Governing the future and the search for spatial justice: Wales’ Well-being of Future Generations Act


URN:NBN:fi:tsv-oa77781
DOI: 10.11143/fennia.77781

Governing the future and the search for spatial justice: Wales’ 
Well-being of Future Generations Act

RHYS JONES

Jones, R. (2019) Governing the future and the search for spatial justice: 
Wales’ Well-being of Future Generations Act. Fennia 197(1) 8–24. 
https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.77781

Recent contributions in Geography and beyond have examined 
historical and more contemporary efforts to govern the future. 
Work in this area has highlighted some important conceptual 

considerations by drawing attention to the way in which states, regions 
and other organisations view the future as an object of governance for a 
variety of reasons: as something that constitutes a threat that needs to be 
managed; as something that can be predicted, thus leading to an 
improvement in governance; as something that allows a more hopeful 
and just society, economy and environment to be expressed (and 
achieved). In this paper, I use this context as a way of making an argument 
for the need to: 1) consider more explicitly the many geographies 
associated with governing the future; and 2) explore how these 
geographies might impact on the definition and promotion of spatial 
justice. I illustrate these arguments through an empirical discussion of the 
development and implementation of Wales’ Well-being of Future 
Generations Act, an Act that seeks to create a better and more just Wales 
by the year 2050. I conclude by exhorting geographers to take the lead in 
exploring the impact that geographical themes might have on states’ and 
regions’ attempts to achieve spatial justice in the present and the future.

Keywords: futures, governance, spatial justice, Well-being of Future 
Generations Act, Wales

Rhys Jones, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, SY23 3DB, United Kingdom. 
E-mail: raj@aber.ac.uk

Introduction
Recent contributions in Geography and beyond (e.g. Anderson 2010; Andersson 2012) have reflected 
on the historical and more contemporary efforts to govern the future.1 Work in this area has highlighted 
some important conceptual considerations by drawing attention to the way in which states, regions 
and other organisations view the future as an object of governance for a variety of reasons: as 
something that constitutes a threat that needs to be managed; as something that can be predicted, 
thus leading to an improvement in governance; as something that allows a more hopeful and just 
society, economy and environment to be expressed (and achieved). Studies of the governance of the 
future has also been characterised by considerable empirical breadth. Detailed work has been 
conducted, for instance, on the historical geographies of the study of the future and its links to the 
Cold War (Andersson & Keizer 2014), along with more contemporary concerns surrounding future 
governance in the context of terrorism and security (Massumi 2007), the radicalisation of youth 

© 2019 by the author. This open access article is licensed under 
a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.77781


FENNIA 197(1) (2019) 9Rhys Jones

(Saunders & Jenkins 2012), infectious diseases and pandemics (Hinchcliffe & Bingham 2008) and 
ecological disaster (Hulme 2008).

This research is to be commended for its detailed and sophisticated conceptualisation and empirical 
examination of the governance of the future. My aims in this article, however, are to foreground two 
themes that have, arguably, not been examined in sufficient detail to date. First, I suggest that there 
needs to be a more explicit examination of the significant geographies that characterise the governance 
of the future; geographies that have only been addressed in implicit ways in pre-existing studies of the 
governance of the future. When I refer to significant geographies, I mean that there is a need, for 
instance, to highlight how the governance of the future occurs differently in different places and 
emerges as a result of a movement of people, things and ideas from one location to another (cf. Baker 
& McGuirk 2017). There is a need, likewise, to examine how the governance of the future becomes 
embedded in various ways in particular states, nations and regions (Jones & Ross 2016). Equally, we 
should develop a more explicit awareness of how the governance of the future is played out across a 
series of connected geographical scales, ranging from the global to the embodied and everything else 
in between (Diprose et al. 2008). Second, I suggest that a focus on these geographies can help us to 
envision and promote a more hopeful and just version of the future. I maintain that there are, 
potentially, important connections here between literatures on the governance of the future and 
recent debates concerning the idea of spatial justice. While the notion of spatial justice has varied 
meanings (Jones et al. 2019), it is, in essence, concerned with understanding the interconnections 
between space and justice. Dabinett (2011, 2391) has argued that we should avoid seeing space as 
merely being a container for justice. Instead, we need to consider how space can influence forms of 
justice and injustice in various. It is in this context that we need to attend to the impact that geographies 
of different kinds might have on the governance of more equal and just futures.

The remaining sections of this paper are arranged as follows. In the following section, I discuss in 
more detail the various ways in which the governance of the future has been approached to date. I 
also elaborate on the value of adopting a more explicitly geographical take on the governance of the 
future, particularly as a way of furthering more spatially just futures. In the subsequent section, I 
provide some background detail on the case study I have chosen for this article, namely Wales’ Well-
being of Future Generations Act (2015) (hereafter the Well-being Act). I contend that it is an Act that 
has the notion of justice – understood in relation to the concept of well-being – at its heart. It is also 
an Act that seeks to govern the future of Wales in explicit ways. The passing of this Act places an onus 
on all public bodies in Wales to consider the impact that their present policies and procedures might 
have on future generations and, moreover, to ensure that their actions in the present will help to 
maximise the well-being of Wales’ citizens of the future, with the year 2050 acting as a significant end 
goal (Jones & Ross 2016). I also discuss in this section the methods and fieldwork that underpin the 
arguments I make in the article. In the penultimate section, I delve into more empirical detail by 
examining the way in which the Act has sought to govern the future across and between three distinct, 
yet interconnected scales: the scale of Wales as a region, devolved state and nation; the local scale 
within Wales, a scale at which much of the Act has been operationalised; the scale of individual and 
embodied civil servants in Wales, who are responsible for making the Act work in practice. Brief 
conclusions appear in the final section, in which I reflect more broadly on the significance of geography 
and scale for the governance of more hopeful futures.

Governing the future
As noted in the introduction, there has been a growth in recent years in academic interest in the 
various ways in which the future has been, and continues to be, an object of governance for states, 
regions, cities and other organisations. A number of important themes have been highlighted by 
academics in relation to this object of governance.

First, many academics have commented on the way in which the future has been viewed as a threat 
or as a risk that needs to be managed and governed (Beck 1992). Work by Andersson (2012; Andersson 
& Keizer 2014) has examined what could be termed the historical geographies of these attempts to 
govern risky futures. Andersson and Keizer (2014), for instance, trace the beginnings of attempts to 



10 FENNIA 197(1) (2019)Research paper

govern these risky futures to the Cold War. It was during this period, for instance, that the science of 
Futurology first emerged, in which various techniques (e.g. Delphi method) and technologies (e.g. 
emerging forms of computer simulation) were developed by key actors, such as the RAND organization, 
in order to manage the risks associated with the Cold War; most notably the risks of nuclear annihilation 
(ibid., 425). It is in this context too that the familiar Rostow model of progress and economic 
development emerged as a more positive account of the futures that would characterize western 
states; a model that was defined in opposition to the alternative Marxist models of progress and 
development fashioned in the Soviet Union and its satellite states (Andersson 2012).

