Embedding sustainable development across Government, after the Secretary of State’s announcement on the future of the Sustainable Development Commission.

Written evidence submitted by the Welsh Assembly Government (ESD 29)

Summary

· The Welsh Assembly Government is underpinned by a legal duty relating to sustainable development, contained in section 79 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 [GoWA 2006];

· Sustainable development is the central organising principle of the Welsh Assembly Government;

· The Welsh Assembly Government has a clear governance structure and a number of mechanisms to embed sustainable development across its policies and programmes;

· There is a robust and comprehensive reporting process in relation to the Welsh Assembly Government’s sustainable development performance, which includes scrutiny by the National Assembly for Wales and commentary by independent stakeholders; and

· In light of the UK Government announcement concerning the future of the Sustainable Development Commission, the Welsh Ministers will develop new arrangements in Wales to provide appropriate advice , as well as catalyse and support action to deliver sustainable development in all parts of society across Wales.

Introduction

1. The Welsh Assembly Government has a duty under section 79 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 to have a scheme setting out how it will promote sustainable development in the exercise of its functions. The duty also requires Welsh Ministers to:

· publish an annual report of how the proposals set out in the Sustainable Development Scheme have been implemented in that financial year; and

· following an election to the National Assembly, publish a report containing an assessment of how effective the proposals set out in the scheme have been in promoting sustainable development.

2. This paper describes how the Welsh Assembly Government has met its legal duty to implement a Sustainable Development Scheme . Going further, this paper also describes how we are embedding sustainable development as the central organising principle of the Welsh Assembly Government.

Background

3. I launched the new Sustainable Development Scheme One Wales: One Planet in May 2009. This scheme defines sustainable development as enhancing the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of people and communities, achieving a better quality of life for our own and future generations in ways which:

· promote social justice and equality of opportunity; and

· enhance the natural and cultural environment and respect its limits - using only our fair share of the earth’s resources and sustaining our cultural legacy.

4. The new S ustainable D evelopment Scheme:

· affirms that sustainable development will be the central organising principle of the Welsh Assembly Government and sets out the steps we will take to fully embed this approach;

· confirms that sustainable development is the overarching strategic aim of all of our policies and programmes, across all Ministerial portfolios;

· sets out our vision of a sustainable Wales, based on using only our fair share of the earth’s resources and becoming a fairer and more just nation; and

· is structured according to our 5 headline indicators of sustainable development, to provide a firmer link between our scheme and how we report progress against sustainable development.

5. We have more closely defined the meaning of sustainable development in terms of the central organising principle of policy making and delivery. The key characteristics that we have identified are:

· clarity about what is valued and our objectives – with a focus on maximisation of the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of Welsh citizens over the long term;

· informing real hard choices in policy and investment - for example through focusing on prevention / early intervention, dealing effectively with failure and promoting policy integration across Departments; and

· securing a sufficiently broad and deep mandate for our approach - through building trust and confidence and promoting behaviour and culture change at all levels in society.

How can mechanisms to ensure the sustainability of Government operations, procurement and policy-making be improved and further embedded and mainstreamed across Government departments?

6. The Welsh Assembly Government’s duty in relation to sustainable development gives us a unique understanding of the challenge in embedding sustainable development across policies, programmes and projects in Government.

7. In over a decade of having a sustainable development duty in Wales, we have refined our thinking as to how to meet this challenge. Our solution, which we have set out in One Wales: One Planet, is that the long term wellbeing of people, communities and place must be the basis for making every decision at the Welsh Assembly Government. That is what we mean by making sustainable development our central organising principle.

8. Below I have briefly described some of the mechanisms we have in place within the Welsh Assembly Government to achieve our goal of making sustainable development our central organising principle.

Working to be an Exemplar

9. In our scheme, we confirmed our vision that the Welsh Assembly Government would become an exemplar organisation in the way that it mainstreams sustainable development as the central organising principle. The key outcomes from this we are working towards are:

· the Welsh Assembly Government, as an exemplar organisation, demonstrates leadership on sustainable development, and encourages and enables others to embrace sustainable development as their central organising principle;

· sustainable development considerations are at the core of the evaluation and development of our policies and our new and existing investment proposals; and

· there are effective and participative systems of governance in all levels of society.

