Cymru Can – the new strategy from the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales – has been launched today in a film shot at a Pembrokeshire seaweed farm.

Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Derek Walker, appears in the film, at Câr-y-Môr, Wales’ first community-owned, regenerative seaweed and shellfish farm, near St Davids.

Câr-y-Môr is an example of how people wanting to change the world are using the Well-being of Future Generations Act (WFGA) to challenge and break down barriers.

The community benefits society which owns and runs the farm used the act to appeal a short-term marine license. The appeal was successful and now they have a 20-year license to produce sustainable Welsh seaweed and farm native oysters and mussels off the coast at Ramsey Sound.

Câr-y-Môr also supplies seaweed for plastic alternatives, including takeaway boxes that are fully biodegradable Justin Davies, marine licenses manager, said: "The Well-being of Future Generations Act was the key piece of legislation that we relied on in our appeal."

Launching Cymru Can today, Mr Walker says that Wales needs to up the scale and pace on delivering its future generations law.

He says that despite increasing good practice, the legislation needs better implementation and that without urgent change, Wales won’t meet crucial targets, for example around climate change and nature.

Wales is the only country in the world with a Well-being of Future Generations Act and Mr Walker is the second ever Future Generations Commissioner - with a job to support and challenge public bodies, including councils, health boards and Welsh Government, to protect the future as they tackle today’s problems.

The commissioner is today launching Cymru Can and putting his team’s focus on five mission areas – ensuring the legislation is working harder and having impact in people’s everyday lives; responding to the climate and nature emergencies; more action to prevent ill health; a well-being economy; and protecting and enhancing culture and the Welsh language.

Wales’ seven well-being goals under the Act have already created change from the scrapping of a £1.4bn motorway that would have torn through a nature reserve, leading to a new transport plan; a progressive school curriculum and a new way to define prosperity – valuing green, low-carbon, fair work over a rise in GDP. The approach has inspired everyone from the UN to countries from Ireland to Japan.

But the commissioner, who took up the job on March 1 this year, says more needs to be done so that improving well-being for current and future generations is the central principle to how public services are delivered. His top mission, therefore, will be to ‘ensure the implementation of this legislation fully lives up to its potential, to close the gap between aspiration and delivery. This will be our core mission and will underpin everything we do.

He's spent the last eight months speaking with people from across Wales about where his role can have the most impact, and the result is his seven-year strategy, Cymru Can, which he says represents the potential for significant change between now and 2030.

The commissioner, who acknowledged that these are challenging times for public bodies, will shift his team’s resources to increase the advice and assistance for public bodies, but will carry out reviews when progress is too slow. Derek Walker said: “People are proud of the Well-being of Future Generations Act and our well-being goals– but we must push harder to ensure they’re better implemented to make more positive change in people’s daily lives, now and in the future.

“We need urgent and transformational change, with joined-up and long-term solutions to problems like the climate and nature emergencies, inequality and poverty and it’s not happening at the pace and scale we need it to – it's my job to work with others to find better ways to support that change.

“Cymru can do so much more to increase everyone’s well-being and involve more people in building new positive futures– we have the permission and legal obligation of this unique law to do better things, and there are great examples of where that’s happening which can be spread across Wales.”

The commissioner has selected the food system as a focus area of Cymru Can, and will continue advocating for Welsh Government to develop a long-term food strategy so that Wales can have a plan for feeding ourselves amidst growing global food insecurity and climate instability.

Mr Walker said everyone and every organisation needs to play a part, and called on public services in Cymru to be even more inclusive and imaginative in the way they involve people in solving challenges.

He added: “We will not achieve our vision for Wales unless everyone is included, and systemic inequality is dismantled.”