can, rather than harm and benefit just a few.
End transcript: Video 3 HEIs for the future
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Scott Stonham is the author of the Jisc report Exploring digital carbon footprints (Soneham, 2022), which focuses on the hidden environmental cost of the digital revolution and the steps universities and colleges can take. Feel free to download and read the report in your own time.