The National Assembly for Wales will appoint a Future Generations Commissioner as early as December 2015, says Peter Davies, the Welsh Commissioner for Sustainable Futures. The announcement came during his keynote speech at the FDSD relaunch event on 29 June.
Speaking to an audience from the legal, academic and third sectors, Davies outlined the far-reaching Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act, passed in April. “The intended effect of the Act is to provide a framework for how the public sector in Wales does business,” he said. “It’s about building in mechanisms that improve our governance for the long-term.”
After hearing from Davies, audience members broke into groups to consider how lessons learned in Wales could be applied elsewhere. We’ll hear from some of them in a later blog post.
The event also launched a new direction for FDSD. John Lotherington, Chair of Trustees, said: ‘We want to make sure that we seed ideas, connect ideas. And also, just as we’re doing here tonight, gather together some of the people who can make those ideas fruitful and start to make the sorts of changes we need to better connect democracy and sustainable development.’
The talk, titled ‘The wellbeing of future generations: how can the Welsh act inspire the UK and beyond?’, was hosted by the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Westminster University in London.