More recent attempts to govern risky futures have been studied in Geography by Anderson (2010). 
He has noted how “preemption, precaution and preparedness” have become watchwords in recent 
years, whether in relation to the need to reduce the threat of: terrorism, especially post 9/11 (Massumi 
2007); infectious diseases and pandemics, such as SARS (Hinchcliffe & Bingham 2008); ecological 
disaster, especially one associated with climate change (Hulme 2008). What unites these attempts to 
govern risky futures is the way in which the future becomes a space of governmental calculation but 
also something that extends beyond scientific calculation into the realms of imagination (Anderson 
2010, 785): a shift from what will happen to what might happen. And of course, the emphasis on the 
riskiness of the future – and of the need to govern this effectively – also raises significant questions 
about the role of affect in the governance of the future. The apocalyptic fears associated with certain 
forms of pandemic and climate change, in particular, highlight how a consideration of affect needs to 
take center stage in any engagement with the governance of risky futures (Boykoff 2008). This is a 
theme to which I return below, albeit in more positive and hopeful ways.

A second area of enquiry has centered on attempts to think about the future as something that can 
be predicted, for the purpose of improving societies, economies, as well as ways of governing them. 
As part of this attempt to think about the future as a time and space to be calculated (Anderson 2010, 
784), emphasis has been placed on developing models, projections, scenarios and so on to try to 
predict the future; as a more neutral aid to governance. While such developments have taken place in 
many different states, it has, arguably been something that has appealed more in some states than 
others. Centralised states, in particular, seem to have placed greater emphasis on predicting and 
planning for the future. Andersson (2012, 1421), for instance, discusses the role of the prognostik 
movement in the USSR and its efforts to use “predictive social and economic indicators to monitor 
progress and change”. Similarly, the centralising tendencies of the French state led to technocratic 
models of prediction being incorporated into the French Plan (Anderson & Keizer 2014, 108).

A number of interesting issues arise in relation to this attempt to predict the future. Some have 
criticised the tendency of such approaches to fall foul of ‘path dependency’, teleology or what has 
been termed “chronological imperialism” (Galtung in Andersson 2006, 281); in other words, a tendency 
to view the future as something that is pre-ordained by the past or present in the particular 
geographical setting in question or, even more problematically, by the past and present of other 
places, regions or states (as in Rostow’s model of development or the demographic transition model, 
where one state is said to follow the path set by other, more ‘advanced’ states). I shall return to these 
criticisms below but suffice to say that such models and predictions tend for foreclose any sense of 
openness or potential in the future. Another key issue in relation to predicting the future – and one 
that perhaps contradicts the first point – has revolved around the inherent uncertainty of doing so. 
For instance, Andersson and Keizer (2014, 116) note that the WRR, a body responsible for governing 
the future of the Netherlands, “came to the conclusion [in the 1970s] that prediction was a very 
difficult activity”.

The emphasis on prediction with the governance of the future has also possessed some important 
disciplinary and methodological consequences. The study of the future has always been inter-
disciplinary but there is some evidence to suggest that early forms of Futurology during the 1950s and 
1960s tended to emphasize the significance of the hard sciences and Economics. These early forms of 
prediction were heavily dependent on statistics and computer modelling, and were augmented from 
the 1970s onwards by more open and plural explorations of possible futures. This shift to a broader 
Futures Studies (the emphasis on Futures in the plural is significant) was associated with a greater 
emphasis on the conceptual and methodological expertise of disciplines in the Social Sciences and 



FENNIA 197(1) (2019) 11Rhys Jones

Arts. An important example of this development was the formation of the Swedish Futures Studies 
Group during the early 1970s. It included a professor of Psychology, Geography (Torsten Hägerstrand), 
Mathematics and Planning Theory, and History (ibid.). Futures Studies, in this way, rejected Futurology 
“as law-driven science”, maintaining that “the future could not be addressed with established tools of 
science such as facticity and empirical observation” (Andersson 2012, 1426). New and alternative 
methods were developed in order to imagine alternative futures, including scenario building (including 
the use of pictures, case studies, narrative accounts and other kinds of more qualitative data). In all 
this, we witness an attempt to move away from data and methods that foreclose the future to data 
and methods that open it up to discussion and debate. And, in more philosophical terms, this 
development reflects an effort to question hegemonic accounts of a singular and predetermined 
future by highlighting the multiple versions of the future that could be problematized and imagined 
(cf. Rose 1999; Dikeç 2007).

The above discussion of the emergence of Futures Studies alludes to a third approach to the 
governance of the future; namely the way in which the governance of the future has been viewed as 
something that can express hope and enable a search for social (and spatial) justice. A focus on the 
potential of the future as a time and space of hope derives in large measure from a dissatisfaction 
with the closed and limiting kinds of future envisaged within predictive models of the future. This 
more open account of the future also derives from a belief that the present is complex and, as such, 
makes the future open and difficult to determine (Anderson 2010). The future, when viewed in this 
way, shifts from being: “as an is: an object of science of which certain predetermined traces could be 
found…[to]…the future as becoming: an object of the human imagination, creativity and will” 
(Andersson 2012, 1413).

There are clear parallels here with work in Geography and beyond on the notion of hope and 
utopia. Harvey (2000), in particular, has attempted to map out an academic and political agenda that 
can allow us to envisage more just and equal alternatives to the political-economic and embodied 
consequences of living and working in late capitalism. His represents a particular interpretation of 
what a more just future might look like, of course. But a key attribute of Futures Studies – as opposed 
to Futurology – is its emphasis on the need to envisage a range of alternative futures. As part of this, 
the future becomes a “surprise” (Anderson 2010, 783) and something, borrowing from Mouffe (2013), 
which is enriched by deliberation, debate and agonism. And if a fear of the uncertainty of the future, 
as discussed earlier, displays the affective significance of governing the future, so does a focus on the 
future as a space and time of hope. As Saunders and Jenkins (2012, 494) note, “‘envision’ is a very 
hopeful word and ‘to envision’ is an act full of promise. It carries with it very positive…connotations 
that imply optimism, enthusiasm and confidence”.

The above discussion illustrates the richness of the debate concerning the governance of the 
future; in thematic, conceptual, methodological and empirical contexts. My contention in this article, 
however, is that there is a need to: 1) develop a more sustained and explicit geographical account of 
the governance of the future than has happened to date; and 2) use a geographical understanding of 
the governance of the future as part of an effort to promote more socially and spatially just futures. I 
outline the case for these two arguments in the remaining paragraphs of this section.