Cabinet Sub-Committee on Sustainable Futures

10. I Chair a Cabinet Sub-Committee on Sustainable Futures. Its overall purpose is to provide Ministerial oversight and determine priority actions to:

· embed sustainable development as the central organising principle of the Welsh Assembly Government;

· tackle the causes of climate change (greenhouse gas emission reduction); and

· adapt to the impacts of climate change.

11.
This Cabinet Sub-Committee meets every two months and receives regular update reports on the work that different Ministers are undertaking within their portfolios to take action in these areas. For example, at our meeting of 4 June 2010 [the most recent meeting for which papers have been published] the following items were discussed:

· Embedding Action on Sustainable Development and Climate Change in the work of Heritage;

· Embedding Action on Sustainable Development and Climate Change in the work of the Directorate General for Public Service and Local Government Delivery;

· 10:10 Campaign;

· Update on Promoting and Maintaining Behaviour Change; and

· Communities and Climate Change.

Director General, Sustainable Futures

12. At an official level, the Director General for Sustainable Futures takes forward and champions delivery of sustainable development across all departments, working directly to the Permanent Secretary.

13. In addition to having sustainable development at the very top of the civil service organisation in Wales, we also have a small dedicated sustainable development policy team that is responsible for implementation and coordination. This team has two key roles:

· working closely with other officials across the Welsh Assembly Government to embed sustainable development as the central organising principle in policies, programmes and business practices at all levels in the organisation; and

· working with external partners to encourage and enable them to adopt sustainable development as their central organising principle, through mechanisms we have developed such as the Sustainable Development Charter and Guidance and Wales Sustainability Week.

Sustainable Development Advocates Network

14. The Sustainable Development Advocates Network is a group of officials from across the Welsh Assembly Government who act as sustainable development champions within their own policy area; staff from the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) participate in the Network. Network members trial new ideas, promote best practice and share learning and experiences.

15. Some of the work taken forward by the Advocates has included projects with Forum for the Future to ‘pilot’ approaches to embed the concept of a ‘central organising principle’ within their Department. Examples include sustainable development workshops for team leaders in the Health Department and research with public sector procurement leads with Value Wales.

Work to Embed Sustainable Development in Departments

16. Several Departments have created their own sustainable development tools and processes. Examples include:

· Creating Sustainable Places which is used by the Department for Economy and Transport (DE&T) to embed sustainable development in regeneration programmes;

· Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship programme (ESDGC) which is a programme led by the Department for Children, Lifelong Learning and Skills (DCELLS) to embed sustainable development in the whole curriculum and management of schools; and

· Sustainable Procurement is led by Value Wales and includes work such as the development of a Sustainable Procurement Action Framework (SPAF) designed to build sustainability into specification design, supplier selection, contract award and management. [see also paragraph 22]

Further details of work within Departments can be provided.

Sustainable Development Training

17. One Wales: One Planet was supported in its first year by a training course that was made available to all staff entitled: One Wales: One Planet – the central organising principle. This course focused on staff developing a broad awareness of the scheme and the principles of sustainable development, including the duties on the Welsh Assembly Government in relation to sustainable development and how this is relevant to their work.

18. We have revised this course to reflect the lessons we have learnt a year on since the publication of One Wales: One Planet. We are also embedding sustainable development as part of other training programmes, for example within the suite of policy and procurement training.

