Given the unprecedented challenges we’ve faced over the past couple of years, I want to acknowledge the commitment Public Services Boards (PSBs) have demonstrated in working together to prepare their 2022 well-being assessments.

After the success of the 2020 pilot academy, the Future Generations Leadership Academy has returned in 2021 to inspire the next generation of Welsh leaders.

People making a positive difference to Wales’ present and future are being spotlighted by the first Future Generations Commissioner, Sophie Howe, as she comes to the end of her seven-year term.

And although many things have changed since growing up as a mixed-race kid in Cardiff in the 80s, I feel there is a great deal to improve upon - and this is a job that we can all get involved in together.

People in Wales should be able to access nature four minutes from where they live, the Future Generations Commissioner is announcing during National Tree Week.

Working in collaboration with Cardiff University, the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales has undertaken research and a Section 20 Review, to establish the extent to which the Act has been informing procurement decisions across the public bodies in Wales since 2016 (when the Act came into force).  

I recognise the significant challenges that the Welsh Government has faced in the past year, and it is positive that the draft budget for 2021-22, published in December 2020, emphasises the importance of a green and just recovery.

“I grew up in Conway in St Lucia, and I had the most wonderful childhood - growing up in the Caribbean - playing ‘Ticky Tock’ with these nice little stones, going on the boats and by the beach."

Education fit for the Future A White Paper For discussion Produced by Professor Calvin Jones in collaboration with the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales

This tendering exercise is open to anyone interested in an opportunity to work with the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, and who can help us consider what a national governance system fit for the future should look like.

The Commissioner is required to monitor and assess the extent to which such public bodies are meeting their well-being objectives are being met. This duty seeks to ensure public bodies are moving closer to their objectives and contributing to the national well-being goals. Every five years, the Commissioner must publish an overall assessment and recommendations for improvement in a Future Generations Report.

The forthcoming budget is a defining moment for the Welsh Government.

Since the bike-sharing scheme launched in Cardiff earlier this year, I was one of the people that took advantage of the scheme and began travelling using the nextbike for my everyday travels across the city. After using them a few times, I started raving about it to my friends and family, or anyone who would listen, and getting them to use it too.

We’re celebrating Black History Month #proudtobe with stories from Black people across Wales on lessons Black history can teach us about the future.  Here, Jessica Dunrod, 32, author, translator, and education and inclusion consultant, from Cardiff, talks about the importance of representation and why complacency is one of the biggest threats to future generations... 

“When I look at my life it feels like I really take after my mother."

The UK’s first 'guardian of the not-yet-born’ is encouraging other countries at COP27 this week to protect future generations from the climate, nature and cost of living emergencies by law. 

I am calling on the Welsh Government to launch a shorter working week trial.

The Education Fit for the Future in Wales report, authored by Professor Calvin Jones (Cardiff Business School) in collaboration with the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, is a White Paper for discussion that calls for us to match the skills needed in the future with our education and qualifications system in Wales.

Thousands of new ‘future-fit' jobs could be created if the new Welsh Government embraces a radical vision for Wales, according to the Future Generations Commissioner.

We will make it our mission to ensure all Welsh public bodies achieve their net zero and nature positive goals by 2030. As a result, public bodies are leading action on climate change including adaptation, in a way that reduces inequalities and maximises the benefits to people and communities across Wales.

Wales should explore paying everyone a basic income to study how it could improve lives for generations in the future, the First Minister is being urged.

This specification is open to anyone interested in an opportunity to work with the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales (FGCW), to provide economic and analytical support for our work on a green, equal and just recovery from the pandemic.  

Involvement is at the heart of the Well-being of Future Generations Act. Since the creation of the Future Generations Commissioner in 2016, our office has involved thousands of people to support and inform our work. Some of the involvement projects we have undertaken to date include

Cowshed has joined forces with Wales’ Future Generations Commissioner’s Office to offer more paid opportunities for people experiencing barriers to starting a career in communications because of race, religion, age, sex or social background.

Wales needs to up the scale and pace on delivering its future generations law, says the Future Generations Commissioner, as he launches his new strategy, Cymru Can. 

Currently in Wales we have a major skills gap. This is only going to widen as we move to green technologies and green jobs. We know that if Wales is to be prosperous, we need our workers to have the skills for the jobs of the future.

Wales is leading the way to protect future generations, the United Nations has said.

We have the opportunity to create a better Wales for current and future generations.

The purpose of our work is to estimate the total funding needed for the decarbonisation of homes in Wales, identify funding gaps and suggest approaches to addressing these gaps.

A future-fit curriculum for our children, solar panels saving a hospital £1m a year in electric bills, a road building freeze and hundreds of people receiving a basic income – these are just some of the changes Wales is making thanks to its world-leading Well-being of Future Generations Act.

