What the world can learn from Wales
Dr Luci Attala is an anthropologist, author, and sustainability scholar whose work bridges culture, ethics, and ecology. As a member of the UN’s BRIDGES Coalition and a senior academic at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, she explores how values of care, balance, and reciprocity can inform a more sustainable future.
In her upcoming Wales Innovation Network (WIN) Talk, Luci will be discussing many of the ideas explored here - considering how Wales’ pioneering Well-being of Future Generations Act continues to inspire international approaches to sustainability. In this piece, she introduces some of the themes she will expand upon in that conversation, showing how Wales is becoming a model for reimagining governance, education, and our shared responsibility to those yet to come.
When I tell people at UNESCO that I’m from Wales, their eyes light up. There’s a genuine curiosity about this small country in their corridors. Wales is known to some for its castles and dragons, but to others for something far more extraordinary: a nation that has made the future a matter of law.
As someone now working within the UN system, I can say with certainty that the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is regarded internationally as visionary, practical and quietly revolutionary.
A Small Nation with Big Ideas
The Act gives Wales something truly unique: a legally enshrined commitment to think beyond the short term. It demands that public bodies consider the well-being of future generations in every major decision they make.
For policymakers around the world, this isn’t just inspiring - it’s a revelation. It proves that sustainability doesn’t have to be aspirational. It can be operational. Wales has turned what others frame as hope into a working model of governance. And this is why, when I made the case for Wales to host the UK UNESCO BRIDGES Hub, it wasn’t difficult to persuade anyone.
From Local Law to Global Leadership
BRIDGES is UNESCO’s global sustainability science programme nested in the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) section. It was created to close the gap between knowledge and action, between what we know about sustainability and what we do about it.
What makes BRIDGES distinctive is its foundation in the humanities. It recognises that sustainability is a cultural and ethical issue, not a technical problem and that morality, imagination, empathy, and lived experience are vital to effective transformation.
When UNESCO put out a call for Expressions of Interest to establish national BRIDGES Hubs, I proposed that the UK Hub should be based in Wales. I argued that Wales, despite its size, was already a world leader in rethinking sustainability through policy, culture and community, and positioned the Act was the cornerstone of that argument.
The response from UNESCO was enthusiastic. They already knew about the Act, and many wanted to learn from it. The result was the anchoring of the UK BRIDGES Hub at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD), now also home to the International Programme Office for the entire BRIDGES Global Coalition, an active network of over 50 organisations worldwide.
Collaboration at the Core
Our base in Wales is not symbolic; it’s strategic. The Act’s values of long-term thinking, collaboration, justice, and well-being mirror both UNESCO’s vision and UWTSD’s ethos as a civic university that places community and culture at the centre of its mission.
At UWTSD, these ideas don’t live only in policy or research, but they shape how we teach and how our students learn. Our courses in sustainability, business, the arts, education and the humanities encourage students to think like future generations’ custodians: to design, plan, and act with long-term impact in mind. Through BRIDGES, our students connect directly with global partners, contributing to international projects that translate theory into transformation.
Now, as a result, we also work closely with the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, whose leadership continues to show the world how policy can become practice. Together, we’re demonstrating how national legislation can seed international innovation and how a small country can lead global systems change not through power, but through principle.
An Anthropologist’s Perspective
For me, the Act resonates at a deeply personal level. My background is in anthropology, and much of my research has been shaped by Indigenous philosophies that challenge market-driven ideas of progress. These traditions remind us to act with the seventh generation in mind and to recognise our responsibilities to ancestors, descendants and the land itself. These are not new ideas; they are ancient ones. To see them reflected in Welsh law is both remarkable and moving. The Act reminds us that meaningful innovation often comes not from technology and invention, but from remembering and rekindling the values of care, balance, and reciprocity that have sustained communities for millennia.
Wales: A Living Laboratory for the Future
Wales may be small and enchanting - a land of castles, dragons, and sea-laced horizons - but its true magic lies in its mindset. Here, the future is not an abstract hope but a legal promise.
The Well-being of Future Generations Act has turned Wales into a living laboratory for sustainable governance: a place where imagination meets accountability and where policy dares to think in centuries, not election cycles. It shows that the systems shaping our shared future need not be built on short-term gain or the illusion of endless growth. They can instead be grounded in values that speak to our deepest sense of what it means to be human.
From Wales to the World and Back Again
Working between Wales and UNESCO, I often find myself moving between the local and the global, carrying lessons from one into the other. The Act provides me with the tools to stand in international forums and say:
“This is what long-term thinking looks like in practice. This is what intergenerational justice looks like in governance. And this is how we can build something meaningful together - across cultures, sectors, and generations.”
From Wales to the world, and from the world back home again, the story of the Act is one of hope, humility, and imagination. Wales should be proud. And the world is paying attention.
Further Information
Arwel Lloyd
Principal PR and Communications Officer
Corporate Communications and PR
Email: arwel.lloyd@uwtsd.ac.uk
Phone: 07384 467076