First, I maintain that there would be considerable value in developing a more sustained and explicit 
geographical engagement with the governance of the future. This does not mean that no work has 
been conducted on such issues. Geographers such as Anderson (2010) and Harvey (2000) have drawn 
attention, respectively, to some of the key calculative and affective aspects, and some of the important 
scalar aspects of governing the future. Work beyond Geography – most notably in the history of 
science – has also examined, in implicit ways, important geographical aspects in the development of 
Futurology and Futures Studies (e.g. Andersson 2012). And yet, there is room to supplement and 
extend this work. A number of key themes present themselves as potential avenues of enquiry. There 
is, evidently, scope to examine some of the important sites, networks and assemblages – or, in other 
words, “arrangements of humans, materials, technologies, organizations, techniques, procedures, 
norms, and events” (Baker & McGuirk 2017, 428) – that have led to the geographical spread of the 
governance of the future (DeLanda 2016). The historical geographies of Futures Studies has been 
embedded in specific sites or places, which have become nodes in networks of learning. Key individuals 



12 FENNIA 197(1) (2019)Research paper

and objects include Eric Jantsch writing the report, entitled Technological Forecasting, for the OECD in 
1967 in dialogue with the RAND organisation. Important networks and conversations have connected 
American Futurologists with European forecasters and modellers. Significant events include the Third 
World Future Research Congress in Bucharest in 1972, which led to the creation of the UNESCO-
affiliated World Futures Studies Association (Andersson 2012).

In another context, we need to consider how the governance of the future became enmeshed with 
geopolitics and the geographies of colonialism. As discussed earlier, conceptualisations of the future, 
from the outset, were inflected by the realities of the Cold War. At the same time, different inflections 
of Futurology and Futures Studies were to appear within the west (US vs. European) and the east 
(Soviet Union vs. satellite states to an extent). The global south too became a playground within which 
these alternative conceptions of the future could be deployed. The Club of Rome’s vision of the future, 
for instance, reinforced fundamental inequalities between the countries of the north and the south 
(ibid.). And, as I suggested earlier, there is a real sense in which individual states and nations sought 
to interpret the study and governance of the future in ways that reflected – at least in part – their own 
national ideals and priorities. The political geographies of states and nations, thus, had a clear impact 
on the engagement of scientists with the future. The strong tradition of social democracy and a trust 
in social science expertise in somewhere like Sweden, for instance, led to a different approach to the 
study of the future than that adopted in centralist and technocratic France. In Sweden, much more 
emphasis was placed on developing a democratic and discursive approach to defining alternative 
futures (Andersson & Keizer 2014, 108). Such issues also begin to illustrate the significance of 
geographical scale to the governance of the future. The 1960s and 1970s, arguably, reflected a concern 
with the governance of global futures. The stance adopted by the Club of Rome, for instance, was that 
“the world had one common future, and that humanity itself was the central obstacle to that future” 
(Andersson 2012, 1423). At the other extreme, the local has been emphasised as an appropriate scale 
over which to imagine more just futures (Saunders & Jenkins 2012). And of course, sustained attempts 
have been made to govern the future between these two extremes, with states (Diprose et al. 2008) 
and regions (Jones et al. 2019) being particularly significant in this respect.

My second claim is that there is a need to develop this more explicitly geographical approach as a 
way of furthering spatial justice; or, in other words, as a way of developing a version of the future that 
is more hopeful and just. As I noted in the introduction to this article, the notion of spatial justice is 
predicated on the idea that space – and, indeed, other kinds of geography – might reinforce inequalities 
and injustices of different kinds and that it might, conversely, allow new and more effective approaches 
to inequality and injustice to be imagined. In this respect, it is worth noting that there has been a 
tendency to date to focus spatial justice within cities and at the urban scale. However, no necessary 
link exists between spatial justice and the urban scale. Soja (2010, 20; see also Israel & Frenkel 2017, 
4), for example, maintains that “justice and injustice are infused into the multiscalar geographies in 
which we live, from the intimacies of the household to the uneven development of the global 
economy”. Moreover, adopting Soja’s viewpoint encourages to reflect on the different ways in which 
spatial injustice and justice manifest themselves in different spaces and across different scales. Such 
an understanding of the interconnection between space, scale and justice also forces us to think 
carefully about the most appropriate spaces and scales over which spatial justice can be achieved.

The literature on spatial justice, in addition, complements many of the key attributes of Futures 
Studies. One of the important distinctions between Futurology and Futures Studies, according to 
Andersson and Keizer (2014) is the technocratic nature of the former and the potential for the latter 
to be developed on the basis of a more democratic engagement with a wider range of stakeholders. 
Certainly, the notion of spatial justice tallies well with the more democratic tenor of Futures Studies. 
Lefebvre (1970), in his study of the right to the city, argued that justice involved the right to take part 
in urban transformation processes. It was thus associated with an “active participation in the political 
life, management, and the administration of the city” (Dikeç 2001, 1790). Care needs to be taken, 
therefore, to ensure that any attempts to govern the future – as a space and time of hope – are as 
inclusive and democratic as possible. Building on this notion of democratic engagement, emphasis 
has been placed within the literature on spatial justice on viewing justice, as well as associated terms 
such as well-being and the ‘good life’, in plural ways (Sen 1993). It is in this context that Storper (2011, 



FENNIA 197(1) (2019) 13Rhys Jones

19) contends that while “freedom and liberty; the ability to live our lives and be happy; and development 
of our capabilities” may well be common goals, “different individuals, groups and territories might fill 
in the detail on these goals in rather different ways”. And, in a related context, one needs to consider 
the extent to which the geographies of the governance of the future – or, in other words, the spaces 
and scales over which governmental entities operate – allow for a proliferation of understandings of 
justice and well-being to emerge?

The above discussion illustrates some of the potential ways in which one might be able to highlight 
the geographies of the governance of the future. Attempts to govern the future appear in different 
places and come about as result of a movement of people, things and ideas from one location to 
another (Prince 2016). Likewise, the governance of the future can become embedded in various ways 
in particular states, nations and regions, and is also played out across a series of connected 
geographical scales. The above discussion also begins to show some of the significance of such issues 
for the promotion of more just futures. A more detailed exposition of these ideas, along with their 
practical limitations, is provided in the next two sections of this article.

Case study and methods
My case study in this article is Wales and, in particular, its Well-being of Future Generations Act. The 
choice of case study requires some justification. It is important for the reader to be aware at the 
outset of this section of the broad changes that have taken place in the governance of Wales in recent 
years. Wales experienced an executive devolution of power in 1999, with a National Assembly for 
Wales being created; one that would “give the people of Wales a real chance to express their views 
and set their own priorities (A Voice for Wales, the UK Government’s White Paper on devolution to 
Wales 1997, 31). Since 1999, Wales has experimented with different forms of governance as a result 
of a selective process of “filling in” (Jones et al. 2005). It has also been keen to exploit the UK’s acceptance 
of policy divergence (MacKinnon 2015, 50) in order to define its own models of policy delivery, whether 
in relation to education, health and sustainable development. This latter emphasis on sustainable 
development is particularly significant, as I shall explain below. In all this, we witness Wales’ attempts 
to define a “Welsh way” in relation to public policy delivery (Power 2016) or, as was described by the 
former First Minister of Wales, to ensure that there was “clear red water” between it and policies in 
operation across the border in England.

