‘Future’ guru sets sustainability stage for Cayman
(CNS): As Cayman battles to reflect the PACT Government’s sustainability policy beyond sustaining profit and prosperity, the premier’s ministry invited Wales’ former commissioner for future generations to Cayman this week to share how the small UK country became the first to pass legislation that forces its government to consider the impact of every law and policy on future generations.
Sophie Howe was the first future generations commissioner for Wales, where she helped to create legislation that holds the government there to account on how their decisions affect the people, not just today but decades from now, securing policy transformation on climate, education and social justice.
The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, dubbed the “common sense act”, was the first law of its kind, but several other countries, including the Balearic Islands and New Zealand, have begun shaping similar legislation. Premier Wayne Panton has said he wants to start the conversation here about how we protect future generations and shape the future country that people want.
In a three-day whirlwind visit this week, Howe met with a cross-section of society and presented an outline of the work done in Wales. The goal was for Howe to help set the stage for Cayman to begin its own conversation about what people here want this country to look like over the coming decades and how to get there.
“It is entirely possible to act today for a better future for tomorrow,” Howe said at a presentation at the Westin on Wednesday.
Protecting the environment is a critical part of the conversation, as Howe pointed out that “there is no growth or jobs on a dead planet”. But the concept of taking a longer-term view on policy decisions and promoting and protecting the needs of future generations is also about housing, education, community, culture, social justice and equality.
Premier Wayne Panton told CNS that he had asked Howe to come and talk to cross-sections of our community to help us begin the necessary conversation about the next 50 years. “Looking down the road, what do we all want for the future? What do we want Cayman to look like?” He said that since taking office, he has talked about the need to begin this process. “This is the kind of exercise I have talked about for some time,” he added.
Howe gave an insight into how a small country like Wales went through the exercise to figure out goals that are people centred, which help guide how decisions are made that will deal with the issues today and also benefit the future. Panton said this type of framework is needed here to guide decisions and actions that will lead to positive outcomes in the future as well as now.
Howe explained that the aim of the legislation and the commissioner for future generations is about meeting today’s needs without compromising the future of the next generation, forcing people to look very differently at the decisions they make.
However, she warned that the rollout of the legislation and the office that oversees it was not a solution on its own. It was the gradual cultural shift, moving politicians from their short-term approach to future thinking, that was equally important. The law was rolled out seven years ago, and Howe said that it is having an impact on new legislation being adopted by the Welsh Assembly (Senedd) and the policies of the devolved government.
Howe said the future generations legislation, from Welsh Transport Policy to the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act, is influencing decisions in a positive way. While there is still much work to be done to monitor how the act is being applied, she said that at the grassroots, people welcome the influence the law has on policy, and politicians are finally shifting away from short-term thinking.
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How much is she being paid for this?
oh FFS. What a farce this is with your mountain of garbage. Can’t take these people seriously.
Avoiding WWW3 would give future generations a chance. Why this part is omitted from the UK’ concerns?
Wales is a Labour Party run basket case when it comes to policy and public services. Why on earth would Cayman think it’s a good idea to follow a consistently failing government that can’t support itself, let alone anything to do with the environment in which it sits?
cayman has zero impact on the world climate. zero. stop trying to distract people with this bs. The Pact Government should work on real issues that they can affect and improve CI residents lives like reducing the cost of living. reducing inflation, working on reducing interesting rates by encourage other Banks from overseas to lend money to ci residents at lower interest rates.
Opec announced they will cut oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day.
Fuel will increase and so will everyone cuc bill. offer zero % on importation of solar panels.
Take the 76 million that Bryan is wasting on his rich friends expensive plane parking lot and use to refinance cayman peoples high mortgage interest rates loans.
I hope you people at George Town central are happy that your representative is wasting your money on BS.
your home needs repair. did he help you?
There is already zero duty on solar panels, electric cars, and bicycles. CUC won’t allow customers to hook up to net-meter like every other country on Earth, because it is a private company not municipal entity. CIG doesn’t even own the transmission network.
This dude just needs to fade into the sunset! He is a bigger looser and failure than Mackeeva Bush
Bigger loser than Bush? Wow! He must really be at the bottom of the barrel!
Wasn’t it him that kept Mac alive politically by making him speaker in 2021? That makes him the biggest looser. He could have formed the Government with the PPM but he insisted on being Premier and instead joined a band of first and second term degenerates to get is ultimate power.
IMPOSSIBLE !!!!!
Tens of millions a year in public money wasted to support an endangered species farm and abattoir, for meat nobody should be eating.
Gotta keep the umemployable employed.
Pass the rum
Wayne you just agreed to destroy our central mangrove for a road we do not need and cannot afford. Now you wish to bring in some consultant (probably at the cost of the public purse) to tell us what we the elected people have been telling you all the while.