Sustainable Development Partners

19. We have a number of key partnerships with sustainable development experts. In their different roles and relationships we feel these partnerships have added insight, scrutiny, specialist support, research and advice; without these ‘critical friends’ the Welsh Assembly Government would not have made as significant progress as it has. Our principal partners are:

· SDC Wales – the SDC in Wales provides the Welsh Assembly Government with advice and commentary on sustainable development and has helped shape our thinking in a number of critical areas. For example, the SDC has very recently contributed to the work on Low Carbon Regions in Wales; has engaged with retailers on the single use carrier bags levy; and provided commentary in our Sustainable Development Annual Report 2009-10;

·
Cynnal Cymru – Cynnal Cymru is an independent, not for profit organisation that was established by the Welsh Assembly Government to engage with civil society to increase understanding of sustainable development and assist in creating behaviour change towards achieving a ‘one planet Wales’. For example Cynnal Cymru supports the Network of external partners that have ‘signed up’ to the Sustainable Development Charter and provided the views of civil society in our Annual Report 2009-10; and

· Forum for the Future (Forum) – Forum has worked with the Welsh Assembly Government over the last ten years to develop a range of tools and processes to embed sustainable development. For example, we recently commissioned Forum to research best practice organisations that have successfully embedded sustainable development. We used this work to inform the content of our Sustainable Development Charter [as noted in paragraph 13].

Policy Integration

20. We have a Policy Gateway Tool, developed originally by Forum for the Future, as a tool for integrating sustainable development into policies as they are developed, ensuring that that the policies contribute to economic, social and environmental outcomes in an integrated way, and so promote the long term wellbeing of people and communities in Wales.

21. During 2009-10 we continued to develop our policy making process. To complement the Gateway, a Policy Threshold tool is now used at an early stage of policy development to prompt policy makers to assess:

· the impact of the policy on long term wellbeing;

· integration of social, economic, cultural and environmental objectives;

· potential conflicts with other policies;

· likely effect on the sustainable development indicators; and

· sustainability aspects of any procurement activity.

Sustainable Procurement

22. We have developed a Sustainable Procurement Action Framework (SPAF), an assessment tool with levels 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). Our Sustainable Development Scheme commits us to achieving level 5 of the SPAF by 2010, by demonstrating that we are building sustainability into specification design, supplier selection, contract award and management.

23. We apply a Sustainable Risk Assessment (SRA), which allows the consideration of all economic, social and environment factors within new procurement specifications, to all competitively tendered contracts over £25,000 in support of this.

How can governance arrangements for sustainable development in Government be improved, and how can sustainability reporting by Government departments be made more transparent and accountable?

24. The Welsh Assembly Government has a number of governance arrangements in place to ensure regular, open and transparent reporting. In some cases these procedures are statutory and in other cases, we have made additional arrangements because of the commitment of the Welsh Assembly Government to full transparency in its performance on sustainable development.

Sustainable Development Annual Report

25. The Welsh Assembly Government has a statutory duty to publish a Report [s79(6)(a) GoWA] on how the proposals sets out in its Scheme for Sustainable Development have been implemented each year. This report is laid before the National Assembly for Wales and is there is an annual Plenary debate to give Assembly Members the opportunity to give me their views on this report.

26. In our 2008-09 Annual Report, for the first time, we included independent commentary on our progress from the SDC Wales. In our 2009-10 Annual Report [laid at the National Assembly for Wales 21 September 2010] the SDC Commissioner for Wales, Peter Davies, once again contributed an independent commentary.

27. An example of the value of this independent commentary is that, in the recent debate on our Annual Report [28 September 2010] I took an amendment to the Motion (which welcomed the Annual Report), based almost entirely on a recommendation made by the SDC Wales in their commentary.

28. The 2009-10 Annual Report is also significant in that for the first time we included an independent commentary from Cynnal Cymru who gathered the views of civil society in Wales on the impact of our Scheme on our external partners.

Sustainable Development Indicators

29. We report our progress towards becoming a more sustainable nation annually using five headline indicators of sustainable development:

· sustainable resource use – Wales’ Ecological Footprint;

· sustaining the environment – percentage of Biodiversity Action Plan species and habitats recorded as stable or increasing;

· a sustainable economy - Gross Value Added (GVA) and GVA per head;

· a sustainable society – percentage of the population in low-income households; and

· wellbeing – the wellbeing of Wales.

30.
Our scheme is structured around these five indicators, to provide a clear link between the proposals we set out in our scheme and how we report our progress towards becoming a more sustainable nation.

