Ambitions for a Nation: Wales Transition Lab
Since October 2020, a group of 35 thought leaders across Wales have listened to each other and imagined a country that future generations could thrive in. Victoria Topham reports back on the four founding ambitions of the Wales Transition Lab. Witness nation-scale change in action.
In October 2020, a group of 35 thought leaders across Wales got together to listen (really listen!) to each other and imagine a country that future generations could thrive in. At the heart of this conversation was recognition of the scale of disconnect between nature, food and wellbeing. As a result, in Wales and elsewhere, huge challenges such as the climate emergency, biodiversity loss, mental health, physical wellbeing and social inequalities are grappled with in isolation. Was there a way, this group asked, to reimagine the relationships between the economy, conservation, farming and health practitioners and create new ways of working that responded to the emergencies ahead of us in an effective, inclusive way?
Wales Transition Lab is a long-term project, initiated by North Star Transition, to develop country-scale common-sense practice by rethinking food, health and nature systems, and building capability for the future. It brought together the group of 35 leaders from across Wales, and facilitated a conversation marked by deep listening, allowing an understanding of each other’s thoughts and viewpoints.
Out of a deep engagement process across the convened group, co-facilitated by a team from UCL’s Climate Action Unit, emerged four long-term ambitions that we wanted to explore in Wales. Each of these ambitions related in some way to the intertwining of food, health and nature. Each of them provided a particular lens through which the working of these systems could be attended to, through focused actions and deep collaboration across Wales.
The four ambitions are summarised in the chart below.
Wales Transition Lab has identified four founding ambitions. Each of these ambitions interweave food, health and nature, across the nation of Wales.
Source: North Star Transition
To put these ambitions in context, consider the example of diabetes in Wales. Over 200,000 people live with diabetes, costing NHS Wales around £500m a year to manage. mostly on complications Two-thirds of this annual spend is considered preventable through lifestyle change. Yet the health service bosses who are responsible for this spend have little visibility and zero agency when it comes to the factors that drive the constant rising demand for diabetes care, whether it is the lack of taught food literacy, the accessibility of affordable sport and wellness activities, or the calorie-rich nutrient-poor output of the processed foods industry.
Making a dent in diabetes in Wales will require deep collaboration across all those sectors and more. Making a dent in the four ambitions defined within the Wales Transition Lab will require nation-scale systemic change.
Genesis of the Lab
So where did the idea of the Wales Transition Lab come from? A fortuitous online meeting in 2020 sparked an interesting question “How could food, health and nature systems support wellbeing and climate change in Wales?” For many, this complex idea with no easy answer would elicit a thoughtful nod and a sudden internet connection issue.
Fortunately, though, the meeting was between Jyoti Banerjee and Andy Middleton. Jyoti had just launched North Star Transition, alongside co-founder Olivier Boutellis, to develop a new approach to address systemic challenges through radical reframing of the problems and holistic collaboration. Andy is a sustainability thought leader and educator based in St David’s on the Pembrokeshire coast who knew from his experiences as a non-executive director in environmental and governmental organisations, and from being a social entrepreneur, that Wales could become a country-scale test bed for sustainability change that supports future generations.
Thus was born the Wales Transition Lab.
Why Wales? With a population of 3m people, Wales is the right size for such a living laboratory. It is small enough to easily convene its leaders across multiple systems. It is large enough to be worth doing in a systemic change context.
Wales is a country of contrasts with national parks, mountains and coastline counterpointed by the legacy of its role as the crucible of the Industrial Revolution with unemployment and health burdens falling most heavily on the mining communities created for that revolution. Wales’ systems, like all ‘developed’ countries, are not currently serving all life equally though. With the support of our founding participants and with the door open for new partners we have an opportunity to reimagine the way that systems connect to support wellbeing and climate change action for future generations in Wales.
Now that the four founding ambitions have been agreed within Wales Transition Lab we now have has the opportunity to support Welsh organisations to:
Find and fix broken connections between sectors and regions
Set ambitious goals that match the scale of change ahead
Inspire change through shared knowledge and understanding,
Ensure that governance upholds ambition and collaboration
Consider the wider value of their impacts,
Create collaborative ways of working together
The role of North Star Transition in the Lab will be to provide change programme governance and practical support to secure blended financing solutions to support change.
We are certain that it’s only by working in new ways, bridging silos and sectors that we will be able to deliver the actions that create clean air and rivers, relocalised and more nutritious food, a healthier population, thriving local economies, elimination of food poverty, flourishing landscapes and resilient biodiversity. This is the level of ambition that the Wales Transition Lab wants to bring to decision making for all organisations in Wales, connecting thinking and dealing with complexity to make a powerful difference for the future.
If our ambition resonates, join us. We are inviting organisations to partner with us in an accelerator programme to co-create plans for our four long term nation-scale Ambitions
