Leading Wales to a Sustainable Future

Speech by Kirsty Williams AM delivered to 27th April 2009 on Mon 27th Apr 2009

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. It's great to be able to work with people, like yourselves, who are focused on finding solutions to the challenges we face.

And do we need some solutions.

Last week we saw Darling Alastair deliver a budget that revealed the desperate state of our public finances.

I don't need to patronise you with the detail - as a nation we are in huge and unsustainable debt. The numbers are staggering, almost to the point of irrelevance.

• Have we seen mismanagement, incompetence - absolutely.

• Is Government too close to banks and big business - absolutely.

• Does short termism reign supreme - absolutely

The market has in many respects failed: weak regulation, fantasy risk trading and the delivery of local and global inequality doesn't sound like the triumph of free market principles.

What is certain is that we have failed within the market, the UK as a whole and Wales in particular.

The International Monetary Fund thinks the UK is amongst the worst placed of developed nations, to deal with recession - forecasting no growth until 2011.

Already, Wales is suffering, with spiralling unemployment and a hammer blow for those pockets of deprivation that got little out of the so called boom-years.

And we've gambled everything. We've even gambled our future, everything -- it means we face decades of tighter public spending.

And that makes it harder to invest in sustainability,

But even more important.

Years of rampant, unchecked growth have also led us into a critical ecological scenario - and today, even presented by scientific consensus - our Government treats the negative impacts of development as a necessary cost, never a show stopper.

And so Heathrow grows further, the M4 expands and Coal and Gas power get a new lease of life.

The Heathrow decision provides the best caricature of Governments' failure to treat sustainable development seriously:

• The decision will impact upon all of our lives for years to come - but it was made in isolation, without an MPs vote and seemingly in spite of much of the evidence submitted.

• The Green Wash provided to help force the decision down our throats was presented in the Future-possible-hopeful tense.

If you saw last weeks' announcements on Clean-coal you'll know what I mean.

There will be 'Green Slots' dedicated to the most efficient planes, we were told.

There will be strict guidelines on air quality and noise. Geoff Hoon proclaimed proudly that: "Taken together this gives us the toughest climate change regime for aviation of any country in the world,"

• The end game for Government was clear "It connects us with the growth markets of the future - essential for every great trading nation," said Hoon.

This wasn't about climate change - you can't decide to build a new runway and present it as part of a 'climate change regime'.

Forget the likely emissions increases caused by a third runway, forget the noise and air quality - the real damage this decision caused is psychological, the message it sends out is shocking: 'Growth at all costs'.

Our only hope is that this decision was the last drink at the last chance saloon - But it's hard to believe this will be the case.

And the Welsh Assembly Government has been no different: The duty to promote Sustainable Development has quite clearly been failed upon.

• we may have lots of strategy

• we may have a 3% annual target for Carbon emissions reduction.

• And we are planting a tree for every new born baby in Wales

but what, what is the sum total of all the activity the Welsh Assembly Government promotes?

Where is the vision, the guts - where is the action?

We should be adopting a war-like footing - digging for carbon victory, fighting emissions in our factories, on the roads and on the runways -

We should be exclusively pursuing sustainable development and addressing the unsustainability locked into our infrastructure, our buildings and homes.

Instead, our leaders are tweaking, fiddling, green-washing, spinning the same old approaches.

This will not do. Every day squandered, not doing enough is a step closer to failing future generations.

This should be the era of sustainability - we should be at full output, leading a sustainable revolution as we did the industrial.

We are facing a triple crunch,

Three interrelated crises we must urgently resolve:

• We face an Ecological crunch - having mismanaged and squandered natural capital in pursuit of economic growth. Peak oil, climate change and species decline loom larger each day.

• We face an Economic crunch - having mismanaged and squandered economic and moral capital in pursuit of economic growth.

• And we face a Leadership crunch - because our existing leaders cannot imagine selling us anything but the pursuit of economic growth.

And it is the leadership crunch that leaves us hamstrung in the face of the economic, social and ecological challenges faced.

It is poor leadership that leaves communities exposed, lacking any resilience to oil price changes, food scarcity and the direct impacts of climate change.

How will we square prosperity with sustainability if we are not willing to open up the debate,

front up to the scale of the problem

or let sound science set the parameters?

Because there's no point doing half of a job on sustainability - we either deliver or fail.

All or nothing.

You see, I'm not standing here pretending to be an expert on sustainable development, climate change science or ecological economics.

I do hope I can demonstrate a grasp of the matters at hand and I certainly understand the urgency with which we must adopt truly sustainable developmental approaches.

But any knowledge I do have is informed by the sound science I have seen, the expertise we have in Wales: CAT, our NGOs, universities and businesses,

the communities and individuals making small and big changes.