The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales has welcomed the Welsh Government’s budget published yesterday but says the Government is still not comprehensively demonstrating how spending is meeting the climate emergency and how across the board it is shifting its spend towards preventing problems from occurring rather than trying to fix them afterwards.

“I’ve always had a love for nature, and I gravitated towards it. Nature taught me what society wasn’t willing to."

The interconnections of people and planet: health depends on nature.

“All my life I have wanted to become a doctor, however in my second year of studies, when I started plugging myself in to different communities and meeting different people through networking, I realised there was so much to do. And impacts to be made in so many ways."

Imagine a person born 50 or 100 years into the future - how is their life going to be made worse or better by what you do today?

In collaboration with the New Economics Foundation and building on research undertaken by the Wales TUC, I have published analysis showing the potential of investment in green jobs and skills for a prosperous, green and equal recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of our series of blogs in response to the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales’ new strategy, Cymru Can, Eleri Williams from Building Communities Trust, explores the link between community resilience and inequality. Here, she looks at what can be done to ensure that Cymru Can achieve well-being for people now, and generations yet to be born, no matter where they live in Cymru.

As part of our duty to promote the sustainable development principle, the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Sophie Howe, is seeking an agency to create and deliver a PR campaign to promote the sustainable development principle to a range of new audiences.

Future Generations Commissioner for Wales is seeking to tender a short-term contract to support the team to package up and communicate examples of our personal journey to ‘walk the talk’ of the Act and be the change that we want to see in others.

We are very pleased to see the Welsh Government publish this important report today accepting the recommendations of the Roads Review Panel which we supported. We thank them and Dr Lyn Sloman for their evident commitment to transforming the way we will move around Wales.  

Wales’ Well-being of Future Generations Act is a law that puts a duty on Welsh Government to protect the interests of future generations while meeting the challenges of today - the law requires the Government to set milestones they are seeking to achieve on their way to meeting each of Wales’ seven well-being goals.

Refugee Ali joins Wales’ leaders of tomorrow as he graduates from Future Generations Leadership Academy   A former asylum seeker will become one of Wales’ leaders of tomorrow after graduating from a transformative programme run by the Future Generations Commissioner.   Ali Al-Anbaki, 27, from Cardiff, said he wants to raise awareness of the mental health struggles of people seeking sanctuary, after completing the Future Generations Leadership Academy, which supports young people to bring about lasting social change under the Well-being of Future Generations Act.  

‘the leaders, the people, they rolled over like spent dogs, yawned above the warnings’

More than two thirds of the public want the Government to consider future generations in policy-making – according to new research - and the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales is backing a campaign for a UK-wide law that protects tomorrow from the actions of today.

“We have recently declared a climate emergency in Wales but are failing to take the action at the scale or pace needed to meet our carbon emission targets. The impact of climate change is already evident in Wales with 23% of our coastline being eroded because of rising sea water as well as the risk of losing 1 in 14 of our wildlife species. Yet it is still our younger generations who are leading the debate and holding governments to account on their lack of action to combat climate change,” said Sophie Howe, Future Generations Commissioner for Wales.

“This is a huge step in the right direction for the healthier, resilient and more equal Wales and shows the difference having a Well-being of Future Generations Act makes."

The announcement back in March this year that the UK was going into lockdown was a shock to us all and created significant challenges as we navigated a new world which largely required us to stay at home.

The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Sophie Howe, has asked Welsh Government to explain how decisions are being made on Wales’ road-building freeze exemptions.

Supporting community climate action is essential if local councils are to help Wales cut climate-warming carbon emissions and reach net zero, the Future Generations Commissioner said today. [Tuesday, March 5.]

Wales’ Future Generations Commissioner is visiting Dublin, Ireland, this week as both countries share learnings on protecting future generations by law.

Following Welsh Government’s publication of an update to the Welsh Infrastructure Investment Plan, Monday, 4th November, the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales has called on the Welsh Government to publish its carbon impact assessments to evidence how they are taking steps to tackle the climate emergency.

The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales says the Well-being of Future Generations Act should be used to future-proof against further cost of living emergencies.

Wales’ new champion for the future of the nation is using his first day in the job to call for “urgent and transformational change” to improve people’s lives now and in the future.

The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Sophie Howe, in collaboration with Literature Wales and Wales Arts International, is announcing an exciting opportunity for an emerging poet to bring the Well-being of Future Generations Act to life.

Wales has a huge story to tell at COP26 – our Well-being of Future Generations Act.

A new transport vision for Wales’ future that prioritises public transport and active travel is a positive step towards shifting the nation’s travel habits, says Future Generations Commissioner Sophie Howe.

Public bodies in Wales spend over £6 billion each year procuring a range of goods, services and works; this represents nearly a third of total devolved Welsh annual expenditure, and it is estimated that over the next decade Welsh public services will spend over £60 billion.