Wales is also a unit of governance that is concerned with the future in many different contexts; 
ones that reflect the threefold division of the governance of the future I outlined above. To a certain 
extent, Wales – as is the case with all administrations – seeks to govern risky futures. Some of the most 
significant contexts for this are in relation to mitigating some of the potential consequences of climate 
change – with particular attention being directed towards the risk of flooding (Welsh Government 
2011) – and the management of the outbreak of a variety of communicable diseases (Public Health 
Wales 2014). Wales’ capacity to govern other future risks is constrained somewhat by the fact that it is 
a devolved administration that possesses only certain powers; others, such as those relating to justice, 
are reserved UK powers and responsibilities. The upshot of this situation is that it is the UK’s counter-
terrorism strategy, CONTEST, which is in operation in Wales (Home Department 2018). Taken together, 
such variation illustrates the complex scalar considerations that inform the governance of risky 
futures in Wales.

Likewise, the Welsh Government also seeks to predict the future as an aid to governance. One of the 
most significant developments in this context in recent years has been the creation of a Future Trends 
unit within the Welsh Government. The logic behind this development is explained as follows:

Forecasting the future is an extremely difficult task. Nevertheless, to make effective decisions now 
that are good for the long term as well as for our immediate needs, we must use the data we have 
to attempt to find patterns and trends for the future (Welsh Government 2017, 3).

The most concrete manifestation of the creation of the Future Trends unit is the publication, annually, 
of a Future Trends report, which seeks to provide useful predictions on trends in relation to varied 
issues such as population, health, economy and infrastructure, climate change, land use and natural 



14 FENNIA 197(1) (2019)Research paper

resources, and society and culture. The data and projections contained in the report are also useful 
tools that can enable the Welsh Government to chart its likelihood of reaching some of the challenging 
goals it has set itself, not least in relation to the Environment (Wales) Act 2016 (where there is a legal 
target of reducing carbon emissions by a minimum of 80% by 2050) and the Well-being of Future 
Generations Act, which, as I shall explain below, possesses a large number of varied targets and goals 
in relation to well-being, broadly defined (ibid.). Interestingly, too, the Future Trends unit view 
themselves – and the report they produce – as important stimulators of a “conversation about Wales’ 
future” (ibid., 15). There is a stated attempt here to change what could be a highly technocratic attempt 
to predict the future into a broader discussion about the possible future trajectories taken by Wales, 
but evidence concerning the extent of this “conversation” has been limited to date.

This leads me on to the third context within which Wales is seeking to govern the future; namely its 
attempt to define a future that can express hope and enable justice. It is this third context for the 
governance of the future that will provide the basis for the empirical section of this article. It is possible 
to trace Wales’ attempt to govern the future in this way to the emphasis that it has placed on 
sustainable development as a policy goal. Section 121 of the Government of Wales Act 1998, which led 
to the creation of the National Assembly for Wales, stated clearly that “[the Assembly Government 
will] make a scheme setting out how it proposes, in the exercise of its functions, to promote sustainable 
development” (Government of Wales Act 1998, section 121). Wales’ pursuit of sustainable development 
as a policy goal has been viewed, at one level, as something that has allowed it to engage with 
international audiences, most notably the European Union and the United Nations, in more effective 
ways (Royles 2010). The Welsh Government’s commitment to sustainable development received a 
further fillip with the promulgation of a Sustainable Development Bill (subsequently the Well-being of 
Future Generations Act) in 2015. The Act has the ambition that sustainable development will become 
“the central organising principle” for the public sector in Wales (Nicholl & Osmond 2012). As part of the 
Act, a Commissioner for the Well-being of Future Generations has been appointed in order to 
champion Wales’ commitment to sustainable development, well-being and justice, and the Wales 
Audit Office (the body responsible for auditing the work of public bodies in Wales) has been charged 
with monitoring the extent to which public bodies are adhering to the aims of the Act. It is this policy 
context that makes Wales such an appropriate location to study the governance of the future. As well 
as seeking to govern risky futures and predicting futures, it has – arguably more than many other 
jurisdictions – placed a great emphasis on attempting to envision more hopeful and just futures.

The empirical material I discuss in this article is drawn from a mixture of three research projects, 
which have examined Wales’ attempt to define and create more hopeful futures. The first project, 
National Sustainabilities, examined Wales’ attempt to define its own interpretation of sustainable 
development through the concept of well-being and, as such, provides important contextual 
information for the article. The second project I draw on is an EU Horizon 2020 project, entitled 
IMAJINE (Integrative Mechanism for Addressing Spatial Justice and Territorial Inequalities, 2017–2021), 
which brings together 16 partners from 13 European states to discuss and develop new academic and 
policy understandings of territorial cohesion and spatial justice. Wales is one case study region within 
this broader network, partly because of its attempt to develop new and imaginative ways of promoting 
social and spatial justice through the Well-being Act. I also discuss empirical material from a third 
project. This is a Leverhulme Fellowship, which is examining the way in which behavioural insights are 
being used in Wales in order to encourage civil servants to think and act in different and more effective 
ways. An important driver of this change in ways of thinking and doing is the Well-being Act.

The empirical material I discuss from these projects includes approximately 70 interviews conducted 
in Wales over the course of the past five or so years with a range of civil servants, academics and other 
stakeholders concerned with sustainable development and the Well-being Act. I was particularly 
interested here in the hopes associated with the development of the Act, as well as some of the 
challenges linked to its implementation. I also draw upon documentary research on various strategies, 
policies and related documents that set out Wales’ attempt to define and create a future that is more 
hopeful and just (for instance, more equitable in terms of life chances and access to services). In terms 
of analysis, the interview material was transcribed and coded using NVivo using a mixture of codes 
that were data-generated and others that reflected more conceptual themes (Coffey & Atkinson 



FENNIA 197(1) (2019) 15Rhys Jones

1996). The documentary material was subject to textual analysis (Kuchartz 2014), where common 
patterns and similarities within and between documents were noted. I use this interview-based and 
documentary material in a synthetic manner in the empirical discussion that follows.

Spatial justice and the governance of the future in contemporary Wales
I proceed in this section to discuss the way in which the Well-being Act has led to a renewed and 
sustained attempt in Wales to govern the future, and to do so a way of increasing well-being for all of 
the people of Wales. There is, clearly, an attempt in the Act to focus public and policy attention on the 
long-term futures of Wales, particularly in relation to its society, economy, culture and environment. 
The promulgation of the Act was preceded by a large-scale consultation exercise, entitled ‘The Wales 
we Want’ (Jones & Ross 2016). The aims of the exercise were numerous. At one level, it helped to 
embed sustainable development and the notion of well-being within public discourse in Wales. At 
another, it encouraged stakeholders of different kinds to envision a future Wales, which would be 
more sustainable and just. The emphasis on envisioning a ‘better’ Wales was reinforced by the Welsh 
Government in its own submission to ‘The Wales we Want’ exercise. It maintained that

In 2050, Wales will be the best place to live, learn, work and do business…Doing things differently 
is about looking forward so the choices we take secure a safe and prosperous future for us, for our 
children and for our grandchildren (Welsh Government 2014, 1).

