Sophie Howe is a public servant with a particularly tricky constituency. The people she represents are remote and unresponsive and they never show up to voice an opinion or tell her if she’s doing a good job. They don’t even vote. That’s because they haven’t yet been born. Howe is the world’s first – and only – future generations commissioner with statutory powers. She’s there to represent the unborn citizens of Wales. There is no shortage of issues to champion. So many of today’s crises – climate, insects, water, population growth – threaten calamity not for the people currently on the planet but for their descendants. The political trope about “our children and our children’s children” has never felt so urgent. Other countries have also toyed with novel governance mechanisms that allow for the voice of future generations to be heard, with Israel, Hungary and Canada notable examples. Yet none have gone as far as Wales to enshrine in law the principle that future generations deserve a fair hearing in present political debates.“We have put it in statute … which means we have to ask how to translate it into the decisions that are made every day throughout government,” said Howe, 41, a former deputy police and crime commissioner who has five children. In the job since its creation in 2016, her mandate – on paper at least – is clear: to ensure that political decisions taken today don’t compromise the interests of Welsh citizens tomorrow. As commissioner, it is Howe’s job to advise the Welsh government and the wider public sector of what their statutory obligations entail. Much of her initial period in office has been spent helping the country’s principal public bodies put together formal action plans for meeting their new responsibilities. But the job is not all about hand-holding. Howe has shown she can play tough too. In recent months, for instance, her attention has been focused on a proposed £1.1bn relief road around Newport. The project’s supporters maintain the investment will boost economic growth. Howe, in contrast, argues it will destroy local biodiversity and saddle Wales’s unborn with a huge debt. Mark Drakeford, the country’s first minister, is due to give his verdict imminently. “It was almost a done deal before my intervention, but now there are serious considerations as to whether it’s in the interests of future generations,” she said. AFP.