You are playing politics and saving your own ass from the overthrow your members are planning for you. Do your damn job and save our islands.
Fact check Minister for Roads is some bloke called Jay Ebanks. Newbie on the block following the Mac pack.
Wayne voted for it in Parliament, he debated against the motion but ended up voting for it, if that makes any damn sense. #GrowAPair
Too bad!!!
Sad, ain’t it…..?
Another loser?
With rare exceptions, all mankind is still monkeys, especially its scientific part. And if you give gunpowder and a burning match in the paws of the monkeys, they will blow themselves up to see what happens. Monkeys are safe only when they are deprived of any opportunity to put themselves in danger.
Check out the Wales Future Generation Report Map, it’s so cool! https://futuregenerations2020.wales/english
Ya’ll all need to get off your soap boxes.
“The Cayman Islands You Want” was a well intentioned forum, well received and needs more dialogue space for the #CaymanVoice.
How many MPs have you heard tell you what they want you to hear or what they think you want to hear…this was a radical and welcome change to that narrative.
Telling questions posed by a cross-section of the community that was able to attend. The initiative is wanted, is needed – so start being a part of the solution and stop voting in MPs who say this is hogwash as they are the real HOGS:
-How do you navigate the trade offs between the needs of current and future generations?
-How do you suggest best gathering youth voice on this issue?
-How can more stagnant mindsets be changed to look to the future?
-How are some of the ways that implementing countries address income and wealth inequality?
-How do you advise politicians to walk in the shoes of future generations?
-How do we address the generational issues of poverty and inquality, generations trapped in the justice system?
-What is the role of the private sector in the implementation of the Act?
All good questions.
All good questions………. But no good answers!
Yeah…. but no one has any good answers.
Can we get Alva back? Asking for a friend in Newlands
Not a good choice.
Better than Wayne thats for sure
Much better, but of course not so wealthy. He didn’t have millions to hand out.
This is just a load of nonsense. It will just be more talk and expense for no benefit. The consultants and the wokey liberals love it but … it’s nonsense in reality and will make no difference.
It makes me cringe thinking of these learned and intelligent people being brought over here and having to deal with our MLA’s. Who was that lady that was shouted at again?
WT actual F? This can’t be a serious thing.
No disrespect to Ms. Howe, but we needed another UK person coming to tell us what we already know? Nothing shared here was rocket science or information we didn’t know already.
Stop stalling and get the national development plan underway Wayne. Stop wasting time and the people’s money. We Caymanians will not forget at the polls next vote.
Change is hard and it has to start somewhere. It helps enormously to have a playbook to work from. It shows what is possible and provides a road instead of open wilderness.
Your no doubt well-intentioned naysaying is an endorsement of the status quo and a barrier to change. If your intention is to keep things the way they are, keep it up!
Here Wayne I’ll save you some time and money.
Put in place an achievable plan to get us off diesel generated electricity in say 10 years. You know the renewable wind and solar stuff you always talk about but do nothing with.
Get the dump finished and the waste to energy agreement finalized. Quit talking about it. Surely this needn’t take 30 years and 7 governments!
Public transport. If this needs further explaining please resign.
Slow down development or at least put environmental guard rails in place.
Bike lanes for e-bikes. No you can’t drive your big truck in them. Sorry.
To encourage recycling put deposits on recyclables like glass, cans and plastic. Start small just one or two. Got to start somewhere old chap.
Ban plastic bags. Only allow paper. You can get to the straws later. You know like maybe in August. 😀
I could go on but I think you see how really easy this is. Just don’t bite off too much too quick. You may get a tummy ache. And please no need for district meetings or committees.
Now you can kiss Ms Howe on the cheek and send her on her jolly way back to Whales. You’ve got this. Oh and sell your big boat. Not a good look for environmental champion.
Your welcome.
I like this
To do any of that he would have to get his Cabinet colleagues to agree with him – that’s the difficult, if not impossible but, unless he can demonstrate how it will make them money.
Do you mean….. like dump the masonic “expenses” ??
I want to go to Whales. I love Whales.
Nothing but a bunch of blowhards if you ask me.
Bigger issue than all of these are how Caymanians are being displaced and treated as second class citizens in their own country. No protection whatsoever. Bring back the Caymanian Protection Board and what it stood for and stop being just greedy.
>300 days of intense sunshine and yet >80% reliant on 1950s diesel-fired electricity, is some kind of basic resiliency lesson nobody understands. PACT has the regulatory authority to accelerate energy transition, but hasn’t done that. PACT doesn’t represent coherent policy, unfortunately. Even the Transparency part has proven to have been too hard to deliver. Disqualifying crooks might help – also a bridge too far for his tenuous leadership situation.