I would be a poor leader if I was not guided by the wisdom and reason of experts, just as we will become a poorer nation if we choose to cut emissions by 3% a year when the science says 9% is needed.

I believe:

A strong leader knows when to let the experts set the parameters

A strong leader seeks to foster creativity, to allow for new approaches and solutions.

A strong leader does not fear home truths - helping everybody face reality, however challenging that might be.

A strong leader makes sure that nobody is left in doubt as to the common objectives, but everyone is invited to help reach those objectives.

And it is better, stronger, leadership we urgently need.

So what would the Welsh Liberal Democrats do?

There are certainly some clear opportunities to align economic recovery with sustainability objectives:

- Real, case by case home energy efficiency grant funding.

Using the money currently squandered by energy suppliers on free lightbulbs and insulation subsidy to provide individual carbon reduction budgets, topped up by government through tax breaks and incentives.

- A concerted effort to redevelop Wales public transport infrastructure.

- Investing in community office spaces to reduce commuting and open up access to so called 'office jobs'.

- Ensuring that each of the 4 billion pounds spent by the Welsh public sector is geared towards sustainability, not as an add on but as a core element of assessing tenders and purchases.

- Opening up public procurement to favour not flummox local suppliers.

- Making sure every penny released to support banks, businesses, industry and our communities is tied to clear sustainability objectives: Be that to encourage producing radically more efficient products, or investments that are ethical and in turn tied to sustainable goals.

These are open goals. No-brainers, easy wins.

But we are failing to score them and many others.

In Wales today, there are:

• Solutions piled up ready to go,

• Welsh companies innovating but for Europe, not for Wales.

• Transition movements stifled by bureaucracy.

Our Government is missing the bigger picture.

• Because power has been centralised,

• Because public services are commanded and controlled so tightly,

• Because Government wants to own every agenda - we have arrived at a situation where sustainability occurs in spite of government and rarely because of it.

Want to produce your own electricity and sell it back to the grid - you can't

Want to use publicly owned land to grow food for your community - you can't

Want to know that everything you put out to recycle, gets recycled - it isn't

Well we would do things differently:

We would work with landowners, local authorities, churches and others to release land in trust.

I've seen first hand how effective community gardens and food cooperatives can be.

And perhaps it's time we took our developmental lead from the urban farms of Havana, not the oil ranches of Texas.

We would lobby hard for favourable feed in tariffs and work with the powers we have in Wales to ensure that heat and energy from homes and industry is shared and used.

We would seek to set up the recycling infrastructure Wales needs to deal with its own waste - creating community owned resource parks where recyclate can be reused and reprocessed into products we need and can export.

But it's more than the detail - it's the context we set, the values we promote in society and in our economy that will do most to help deliver a sustainable Wales.

And I believe that principles of liberty, fairness and democracy underpin sustainability thinking and will best arm us for the challenges ahead,

Liberty allows us to embrace creativity - to understand that we must explore all avenues, support innovations both technologically and socially.

Liberty lets small towns create currencies, communities to go off-grid, cooperatives and mutuals to be formed and supported.

A belief in fairness should shape and drive our pursuit of sustainability. The fact that hideous inequality marks our global and local societies is equally shameful as our ecological destruction.

We cannot continue to pretend that an economy reaping such social and ecological ruin is just or effective.

Only a fair Wales will be a truly sustainable Wales.

So, the risks and rewards of our investments in sustainability must be shared.

For example, energy solutions must be made affordable - It should be easy for anybody in Wales to afford PV panels or a super-efficient boiler. The public sector has the buying power to make this a reality.

But without fairness energy solutions will be delivered only through multi billion pound deals with multinational companies?

Without fairness we will be dealt green-ness, not engaged in delivering a better Wales.

And what about democracy?

I believe that without real democracy we will continue to fall long short of meeting our responsibilities to planet and people.

So many of the changes we should be making, leave the old politics floundering.

• How do we get people to use more efficient cars or stop using them altogether?

• How do we decide if another supermarket is one too many?

• Should we back new Nuclear power generation?

• How do we agree on tidal power in the Severn?

If our political parties don't let their members vote on all policy, and stick to what they say?

If consultation always takes place after the strategy is written?

If our politics is heavily funded by industry and big business?

If Welsh people don't feel part of shaping their own future?

So the Welsh Liberal Democrats will continue to hold the government to account, continue to explore the awkward issues, as our Severn Tidal Power report does.

Our members will continue to shape our policies, locally and nationally.

And rest assured that a Liberal, Fair, Democratic Wales would be a rapidly more sustainable, resilient Wales.

Our members will make sure of that,

I can only offer leadership.