The level of ambition demonstrated in the above statement is remarkable and it signals – above all 
else – the radical attempt by the Welsh Government to think proactively about how it might use the 
Well-being Act to create a different and better kind of Wales.

Particular emphasis was placed in the consultation exercise on asking stakeholders to define the 
specific vision of sustainable development, well-being and justice that should be striven for by the 
year 2050. At face value, therefore, there is a clear attempt here to enable multiple visions of the 
future to be articulated and for these to help define the future of Wales as an object of governance 
(Rose 1999). The deliberations were said to feed directly into the seven well-being goals that came to 
structure the Well-being Act. The Act would, by 2050, create: a prosperous Wales; a resilient Wales; a 
healthier Wales; a more equal Wales; a Wales of cohesive communities; a Wales of vibrant culture and 
thriving Welsh language; a globally responsible Wales (Welsh Government 2015, 3). While the notion 
of justice is most clearly associated with the goal of creating “a more equal Wales”, it was also linked 
to some of the other goals. For instance, the issue of a thriving Welsh language has been in recent 
years been articulated as an issue of linguistic rights (Jones & Lewis 2019). Similarly, when discussing 
a prosperous Wales, there is a need, according to the Act, to consider the extent to which such 
prosperity is shared by the whole of the population of Wales. The idea of justice, therefore, permeates 
much of the ethos of the Well-being Act.

These seven goals were subdivided into 46 national indicators of progress. While some of these 
would be well-worn and familiar to policy-makers based in other jurisdictions, such as Gross Value 
Added (GVA) per hour worked (relative to UK average) (national indicator 9), others were more unusual 
and reflected the attempt that had been made within the Act to expand understandings of the 
objectives of government. They included reducing the gender pay difference (national indicator 17), 
increasing the percentage of people moderately or very satisfied with their jobs (national indicator 
20), increasing the percentage of people satisfied with their ability to get to/access the facilities and 
services they need (national indicator 24) and increasing the percentage of people who could speak 
Welsh (national indicator 37).

There is a sense in the above indicators of the Welsh Government’s efforts to envision a more just 
future for Wales, embedded in notions of well-being and sustainable development. Echoing important 
aspects of the more conceptual literatures concerning the governance of the future and spatial justice, 
this is a vision that was based on a democratic process of consultation with the public. Admittedly, the 
process whereby this public input was distilled into seven well-being goals is relatively opaque, thus 
posing questions about the extent of consultation exercise: did all voices count and, if so, did they all 
count equally? What is not in doubt is the way in which the vision of the future encapsulated in the 



16 FENNIA 197(1) (2019)Research paper

Well-being Act extends well beyond GDP or GVA to encompass plural measures of justice and the 
‘good life’. And as a result, this interpretation of well-being and justice is one that is said to be 
embedded in key aspects of a Welsh national culture (Jones & Ross 2016).

In the remaining paragraphs of this section, I want to discuss important geographical – particularly 
scalar – aspects of the Well-being Act. I focus on three scales, namely the way in which the Act is 
embedded in a national Welsh scale, its operationalisation at a more local scale within Wales, and its 
implications for more embodied ways of working. Of course, while I examine each of these scales of 
governance in isolation, I fully recognise the important connections that exist between them (cf. 
Swyngedouw 2000). In discussing these significant geographies of the Well-being Act, my other goal is 
to reflect on the impact of these distinct geographies on the Welsh Government’s stated aims of 
achieving well-being and justice. It is in this second context that one can begin to appreciate the extent 
to which the governance of the future – as reflected in the Well-being Act – is helping or hindering the 
Welsh Government to achieve spatial justice.

Scaling future governance 1: the national scale

The discussion in the above paragraphs points, quite clearly I maintain, to the way in which the Well-
being Act reflects an attempt to ground notions of well-being, sustainable development and justice at 
the scale of Wales as a devolved state, region and/or nation. We can identify the attempts to embed 
understandings of justice at a Welsh national scale in many distinct, yet related, contexts. First, it is 
clear that ever since the beginning of the devolution process there has been an attempt discursively 
to construct well-being and justice as issues and goals for Wales as a nation. One of the most clear-cut 
examples of this emphasis was the naming of ‘The Wales we Want’ exercise, described earlier. 
Evidently, the common-sense geographical frame of reference for sustainable development and well-
being in this case is Wales (Jones & Ross 2016). Some of the Welsh Government’s statements about 
the significance of sustainable development and well-being – both prior to and following ‘The Wales 
we Want’ consultation – reinforce this geographical connection with Wales as a nation. The ministerial 
foreword to the Welsh Government’s Sustainable Development Scheme, One Wales: One Planet, for 
instance, states that “I hope that you will be able to support and join us in this endeavour [the journey 
to sustainability], so that together we can transform Wales into a sustainable nation” (Welsh 
Government 2009, 5). Even more strident comments were made in the later Sustainable Development 
Report published by the Welsh Government. Here, it is confidently stated that Wales has “its own 
account of sustainable development”, with an “emphasis on social, economic and environmental 
wellbeing for people and communities, embodying our values of fairness and social justice” (Welsh 
Government 2012, 5). A form of banal nationalism (Billig 1995) – or, in other words, a nationalism that 
is reproduced in subtle and highly banal contexts – is evident in all of these statements, with the use 
of plural pronouns such as ‘us’, ‘we’ and ‘our’ helping to emphasise that Wales as a nation is taking 
possession of a distinctive approach to sustainable development, well-being and justice.

An even more explicit and instrumental attempt discursively to connect sustainable development 
and well-being to Wales, a Welsh nation and the Welsh national scale appears in the Sustainable 
Development Narratives for Wales document, which was published in November 2013. The document 
used behavioural insights in order to highlight the specific discourses – in terms of language, idioms 
and imagery – that could be used to ‘sell’ the idea of sustainable development to a Welsh nation 
(Welsh Government 2013). The guide drew on ideas from social marketing (Pykett et al. 2014), in which 
marketing insights from the private sector are used in order to promote public goals, to target specific 
segments of the population with bespoke messages. As noted by Sustain Wales, the NGO that was 
responsible for producing the document, the art of social marketing “requires an understanding of 
specific groups of people – what they value, what they identify with, who they are – and the language 
that resonates with them” (Sustain Wales 2012, 1). The key point I want to make at this juncture is that 
the Welsh nation was viewed in these documents as a significant segment for the promotion of 
sustainable development and that there was, thus, a need to create a bespoke take on sustainable 
development that would resonate with the Welsh nation.



