Can we promote plural local pathways to sustainable development? Insights from the implementation of Wales’s Future Generations Act

This paper examines the implementation of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, the first and only piece of legislation to codify the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals in law. The paper provides empirical analysis of the implementation of this legislation based on 16 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders across Wales. The analysis explores whether the Act can deliver spatial justice in Wales through its novel and place-based approach to sustainable development. We examine how the Act has been implemented at different spatial scales–the local, the regional and the national–and how the differences in the way it is interpreted by actors at these different levels influences the extent to which spatial justice is realised in its implementation.