The UN Summit of the Future and the Wellbeing of Current and Future Generations was a powerful framing and a once-in-a-generation opportunity that is inspiring hope, energy and agency. The Declaration on Future Generations (DFG), due to be adopted at the Summit, signals widespread recognition that short-term crisis management is insufficient to address today’s challenges. It invites governments and multilateral organisations to instead prioritise long-term thinking in policy and planning.

Esteemed Representatives,

“Are we being good ancestors?”

We stand at a critical juncture in human history.

Our decisions today profoundly affect the world our descendants will inherit tomorrow, yet our policies and actions are too often driven by the “tyranny of the now”.

Countries will likely agree to further their efforts to safeguard future generations through a Declaration on Future Generations, annexed to the Pact for the Future to be adopted at the UN Summit of the Future in September 2024.

Ultimately, the success of the Declaration will depend on its ability to catalyze implementation at the national and subnational levels, across all parts of government, and across society more generally.

This policy brief outlines what implementing such a Declaration could mean in practice by identifying key policy tools around the world that policymakers are already using to safeguard future generations. These include informational tools, strategic foresight, goal-setting, representatives for future generations, trustees (especially courts), reserves, catalytic institutions that seed small interventions that grow over time, and tools to extend time horizons, including citizen assemblies.

Policy reforms and tools to protect future generations are highly diverse, spanning all areas of policymaking and ranging from small shifts in processes to the creation of entirely new institutions. The tools briefly summarised in this memo are not comprehensive, but rather seek to give a representative flavor or what implementing a Declaration on Future Generations might look like in practice.

Moreover, there is no single model for countries to follow, as tools to protect future generations must be appropriate for the contexts in which they operate. However, because all governments struggle with the challenge of overcoming short-termism, there is enormous value in learning from diverse experiences of different policy tools around the world. Catalyzing such exchanges could be one key way in which the Declaration on Future Generations and related tools to help implement it, such as a UN envoy for future generations and a multilateral forum on the subject, could provide concrete benefits to member states.

In September 2024, countries will likely commit to safeguard future generations through a Declaration on Future Generations, annexed to the Pact for the Future to be adopted at the UN Summit of the Future.

The purpose of the Declaration is not simply symbolic. Its success depends on its ability to catalyse a wide range of strategies and reforms at the the national and subnational levels to help countries address current and long-term challenges such as development, environmental protection, or changes in technology and demography. Across the world, countries have developed numerous tools that help them serve the interests of future generations, but every government needs more support to operationalise and implement the core commitment to safeguard future generations.

As we stand at a critical moment in human history, the Declaration on Future Generations would be a renewed commitment of Member States to act on the intergenerational transmission of injustice, and reinvigorate the principles of sustainable development: responding to the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to do so.

Analysis and recommendations of the Zero Draft of the Declaration on Future Generations, the Pact and wider process

Over the past few months, the advocacy work to ensure a high-ambition Summit of the Future, especially on the Future Generations agenda in the Pact and the Declaration on Future Generations (DFG) Annex, has come to a head after years of preparation by the various interested communities from foresight, long-term action, anticipatory governance, future generations and wellbeing fields.

These communities, supported by Future of Climate Cooperation and the School of International Futures, have developed various inputs to the Zero draft of the Pact and the DFG, both directly via the civil society-influencing mechanisms led by the co-facilitators, but also via Member State MFAs, including via a letter template targeting MFAs sharing specific proposed text for the DFG in February.

Developments over the past two months confirm that the Future Generations Declaration, and supporting commitments, have the potential to be one of the most exciting, innovative and important consequences of the Summit of the Future. It remains, therefore, the key priority focus for our loose global community of future-interested citizens.

The co-facilitators shared the zero draft of the DFG on March 26, 2024. Influencing the upcoming reviews of that text and the wider process will be possible through direct national member-state advocacy and multilateral moments.

Here is our analysis of the ongoing process.

In preparation for the intergovernmental negotiations on the Declaration on Future Generations, the co-facilitators (Jamaica and Kingdom of the Netherlands) have convened a virtual informal consultation with stakeholders and have asked them to share their written inputs in January 2024. This article presents a summary of our contribution.

The Summit is a high-level event, bringing world leaders together to forge a new international consensus on how we deliver a better present and safeguard the future.