FENNIA 197(1) (2019) 17Rhys Jones

Second, the evidence points to an emphasis being placed on Wales as a focus for intervention as a 
result of the national challenges that it has faced and continues to face. This theme was especially 
apparent in some of the interviews I conducted with workers in Sustain Wales, the NGO responsible 
for ‘The Wales we Want’ consultation. One reflected on how the problematic history of Wales should 
act as a spur for Wales to create a new and better Wales of the future, as the following quote illustrates:

Wales was there at the start of the industrial revolution and the production of coal and then the 
export right across the world…So it’s benefited from it but it’s also been, pardon the pun, at the 
coalface of it.  So it’s seen its landscapes absolutely scarred, it’s got the communities that are now 
being hit by inertia (Interview, Sustain Wales).

The same individual described how the challenges facing Wales in the present should be viewed as 
sources of inspiration for future action; once again at the scale of Wales as a region and nation. The 
respondent explained that “Wales has some of the highest rates of obesity in the world, some of the 
highest rates of teenage pregnancy”. They viewed these statistics as ones that needed to change as 
Wales moved forward (Interview, Sustain Wales).

This kind of attitude – about the need to get to grips with some of the entrenched challenges facing 
Wales as a nation – has translated into the priorities that have been set by Sophie Howe, the 
Commissioner for the Well-being of Future Generations. In her first Annual Report, she identified two 
main areas of intervention. The first emphasised the need to create “the right infrastructure for future 
generations”, including improving the housing stock, energy generation and efficiency as well as 
transport planning (OFGC 2018, 21). The second centred on “[e]quipping people for the future”, with 
a focus on improving skills for the future, addressing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and 
promoting alternative models for improving health and well-being (ibid.). There is a certain logic to the 
approach that has been adopted by the Commissioner. At one level, these are patently fundamental 
challenges facing Wales as a nation and a region. At the same time, it is impossible for the Office of 
the Commissioner to give equal attention to each of the seven well-being goals contained in the Well-
being Act. And yet, there are important questions that are deserving our attention. To what extent, for 
instance, are these challenges and priorities equally relevant to all people and all parts of Wales? 
Wales, after all, is varied in terms of its social, economic, cultural and environmental makeup. There is 
room to suggest, in this respect, that the priorities emphasised by the Commissioner during her first 
years in office reflect well-being challenges that are significant for the more urbanised areas of south-
east Wales, with challenges associated with the more rural areas of Wales – isolation, access to services 
and the Welsh language for instance – being marginalised as a result (cf. Luukkonen & Sirviö 
forthcoming). As such, there is a danger that emphasising a set of national priorities in relation to well-
being and justice will, inadvertently perhaps, lead to an implicit focusing of attention, services and 
funding on certain areas more than others. In effect, one could have a situation in which attempts to 
address injustice could exacerbate spatial injustice by prioritising certain areas more than others. To 
what extent, therefore, can just futures be defined at a national or regional scale? Such concerns point 
to the potential value in developing a more localised interpretation of well-being and justice, and I 
turn to this theme in the next sub-section.

Scaling future governance 2: operationalising well-being and justice at the local scale

Another significant aspect of the Well-being Act is the way in which it has attempted to ground 
understandings of well-being in localities. The Act has led to the creation of a series of Public Services 
Boards (hereafter PSBs) and, with a few small exceptions, these have been centred on local authority 
areas. The PSBs consist of the relevant local authority and representatives from the Local Health 
Board, the Welsh Fire and Rescue Authority, Natural Resources Wales (the body responsible for 
managing the environment of Wales), the relevant Chief Constable, the relevant Police and Crime 
Commissioner, and a representation from local voluntary bodies (Welsh Government 2015, 11). PSBs 
are responsible, furthermore, for consulting with the local population in order to produce assessments 
of local well-being, encompassing economic, social, environmental and cultural themes. These 
assessments are then used to develop local well-being plans, which contain “objectives that are 
designed to maximise the PSB’s contribution to locally-defined well-being goals” (ibid.).



18 FENNIA 197(1) (2019)Research paper

At face value, PSBs provide a welcome antidote to the potential homogenising tendencies of the 
Well-being Act at the national scale. The first iterations of the local well-being assessments and plans 
have now been produced. There are references in some of these documents to the issues that have 
been identified as national priority areas by the Commissioner for Well-being. For instance, PSBs in 
diverse locations in Wales – Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent in post-industrial South Wales, and Ceredigion, 
and Gwynedd and Anglesey in more rural West Wales – all reference in slightly different ways to the 
need to address adverse childhood experiences. And yet, at the same time, there are efforts in these 
documents to emphasise more localised and distinctive aspects of justice and well-being. Torfaen PSB 
(2017) for instance, draws attention to the need to prevent chronic health conditions and to improve 
local skills, Blaenau Gwent PSB (2017) makes a case for increasing healthy lifestyle chocies, Ceredigion 
PSB (2017) notes the need for individual well-being within communities, and Gwynedd and Anglesey 
PSB (2017) emphasises the need to protect and promote the Welsh language, as well as the need to 
understand demographic changes and ensure that there is a sufficient stock of affordable housing 
(the latter two priorities are, once again, linked to local debates about the in-migration of English 
speakers to the area and the lack of availability of affordable housing for Welsh-speaking residents).

This variation could be viewed as a testament to an attempt to localise well-being, with spatial 
justice in this sense being more effective and far-reaching if it is defined through a democratic process 
of engagement taking place at the local scale. And yet, certain concerns can be raised about the 
effectiveness of this process. While these reflect practical and operational difficulties, at one level, 
they also testify to more fundamental and conceptual challenges associated with defining well-being 
and spatial justice at the local scale. First, concerns have been raised about the extent to which PSBs 
have considered fully the spatial aspects of well-being in the production of their local well-being 
assessments and plans. In a publicly released review report, the Commissioner for Future Generations 
commented that:

The assessments acknowledge the importance of local spaces as assets, acknowledge their roles 
in people’s well-being and consider how people engage and interact with these places. However, 
most well-being assessments showed very limited consideration of the significance or cause of 
spatial differences, including: life expectancy; the distribution and isolation of elderly residents; the 
differences between rural and urban or inland and coastal communities; biodiversity loss; 
community safety or the impact of climate change. These were described as relevant problems, 
but their localised impact on well-being remained unexplored (OFGC 2017,15).

The collective feedback provided above by the Future Generations Commissioner to PSBs is significant. 
It encourages PSBs, I contend, to think in more creative ways about the significance of space to well-
being. And it is interesting that this is a spatial perspective that should feed into a range of aspects of 
social life.

Second, some within the voluntary sector have bemoaned that their potential to provide input into 
the work of the PSBs, as well as the production of well-being assessments and plans, is limited. Echoing 
familiar and long-running criticisms levelled at the idea of partnership working, it has been suggested 
that PSBs are dominated by the public sector, with concomitant worries about the unevenness of 
power relationships, which are redolent of forms of metagovernance (Jessop 2016) or a ‘shadow state’ 
(Wolch 1990). Clearly, there are implications here for spatial justice, particularly in relation to the (in)
ability of those working within the voluntary sector in different parts of Wales to contribute fully to the 
definition of future goals.

