Implementing a Declaration on Future Generations
Tools and Resources for Policymakers
Summary
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.