This once-in-a-generation opportunity serves as a moment to mend eroded trust and demonstrate that international cooperation can effectively tackle current challenges as well as those that have emerged in recent years or may yet be over the horizon.

We already have the "what" in the form of many existing agreements and commitments, starting with the UN Charter and including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and many others.

The Summit of the Future will look at the "how" – how do we cooperate better to deliver on the above aspiration and goals? How do we better meet the needs of the present while also preparing for the challenges of the future?

The rights of future generations have long been neglected in the analysis and application of human rights. Yet, human rights law does not limit itself to present generations. The foundations for international law to address the rights of future generations are established in international

instruments in an array of subject areas spanning nearly a century; constitutions and legislative acts adopted by the majority of the World’s States; in the laws, traditions, and cosmologies of Indigenous Peoples from every continent; and in the doctrine of major faith traditions representing the majority of the world’s people.

The Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations seek to clarify the present state of international law as it applies to the human rights of future generations. The Principles consolidate the developing legal framework and affirm binding obligations of States and other actors as prescribed under international and human rights law. They also provide a progressive interpretation and development of existing human rights standards in the context of the human rights of future generations. They further recognize that States may incur additional obligations as human rights law continues to evolve.

These Principles provide examples of how realizing rights of future generations requires attention to the distinct rights of particular groups and peoples, but does not do so comprehensively. It is important to read these Principles together with other human rights standards setting out the implications of human rights for particular groups, including groups subject to historic and current systemic discrimination in its many forms.

The Principles represent the result of a process of close to six years of research, dialogue and collective brainstorming, with the engagement of a range of academic experts, national and regional current or former human rights mandate holders, civil society organizations, members

of Indigenous Peoples, and social movements. They build on historic traditions and knowledge spanning millennia.

The Principles were adopted in Maastricht on 3 February 2023. Signatories include experts located in all regions of the world and include current and former members of international human rights treaty bodies, regional human rights bodies, and former and current Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Council. This initiative builds on expert legal opinions adopted in Maastricht, the Limburg Principles on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1986); the Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1997); and the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2011) and its accompanying commentary.

The full explanation of each Principle, and the sources supporting them will be set out in the Commentary to these Principles.

The challenges that we face can only be addressed through stronger international cooperation. The Summit of the Future in 2024 is an opportunity to agree on multilateral solutions for a better tomorrow, strengthening global governance for both present and future generations (General Assembly resolution 76/307). In my capacity as Secretary-General, I have been invited to provide inputs to the preparations for the Summit in the form of action-oriented recommendations, building on the proposals contained in my report entitled “Our Common Agenda” (A/75/982), which was itself a response to the declaration on the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations (General Assembly resolution 75/1). The present policy brief is one such input. It elaborates on the ideas first proposed in Our Common Agenda, taking into account subsequent guidance from Member States and over one year of intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder consultations, and rooted in the purposes and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international instruments.

Adopting a strong Declaration on Future Generations ahead of the Summit of the Future in 2024 represents an important opportunity to advance the sustainable development agenda as part of a broader “upgrade” to build the resilience of the multilateral system as a whole. This memo outlines how the upcoming Preparatory Ministerial Meeting for the Summit of the Future, to be held at the United Nations in New York on 21 September 2023, can concretely advance this goal. Building on the SDG Summit, Ministers have a key opportunity to signal support for, and to offer guidance to, negotiations on the Declaration.

A United Nations report, Our Common Agenda, commissioned for the international body’s 75th anniversary, proposes for states to issue a Declaration on Future Generations as a way to address the ongoing and urgent overlapping crises of the present and the deeper drivers such as climate change, technological and demographic transitions, and persistent underdevelopment.

Such a Declaration should firstly define future generations, and secondly delimit a list of issues that affect them such as sustainability, responsible development of emerging technology, management of existential risks, and long-term development. Additionally, countries should create a ‘voice’ for future generations in the UN system, such as a Special Envoy or High Commissioner, as well as a forum in which nations can share experiences regarding how to better safeguard future generations in their domestic systems. This can serve as a critical catalyst for broader changes in human governance.

In no way is a Declaration on Future Generations a panacea for the dilemmas of short-termism or the structural challenges we face. To address both long-term trends and the sharp, immediate crises they drive, a bigger, broader transformation of human governance is needed. Still, a Declaration on Future Generations and its institutionalisation can serve as a critical catalyst for these broader changes.

https://doi.org/10.35489/BSG-PB_2023/001