The document discusses the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, a groundbreaking 2015 law in Wales that requires public bodies to consider long-term decisions and sustainable development. It formed a Sustainable Development Alliance of organizations to advocate for the bill, agreeing on core objectives and messages. Through consistent, creative advocacy and a shared social media campaign, the Alliance succeeded in getting its priorities written into the final law. The Alliance continues working to ensure proper implementation of the Act.

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WELLBEING OF
FUTURE
GENERATIONS ACT
RICHARD NOSWORTHY HEAD OF
COMMUNICATIONS, WWF CYMRU

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What is the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act?
The law was passed in 2015 and to quote Welsh Government:
“The Well-being of Future Generations Act requires public bodies
in Wales to think about the long-term impact of their decisions, in
an integrated joined up way, to work better with
people, communities and each other,
and to prevent persistent problems such as poverty, health
inequalities, biodiversity loss and climate change.”
It’s not an easy concept to communicate but we believe that not
only is this a ground breaking law globally, it also paves the way
for radical changes in how Government and public bodies work,
with massive implications for people in Wales.

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To give one cute example of why this matters to WWF – orangutans are
threatened by loss of forests due to unsustainable use of wood products.
We obviously care about wildlife but also this raises issues of the impact on
people too, such as deforestation worsening the effects of climate change.
By placing a duty on public bodies in Wales to carry out sustainable
development, this should mean decisions such as what paper local councils
buy will come from sustainable sources.

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We formed the Sustainable Development
Alliance with all these organisations:

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This alliance had a number of advantages:
• It meant we could spread the load in terms of advocacy and
campaign work.
• It meant we had more legitimacy.
• By working closely together on our asks and messaging we could
avoid divide and rule.
• Key to our success were having agreement on core objectives
across the Alliance, and consistency of message.

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This is one of the illustrations we commissioned for the Alliance –
and we all shared these across media and social media.

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Each of us had our focus of interest, whether it was wildlife, tackling
poverty or the Welsh language. But we all stuck to the same core asks of
the Bill.
Even at moments in the process when the Government appeared to be
failing, we framed our asks around the positive potential of a strong bill
and a clear, evidence based solution.
This was about going with the grain of the political process – we already
had the commitment from Welsh Gov, so this was about making sure it
was delivered.
We also benefitted from providing what the Government could not – so
both in terms of the research and legal advice we had, and the message.
So as well as the external message we worked in detail on the evidence
base for the Act.
In terms of communicating this was a complex issue – so we had to be
creative both to provide a vision of what we wanted but also to explain it in
clear, easy terms.

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At WWF we got quite creative – we ran the Welsh Wish campaign where we
invited supporters to contribute a photo and wish for the future of Wales. This
inspired hundreds of supporters to get involved. We worked with IGERs
Wales and this drove media coverage and social media engagement, and
through an event interaction between the public and politicians to support
this positive message.
The campaign also had a very strong face to face political Advocacy
dimension.
We created a Twitter storm on Ams at key moments for influencing and
combined behind-the-scenes political engagement with a public campaign
approach.

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SD ALLIANCE - KEY LESSONS
FOR COMMUNICATORS
• Share common assets
• Have a sign off protocol
• Share & co-ordinate
spokespeople
• Keep technology as simple as
possible
• Be creative and visual

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In the end – we succeeded in getting our asks into the Wellbeing of Future
Generations Act. We now have that strong duty in law to act in the interest of
future generations, and we have our Future Generations Commissioner set
up.
This was fantastic but of course is not the end of the story – we’re still
working with Welsh Government and others on getting the Bill implemented.
Issues such as the M4 relief road raise questions about how much impact
this law is having. So this was a step along a longer road of making Wales a
sustainable nation.

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14. Campaigning and
advocacy for charities in
Wales
Wales Networking Group
23 January 2019
Cardiff
#CCwales
Sponsored by

15. Visit the CharityComms website to
view slides from past events, see
what events we have coming up
and to check out what else we do:
www.charitycomms.org.uk