Why we need a vision for a sustainable future
Last month, the IES kickstarted a conversation on values, the value we assign to the environment, and how those factors affect environmental outcomes. It is a critical conversation, because our values shape our decisions, both as individuals and as countries.
There’s also a deep connection between our values and the kind of world we want to create. Naturally, we try to make a world that reflects our values. Our view of the world also influences the values we hold over time.
If we want to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable society, we need to understand what people care about so that we can craft a vision of the future that gives them the things they value.
Joseph Lewis is Head of Policy at the Institution of Environmental Sciences, working to promote the use of the environmental sciences in decision making. Joseph leads the delivery of the IES Policy Programme, standing up for the voice of science, scientists, and the natural world in policy. He also delivers the IES policy training programme.
Joseph has more than ten years of experience in public policy, including in Parliament and the charity sector. He was recognised on the ENDS Power List 2026 as "a prominent advocate for ensuring environmental science is reflected in public policy".
Why does vision matter?
There’s always a lot of conversation in policy about vision and strategy; it’s more than a talking point and visions can be a massive lever for influencing outcomes if they are produced and delivered in the right way.
Take the example of the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales: it’s been a significant presence, both in policy and wider society. People understand what it is trying to achieve and the implicit framing of environmental outcomes as things that help to achieve the well-being of future generations is crucial, because it tells people that something they value, helping their children, grandchildren, and other young people, is linked to the environment.
We find the same message when IES President Julie Hill MBE carried out a challenge project on how to deliver environmental targets in practice. The final report, The Golden Thread of Governance, found that having a vision that underpins targets makes it more likely that they will lead to effective outcomes.
That shouldn’t be surprising. A clear vision means we know what we are working towards and we understand why it matters, so it makes it easier to act in line with that vision, and it motivates us to make change happen.
In 2023, the IES coordinated our members and the wider environmental science community to create a Vision for the future of Environmental Science. It was a vital step towards bringing those who already agree with us together, yet the real challenge is uniting wider groups of people across values and worldviews, so that we can build a vision of the future that inspires all of society to act.
Even in the UK, there are very divided views on the kind of world we want to create. While the Well-being of Future Generations Act is broadly supported in Wales, there’s not an equivalent framework in England. Scotland has a National Performance Framework, yet it has limited reach beyond internal governance. And across the four countries of the UK, there is not much to unite the visions for the future being developed in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England.
If the United Kingdom is going to accelerate towards sustainability with sufficient speed and success to meet the urgency of the environmental challenges we face, then we need a clear vision of the future we want to create beyond this period of crisis.
How do our values shape the world we want to build?
The relationship between vision, values, and actions is complex. In our August analysis for Essential Environment, we highlighted insights from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), showing the complex manner in which values can shape the environment and how we perceive it.
When it comes to creating a vision of the future, those links can be very strong. If the main way that we get value from our economy is by buying stuff, owning it, using it, and discarding it, then we are going to create a world where our economy promotes single-use products, with massive implications for waste and resource use.
By comparison, if we value the integrity of what we buy, looking for high-quality products that last a long time (which was a more common approach in the past), we might seek to create a world with more resource efficiency, potentially even a Circular Economy where we repair and reuse products much more regularly.
As we reach the last few months of the year, another clear example is what we buy as presents, particularly at big holidays like Christmas. Lots of people are increasingly asking for experiences or services as gifts, rather than one-off items. They value the chance to do something memorable more than they value having and using a ‘thing’. That’s a great lens for how we can build a future economy based on what people value: if we view services as more valuable than single-use products, we could create an economy and world that are less extractive and more sustainable.
Those are just examples of the big picture: what we view as valuable shapes the things we want. As lots of people pursue the same things, our society shifts to accommodate those desires. As we shift our society towards the kind of world that lets people have those things, we make decisions about the future. Those decisions have significant consequences.
Often subconsciously, we make small decisions about what we want and how we value things, which leads to big consequences for the world we live in.
Rebuilding a link between what we value and the world we create
Too often, the way that our values are mediated into policy outcomes is not something we control explicitly. Political leaders suggest policies that they think will appeal to the values of particular groups, and those policies become issues and debates.
In environmental policy, the values being represented by those debates are often lost in the nuances of technical exchanges on the details of policy. We might be engaged in an important debate about the future of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), arguing over exemptions and where thresholds should be drawn. That debate could be tremendously important for the environment, yet it won’t necessarily resonate with the values of the people we are trying to convince, because the actual trade-off appears very abstract from what they care about.
The easiest solution for environmental professionals is to make the technical aspects of the debate real for people. That’s why we use metaphors and accessible language to open up the conversation; like referring to developments exempt from BNG under a 0.2-hectare exemption that works alongside the de minimis exemption as “an area twice the size of Bristol”. It helps to make the technical discussion more real for people, but it doesn’t solve the real challenge.
At its core, the problem is that there is no sense of the world that these decisions might be creating, or why people should care.
By comparison, something like 30 by 30 is a very clear vision, and it’s also clear what is at stake. It commits a very specific amount of land (and sea) to the purpose of restoring and conserving nature. 30 by 30 has a different problem (setting aside the quality of national delivery plans): the vision it creates doesn’t explicitly link to what people value. 30% seems like a relatively arbitrary number for most people, and it isn’t clear how that area would affect their lives, especially compared to 10%, 25%, or 29%. It’s not really a vision that unites anyone to achieve it.
Those are the two things that help to link people’s values to an impetus for action:
- A clear vision of a future that their choices can actively make progress towards
- A link between that vision and the things that people value
From the perspective of environmental professionals and particularly those working with policy, we have a direct role in helping to develop that vision. Case studies like the Well-being of Future Generations Act can teach us a lot about what works.
The next step is to go beyond that. As the world reflects on the Sustainable Development Goals with a view to what comes next, there’s a real opportunity to think about what we want the future to look like, and how our goals can bridge the gap between the things we value and the actions we can take to achieve a better future.
In part, we will need to work beyond our usual bubbles, including across disciplines and with social scientists. The IES hosts an annual interdisciplinary conference, Dialogue Between Disciplines, to help bridge that gap. This year's upcoming conference will launch a toolkit that helps professionals to connect.
Fundamentally, we need to be open to conversations with people about what they value. We also need to be ready to help translate those values into a shared vision of a better future, that can unify people as we work towards a more sustainable society.
Get involved
The IES is already uniting the environmental sciences around a shared goal: to work with speed, vision, and expertise to solve the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.
Our work in sustainability policy focuses on building a shared vision for sustainable well-being, with a view to increasing the consensus for environmental action and delivering that on the ground through practical interventions.
If you want to support the work of the IES to stand up for science and nature, become an affiliate, or if you’re an environmental professional, join the IES.
- Read our recommendations to the UK Government, including how to create a shared vision for sustainable well-being across the UK.
- Join our Environmental Policy Implementation Community (EPIC) to support effective policy in practice, including unlocking action for biodiversity at a local level.
- Register for our interdisciplinary conference, Dialogue Between Disciplines, to build stronger links with other disciplines and social scientists.
- Sign up for our training course on ‘Understanding environmental policy’ and our intermediate course on 'Influencing and Engaging with policy'.
- Learn more about recent policy developments in our briefings on clean air, water policy and land and nature policy.
- Find out more by reading the latest articles from Essential Environment, including insights on how policy values nature and our analysis on what the 30x30 biodiversity delivery plan means for environmental experts.
If you want to learn more about environmental policy or the training we offer for members, please contact Joseph Lewis, Head of Policy (joseph@the-ies.org).
Header image credit: © Татьяна Максимова | Adobe Stock
