Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.

We are the charity and a think tank that is all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

In this episode, we brought together a panel of experts to discuss the importance of long-term policy thinking that extends beyond short-term electoral cycles

and how to achieve positive changes that benefit future generations.

There's so much interesting work being done just now about imagining what economists could look like

if they really were circular economies or economies based on well-being rather than growth.

The event was chaired by Ruth Chambers, Senior Parliamentary Affairs Associate in the Green UK unit at Green Alliance.

A really warm welcome to this Green Alliance event. I'm Ruth Chambers from Green Alliance and I'm joined by three expert speakers to discuss how we can inspire long-term policy thinking on the environment.

I'm delighted to welcome Sophie Howe, the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales,

who is the world's first and only at present Future Generations Commissioner.

Caroline Lucas MP, sponsor of the wellbeing of Future Generations No. 2 Bill,

which is just won an important ballot in the House of Lords, and we hope to see that making progress shortly, and Deyza Agargy, climate justice activist, political candidate and student.

Now, without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Sophie, who's going to start us off with some opening words. Over to you, Sophie.

Thanks. Great to be with you today. So,

as you heard, my job is rather unique. I'm in a place where I would greatly value having more

friends, being the only Future Generations Commissioner in the world. But as I was saying earlier on,

perhaps Caroline as the sponsor, one of the sponsors for the well-being of

Future Generations Bill in the UK Parliament can help me out there. Why is it that thinking long-term

and legislating to protect the interests of future generations is so important? Well, you've only

got to look at the climate crisis, the nature

emergency that we are in the middle of to understand why short termism is so prevalent and so endemic

in policymaking and why there is such a need to try and shift that to the long term. Our political

...