#FUTUREGEN

Davidson, the former minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing in Wales, among many other public roles, chronicles the complex, ultimately successful process by which the nation created the Well-being for Future Generations (Wales) Act, which became law in 2015. The act, Davidson explains, “creates seven goals for living within our environmental limits in the arenas of health, prosperity, resilience, communities, language and heritage, equality and Wales’ role in the world.” The wide-ranging law connects environmental policy to social justice, a crucial concern in the nation of fewer than 4 million, where social justice, poverty, and inequality—of housing, education, and access to services—are key political themes. For Davidson, environmental awareness began early in her life. She grew up in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where, she writes, “the wildness of nature entered my soul.” Returning to the U.K. when she was 14, she resented the culture of consumerism that she saw all around her and sought chances to immerse herself in the natural world. After university, she became a teacher, but she was “galvanized into resistance politics” by the policies of Margaret Thatcher and eagerly joined the Labour Party. After Wales voted for self-determination in 1999, she worked to put sustainable development at the heart of the new government. Davidson recounts the push back she received from politicians and voters and the slow process—from 2003 until the passage of the sustainability law in 2015—necessary to get popular support. Welsh voters needed to be convinced that the law was both economically and environmentally sound: “How do we create an economy that enhances our ecology—and thus our survival? Currently all the evidence,” Davidson notes regretfully, “particularly from the so-called developed countries, is going in the opposite direction.” Wales’ hard-won success, though, is cause for optimism.

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