Looking across the Sound at the yellow cloud above CUC will tell us all we need to know. No desire from PACT or CUC to truly promote alternate sources despite an ability to power the nation without Oil. It’s profit over environment every time. Preserve the CUC dividend. How many MPs own CUC shares?
CUC makes zero profit from burning diesel. It’s an established fact, verified over many years by multiple independent audits of their published annual financial statements. Using less diesel would therefore have zero negative impacts on their dividends. The holdup is from government – both OfReg and CIG itself.
So, CUC wants to do better but the gov’t and OfReg are preventing CUC from doing so. That adds up.
Go check for any profits on fuel, then come back and tell me why it doesn’t.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, through mitigations sections in successive Assessment Reports over 14+ years, proposed radical and swift human behavior changes that are largely not discussed by self-styled “environmentalists”, resiliency experts, and dedicated climate desk journalists. Chief among the high-consensus mitigations from their thousands of qualified persons from early 2000’s, is a rapid shift to plant-based food supply and eating. With under 3 years to the +1.5’C tipping point, if eating plants still can’t be a keynote message, or adopted habit relayed from leaders like Wayne and Sophie, then what does it say about their qualification to hold the microphone? At least David Attenborough has finally grown the balls to say it out loud: Global Meat and dairy contribute more GHGE than the entire Fossil Fuels sector, including aviation and shipping (source UN FAO Livestock’s Long Shadow 2006).
CNS: You’ve missed the entire point of what the lecture was about. It was not to expound on specific measures and policies but to explain, using Wales as an example, how to change politicians’ way of thinking so that laws take future generations into account. Specific policies or laws might cover diet but not a general political ethos.
I’m not saying you are wrong about the meat eating. It’s just a different topic.
Pump prices are back up to KYD$6 a gallon, even as global crude prices have stabilized last 3 months <USD$75/barrel. Wayne needs to supervise our energy suppliers.
Asking the impossible, poor boy can’t supervise himself. Cant you see the job he is doing of managing us? Sadly we are always the ones that lose.
What? And tell his friends to reduce their prices and thus their profit. Not a chance. This is Cayman.
Wales is one of the most woke and messed up section of the UK and they are bringing them in to set policy and law, all of PACT need to be removed from office.
CNS: Trump Slams Calling Everything “Woke”
Future??? You mean like building a private airport terminal for the super wealthy and not having jet ways for the unwashed masses?
The future is bleak..very bleak and mankind in its usual cocksure, arrogant & egotistical way will create the end of the human race. AI is out of the bag and there aint no putting it back!
“Premier Wayne Panton has said he wants to start the conversation here about how we protect future generations and shape the future country that people want.” The conversation has been going on for years. The problem is the government influenced/controlled by developers has chosen to not be a part of, or listen to the conversation and we the people of Cayman pay the price. Our beauty used to be the local flora and fauna. Now it is tall metal cranes and concrete trucks.
The first step would be to get all politicians out of any hanky panky with those masonic organizations. Did you know that there was once a law that prevented our lleaders from belonging to a masonic group?
The study is already gathering dust in the glass house.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
“…he wants to start the conversation here..” Too many words, too little action.
Ban single use plastic items for starters!
Environmentalism has become a religion. It provides its adherents with an identity. It can drive people to self-flagellation and self-righteousness.
Nothing personal, but when I hear the word Guru I get nauseated.
Easiest thing in the world is just to start with one step…no more plastic grocery bags. Go to Bahamas they have no grocery bags, paper or plastic, in the grocery stores. You bring the reusable ones or you buy one at the store or you carry out in your hands. If they can do it so can we.
Where’s the highly influential pro-plastic cartel stopping the government from doing so?
Very interesting she should be appointed to this consultancy group in May 2023 and she should find herself here in the Cayman Islands. In our Premiers quest to everything woke will we soon be hiring Ms. Howes employer to tell us how to get ready for the future?
https://www.business-live.co.uk/enterprise/former-future-generations-commissioner-wales-26922428.amp
Did he explain to her:
CPA suing DOE so the falling West Bay gazebo can get its new seawall
Regal Beach seawall falling into the sea
CPA allowing so much mangrove destruction
The unbridled building especially along the coastal areas
The list could go on but I would imagine not a thing was mentioned to this lady and all this was a photo opportunity and a lot of empty chatter.
CNS just write another more relevant story as this one is all bulls%^t
Oh good. Another intelligent woman that they’ll ultimately ignore after having engaged in a performative public exercise.
If Wayne were worried about enacting long-view policy and legislation, PACT would not exist given the numerous instances he’s capitulated on his purported values to stay in his position. Our politicians struggle to look at any multi-year policy, let alone anything longer than the current election cycle.
“Oh good. Another intelligent woman that they’ll ultimately ignore after having engaged in a performative public exercise.”
We’ve all seen this episode before, LMAO!