Third, it is also possible to question how the subsidiarity associated with the Well-being Act – as 
embodied in the notion of PSBs, local well-being assessments and plans – is actually serving to 
undermine some of the Act’s essential characteristics; and, by extension, the notion of spatial justice. 
The significance of this issue can be seen most clearly in relation to the Act’s commitment to the Welsh 
language as an important aspect of ‘The Wales we Want’. A well-placed individual working in Sustain 
Wales, the body responsible for promoting sustainable development in Wales prior to the passing of 
the Well-being Act, explained some of the reasoning behind this emphasis on promoting the Welsh 
language:

The kind of Wales we would like to see would be in terms of equality, in all things…The language 
would be key…We’re the only place in the UK trying to develop bilingualism and that is something 



FENNIA 197(1) (2019) 19Rhys Jones

we need to be really proud of to show as a nation we’re proud of our heritage and culture (emphasis 
added).

As well as demonstrating the distinctiveness of Wales’ interpretation of sustainable development and 
well-being, the above statement clearly indicates a commitment to the Welsh language as something 
that is significant for the whole of the Welsh nation. And yet, the brief description of the priorities of 
four PSBs, provided earlier, demonstrates quite clearly an uneven commitment to the Welsh language. 
It is only in Gwynedd and Anglesey PSB (2017) that there is any overt statement about the significance 
of the Welsh language for understandings of well-being. Ceredigion PSB (2017, 7) has seen fit to 
incorporate certain goals that might have some tangential benefits for the Welsh language within 
their local well-being plans. The place of the Welsh language within local well-being plans is even more 
muted, though, when one studies those PSBs located in parts of Wales possessing lower percentages 
(though sometimes large absolute numbers) of Welsh speakers; places such as Torfaen and Blaenau 
Gwent. As such, the local well-being assessments and plans that have been produced – and the 
institutional priorities that they reflect – are, I contend, in danger of reproducing familiar geographies 
of the Welsh language; with the Welsh language being viewed as a legitimate well-being goal for those 
areas of Wales possessing higher percentages of Welsh speakers while being deemed as an irrelevance 
for PSBs operating in parts of Wales possessing lower percentages of Welsh speakers (Jones & Lewis 
2019). What are the impacts of such variations on the linguistic aspects of spatial justice? Will Local 
Well-being Plans help to determine access to Welsh-medium services in the future and, if so, will it 
lead to a situation in which the institutional support provided for the Welsh language – and for Welsh 
speakers – can legitimately vary from one part of Wales to another? There is clearly, here, the potential 
for the devolved character of the Well-being Act to lead to a situation in which the Welsh language 
faces additional challenges in certain parts of Wales, rather than being supported as one of the Act’s 
seven well-being goals.

Of course, I can be accused, in this respect, of wanting to have my cake and eat it. In the previous 
section, I argued that there was a need to be wary of the homogenising tendencies that might be 
associated with approaching the idea of well-being and spatial justice at the national scale. In this 
section, I am suggesting that we need to be careful that embedding well-being and spatial justice 
within localities does not lead to a situation in which access to opportunities and services vary spatially. 
My defence is that in pursuing these – perhaps conflicting – arguments we witness the challenges 
associated with seeking to promote well-being and justice. Moreover, I seek to demonstrate that the 
geographies and, particularly in this case, the scales over which this endeavour is operationalised 
possess consequences for the justice that can be achieved.

Scaling future governance 3: the body and mind as terrains of governance

The third and final scale of future governance I want to discuss relates to the body and mind as key 
terrains of governance. One of the most significant aspects of the Well-being Act is the emphasis that 
it has placed on encouraging five new ways of working, highlighting the need to: think about the long 
term; prevent problems occurring or getting worse; integrate different well-being objectives and the 
work of different public bodies; collaborate with any stakeholder that might help a well-being goal to 
be achieved; involve any individuals and groups who might have an interest in a well-being goal (Welsh 
Government 2015, 7). The most significant of these for the present discussion, of course, is the first 
and it is worth considering the specific wording of this new way of working. It is stated that thinking 
about the long term reflects “[t]he importance of balancing short-term needs with the needs to 
safeguard the ability to also meet long-term needs” (ibid.). As such, this different way of working 
reflects both the overall tenor of the Well-being Act, namely that there is a need to create a new, 
different and better kind of Wales by the year 2050. It is also a new way of working, at least in an 
implicit sense, that is borne out of a concern with the short-termism of politics and policy-making in 
general. As one respondent from the Welsh Government put it, “part of the problem we have is that 
civil servants aren’t used to thinking over the long term. They get tied in to the electoral cycle, which 
emphasizes the need for short-term gain” (interview, Welsh Government).



20 FENNIA 197(1) (2019)Research paper

Such concerns have resulted in a concerted effort to retrain civil servants, particularly within the 
Welsh Government, so that they are better suited to taking on board the requirements of the Act. A 
number of bodies in Wales have taken up this challenge. The Wales Audit Office, for instance, has 
created a Good Practice Exchange in order to help civil servants to think and act differently in relation 
to the Well-being Act (and also with regard to the relatively new Social Services and Well-being Act, and 
the Environment Act). An example of their work includes a recent training course on encouraging 
public sector workers to take more seriously the outcomes of their work, rather than the current focus 
on measuring outputs. As Jeffs (2018), one of the contributors to the training course, states “the true 
‘value’ of public service ultimately lies in improving people’s lives” and, as such, there needs to be a 
concomitant “different way of seeing and providing public services that starts with people’s lives and 
what matters to them in their lives”. While this is a laudable goal in its own right, I also suggest that it 
also reflects – and least implicitly – an attempt to move away from the short-termism of an output-
focused approach to one that takes heed of the longer-term consequences of policy delivery. Similar 
work is undertaken by Academi Wales, which is linked to the Welsh Government’s Cabinet Secretary for 
Local Government and Public Services. The aim of Academi Wales is to be the centre for excellence in 
leadership and management for public services in Wales, and one of the values it seeks to instil among 
civil servants is to “work for the long term” (https://academiwales.gov.wales, accessed 10.1.2019).

While this is, evidently, a laudable goal and one that tallies with the overall tenor of the Well-being 
Act, it seems as if it is much easier to say than it has been to achieve. An analysis of some of the 
courses and guidance provided by Academi Wales, for instance, shows that they are aware of the 
need to address long-term futures but the guidance provided is a little vague. Its discussion of a 
Sustainable Futures Development Architecture starts with the need to think over the long term and 
the need to move away from so-called “short term fixes” but the solution to this issue, seemingly, 
focuses far more on collaboration and involvement ways of thinking:

Long term relationships. To solve tough problems, we need everyone who is prepared to help; 
the recipient or customer has just as much to bring as the field expert. We commit to people to 
help discover and build on all our strengths and create relationships that increase trust (Academi 
Wales 2015, 1).