31. The latest Indicators Report for 2010 was published 26 August and, for the first time, we reported on the wellbeing of Wales as one of five headline indicators of sustainable development.

32. The five headline indicators are underpinned by 39 supporting indicators in a range of fields such as waste, crime, workless households and air quality. Overall, the publication showed that:

· 17 of 44 indicator assessments show a clear improvement;

· 22 of 44 indicator assessments show little or no change;

· 1 of 44 indicator assessments show clear deterioration;

· 4 of 44 indicator assessments have insufficient or no comparable data.

33. As with the Annual Report, there is an opportunity for Assembly Members to give me their views on the progress on our SD Indicators report during an annual Plenary debate.

Green Dragon

34. In terms of the environmental sustainability of our own operations and its reporting, we publish an annual Green Dragon report (Green Dragon is a Welsh Environmental Management System in five levels, with level 5 equivalent to ISO 14001).

35. The Welsh Assembly Government has achieved Level 5 of the Green Dragon Standard for the entire administrative estate. The Environmental Management System now covers all administrative estate offices and in-house business processes and includes trained Green Dragon teams in 20 offices with responsibility for local environmental management.

Sustainable Development in Government (SDiG)

36. In addition to the above, we also ask the SDC to benchmark our progress in our environmental management as part of their Sustainable Development in Government (SDiG) reporting process.

37. Their first report was published in December 2009. The SDC reported "very good" or "good" progress in the follow areas: waste arisings, recycling, electricity from renewables, use of BREEAM and use of sustainability appraisals. Areas where no progress was reported were carbon dioxide emissions from road vehicles and water consumption.

38. We have used the analysis provided by the SDC within our annual review of our Environmental Management System (EMS), and the resulting Action Plan from this review will strengthen our progress across all areas.

Committee Scrutiny

39. We are scrutinised on our policies and programmes on sustainable development by the Sustainability Committee of the National Assembly for Wales.

40. In addition, in January 2010 the Wales Audit Office (WAO) published a report on sustainable development and business decision making in the Welsh Assembly Government. The report is currently before the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly, and at the time of writing, we await their report.

Was the SDC successful in fulfilling its remit? Which aspects of its work have reached a natural end, or are otherwise of less importance, and which remain of particular continuing importance?

41. We strongly support the work of the SDC, and in particular we value the following aspects:

· the expertise and authority on sustainable development provided by its Commissioners;

· its ability to draw on good practice and initiatives from across the UK to advise us on the delivery of sustainable development in different policy areas;

· in Wales, the SDC has convened stakeholders to consider particularly challenging issues and taken these issues forward on a "coalition of the willing" basis; and

· its provision of independent commentary to us (for example in our Sustainable Development Annual Report) on the progress we are making and on the barriers to implementation.

42. We are committed to funding the delivery of the SDC’s agreed work programme to the end of this financial year.

43. I am also attracted to the option of retaining the SDC as a dormant company. This has the potential to offer the following benefits:

· It allows the option of retaining the expertise provided by the existing Commissioners of the SDC, for members of the SDC to draw upon, possibly on a "call-off" basis;

· The Commissioners could provide a body of expertise for the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee to draw upon;

· It retains the option of the re- establishing the SDC as a "live" company at some time in the future, should Members of the SDC wish to do this, without the cost of re-establishing a new company limited by guarantee.

There are legal and other administrative details that would need to be confirmed, but I have asked the Secretary of State for the Environment and other Ministers in the Devolved Administrations to consider this as an option.

44. I have stated that we will continue to seek independent advice on sustainable development, drawing on the best practice from the UK, Europe and internationally, to inform us as we take forward our policies. We also recognise the need for continued engagement and networking with all sectors and communities in Wales to ensure we can deliver our vision of a sustainable Wales.

45. We will therefore ensure that we develop new arrangements in place that are fit for our purpose here in Wales to provide appropriate advice on sustainable development and to catalyse and support action to deliver sustainable development in all parts of society across Wales.

20 October 2010