Yet another piece of the Wayne agenda! The people elected you to do something and that doesn’t mean hiring dozens of foreign consultants to come into this country and tell us they know better that the people who live here. Not one, not two but three high priced consultants here working for government this week.
The PACT hurry up and do something…. anything, bunch of rookies is painful to watch. Seeing the people’s money being wasted by these jokers is angering people. STOP with all the consultants and fix the bloody dump and education which is a complete mess. Money gone and a mess left behind!
Consideration by Parliament of future generations legislation, which is forward-looking into the future, is a positive step in the right direction.
This is already provided for in our Constitution as a fundamental right, pursuant to section 18(1) of our Bill of Rights (headed “Protection of the environment”), which provides:
“Government shall, in all its decisions, have due regard to the need to foster and protect an environment that is not harmful to the health or well-being of present or future generations, while promoting justifiable economic and social development.”
As such, while section 18 of our Bill of Rights, indeed protects the physical environment (including wildlife, land and sea biodiversity and natural resources), it also firmly protects the socio-economic environment for Caymanians “that is not harmful to the health and well-being of present and future generations, while promoting justifiable economic and social development.”
Moreover, our Bill of Rights also “recognises the distinct history, culture, Christian values and socio-economic framework of the Cayman Islands and it affirms the rule of law and the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom” (pursuant to s.1(2)(a), BoR).
We must not forget whence we came and where we are currently, as we chart our course ahead.
Wow such a long explanation of what should happen. Why don’t you try explaining all these things to the whole bunch of elected representatives and civil servants because this is not what is happening now.
Orrie you are saying the obvious but it is not enforced. The politicians are not being held accountable, are not considering the Bill of Rights and operate on re-election mode versus forward planning.
Every time an intelligent or level headed candidate puts themselves forward for office they are never elected!! Look at who is in office and ask yourself how did most of them get elected?? Doing favors and vote buying that is how. Jay’s cronies were handing out chicken and rice during the pandemic amongst other “gifts” and people thought oh my gosh this is great. Really??? I heard Saunders was handing out cakes etc.
This single member constituency has created a field day for easy vote buying. Remember Marco Archer who was named Finance Minister of the region was beaten by Kenneth Bryan. How does this happen??? The story can go on and on.
If our politicians ignore the Bill of Rights and the people are sheep do you think trying to enact policy will work?
Typical Wayne, bring in some foreigner to tell us what our own gurus have been telling us for ages, then acts like he did something special. This man has no respect for our sustainability warriors who have to live with the end result. This was nothing but a PR stunt designed to give the impression something is happening. Where is our legislation and I’ll bet half of his cabinet is not even remotely going to support it, if/when it goes to parliament.
What’s with the coordinating attire! Tangerine must be the new black!
Hey Sophie, is the dump sustainable? Asking for Wayne.
What dump? He forgot to mention that one to her, but not to worry because we got the wonderful Dart organization and our chief officer dealing with that one.
I am sure she saw that on her approach to the airport .
I wish I had known about this because I would have loved to attend. However, I hope the Premier’s cabinent and chief officers and keenly aware members of the public were at these meetings. Especially the cabinet members /ministers who are hell-bent on destroying what little is left with runways, roads, etc. Any further developments on this 2×4 Rock really need good solid expertts’ information and directions before embarking upon. Time and land mass is furiously running out, nothing should else should started up until the landfill is remediated, the at risked areas where all the mangroves have been removed and the fill dug should be replenished. We need to halt pouring more cement and try improving and saving the natural environment. It is almost too late.
Are you kidding me, his cabinet ministers wouldn’t understand a word of it. Most likely all Jay Kenny and Jon Jon might come for is the free food then fall asleep in their chairs. Ms. Howe might as well be on a deserted island speaking to a lone palm tree.
Jon Jon starts telling her earth is flat and they should push the trash off the side.
“Looking down the road, what do we all want for the future? What do we want Cayman to look like?” He said that since taking office, he has talked about the need to begin this process. “This is the kind of exercise I have talked about for some time,” he added.
Wayne, you’re part of the problem, – people elected you on the platform you were presenting but you’ve changed that predilection midstream
Looking down the road at a lot of high rises for the ultra rich who Kenny & Rosa are going to blow a massive amount of money on making the exclusive private terminal because those rich folks do not want to associate with the common folk. The mangroves will all be gone after the CPA gets done granting loads of approvals to get rid of them. The north sound will be dredged out and demolished as the developers will need the fill for more projects. Don’t forget the low income tenements that they will be building to house all the people who can not afford anywhere to live. It will be a true utopia!
More starts and stop than a car with a bad ignition. Wayne’s main focus is “being the Premier”., and that certainly isn’t working too well for him. Poor Weenie as the member from Savannah loves to say.