Again, there is much to commend in the above statement but it does not, as far as I can see, get to 
grips with the need to think about the long term. The development of strong collaborative links and 
trust between policy-makers and the public may be a part of achieving this goal but where is a 
consideration here of the long-term consequences of policy decisions in the present? How does the 
above guidance help policy-makers to think creatively about how small-scale decisions and investments 
in the present might have large-scale positive outcomes in the future, or how one needs to think 
carefully about the unintended long-term consequences of decisions in the present for ideas of well-
being and justice?

Some of the interventions that have been run out of the Department of Geography and Earth 
Sciences at Aberystwyth University have attempted to exploit understandings of behavioural insights 
(Jones et al. 2013) and mindfulness as a way of addressing some of the short-comings of policy-makers 
and policy-making, including the lack of long-term thinking (Kahneman 2011; Academi Wales 2018, 5). 
One intervention was developed in order to explore whether the experience of practising mindfulness 
would enable participants to enhance their understanding of the principles that inform contemporary 
behaviour change policies. Fifteen civil servants in the Welsh Government were trained over the 
course of eight weeks to reflect on their behaviours and those of the stakeholders that they interact 
with. While those who attended the course identified many positive aspects (see Lilley et al. 2014), 
some of the more interesting themes arose in relation to the perceived increased capacity of attendees 
to manage their time, to think more slowly and to reflect on the longer-term consequences of their 
decision-making, as the following quote shows:

I think that it’s really important having the capacity to learn and think rather than just going with 
the prevailing wind […] if you do that you can start changing how you see, even how you look, at 
things. If you don’t give yourself space I think that you just get caught-up with the tide (civil servant, 
Welsh Government).

https://academiwales.gov.wales


FENNIA 197(1) (2019) 21Rhys Jones

Again, while it may not be possible to equate being “caught up with the tide” with a short-term 
attitudes towards policy-making, one can see how there is some potential here for the training course 
to encourage civil servants to avoid making knee-jerk policy decisions; ones that are more likely to be 
short term in their outlook.

The discussion in this sub-section illustrates how the Well-being Act is leading to an effort on behalf 
of various organisations to encourage public servants to think about the long term impact of their 
decisions and policies. There is, moreover, some evidence to show that behavioural insights are being 
used as a way of encouraging this different way of working. While these insights seek to help civil 
servants to reframe their policy decisions in different ways (reflecting the five different ways of working 
encompassed by the Act), there is some doubt as to the extent to which they are successful means of 
allowing civil servants to make policy decisions that fully take account of the specific need to create a 
long-term perspective on policy-making. Such concerns point to the need for more research on the 
practical implications of seeking to govern of the long term.

Conclusions
My aims in this article were twofold. I discussed the growing interest in the governance of the future 
within academia and argued that there was a need to develop a more explicit and sustained 
engagement with the geographical aspects of this process. I also maintained that developing such a 
geographical perspective was necessary as a way of ensuring that attempts to govern the future were 
as spatially just as possible. Geography, in this sense, is not merely a backdrop to efforts to promote 
justice and well-being. It has a significant bearing on the extent to which justice and well-being can be 
achieved. I illustrated these conceptual claims with a discussion of the development and implementation 
of the Well-being Act in Wales; an Act that explicitly seeks to create a different and better kind of Wales 
by the year 2050.

The Act promotes a notion of well-being and justice at different scales and each of these possess 
implications for the way in which well-being and justice can be achieved in practice. The Act’s discursive 
emphasis on the national scale – while being something that can make the notion of sustainable 
development, well-being and justice something that is embedded in Welsh values (Jones & Ross 2016) 
– can lead to a situation in which certain issues are prioritized above others; with a potential for unjust 
outcomes to emerge. The Act’s emphasis on the local scale – particularly in relation to the work of 
PSBs – also has the potential to lead to situations in which some of the Act’s overall aims are 
downplayed or ignored. Once again, certain interest groups and particular areas may suffer as a 
result. And the Act’s emphasis on the body and minds of civil servants as terrains of governance is also 
significant. Yet, there is still some doubt as to the extent to which the training and interventions that 
have been trialed to date have been wholly effective in reshaping values and sensibilities; particularly 
in relation to the need to think and act in ways that promote long-term goals. And even though it was 
not discussed in the main body of the article, there is some tentative evidence to show that the Well-
being Act is having some impact internationally. The Well-being Commissioner presents regularly to 
international audiences about Wales’ experiment with governing the future and there is a sense that 
the Act has already served to raise Wales’ profile internationally.

The overall message that comes out of this case study is that whereas there is an appetite for 
governing the future, and to do so as a means of furthering sustainable development, well-being and 
justice, the act of operationalising this – at least in relation to geographical themes – is fraught with 
difficulty. There are no simple means of addressing such challenges. Rather than providing simple 
answers, for now it may enough for geographers – because of their sensitivity to the difference that 
geographical issues, such as space and scale make, to politics and governance – to take the lead in 
drawing attention to the significance of the questions that need to be asked when seeking to govern 
the future. How do the spaces and scales over which more hopeful futures are being articulated 
influence the extent to which those hopeful futures can be realised? To what extent do these spaces 
and scales of future governance lead to greater justice for some rather than others? In short, how 
does this search for future justice play out in spatial contexts?



22 FENNIA 197(1) (2019)Research paper

And if these kinds of questions are pertinent within the specific context of Wales, they are even 
more significant when one considers spatial justice at broader geographical scales. If one key aspect 
of spatial justice is that individuals, groups, cities, regions and states can articulate their own vision of 
what a just future might look like (Storper 2011, 19), then surely they must be allowed the same 
license to define the spaces and scales over which that search for justice occurs. In short, the spaces 
and scales of future governance might vary from one place to another; some spaces and scales of 
future governance might work more effectively in some places than others. There is a need, therefore, 
for a spatial sensitivity to spatial justice and geographers should play a leading role, not just in 
analysing this spatial variation, but also in enabling the most effective governmental configurations to 
be developed within specific geographical settings.

Notes
1 While I refer to attempts to govern the future in this article, it will become apparent throughout that 
I do not consider the future as something that is singular and predetermined. There are, therefore, 
many possible futures that might be problematized and imagined as objects of governance (Rose 
1999; Dikeç 2007). Therefore, while I use the term ‘governing the future’, the reader should be aware 
of the many possible interpretations of the future that underlie its use.

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the audience at the Geography Days conference for their comments on the oral 
version of this paper, and for the two referees for their useful and insightful comments on the written 
version. I would also like to thank Bryonny Goodwin-Hawkins for conducting the interviews for the 
IMAJINE project. I also would like to acknowledge the financial support of the following organisations: 
the AHRC for the project on National Sustainabilities (grant number AH/K004077/1); the European 
Commission for the IMAJINE project (grant number REP-726950-1); the Leverhulme Trust for the 
project on the use of behavioural insights by the Welsh Government (grant number RF-2017-696). All 
the errors and omissions are mine.

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