How to design policies that are fair to future generations
by Cat Tully and Luis Lobo Xavier
There’s growing interest in many countries in intergenerational fairness — the idea that governments and decision-makers need to start paying much closer attention to the impacts of policy decisions taken today on the interests, needs, rights and wellbeing of future generations.
Future generations will bear the consequences of today’s decisions for decades to come, yet they are absent and voiceless in decision-making processes. The UK’s Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, has called future generations (and the children of today, many of whom will live to see the 22nd century) “the ultimate unrepresented constituency”.
The central role of young people in the climate change debate, including Greta Thunberg’s school strikes, has crystallised the issue in many people’s minds. The fear is that today’s adults are mortgaging our children’s future; taking too many policy decisions with an eye to short-term benefits while disregarding the long-term harms. In the years ahead, the sense of intergenerational tension is set to intensify, with more generations alive simultaneously and tightening availability of limited resources, from ecological resources such as water and forests to pensions savings.
One response is to frame this as a conflict between the generations. Much media coverage does just that, stoking a narrative of competitive grievance. But a better response is to start the search for solutions: to rethink, starting from first principles, how policy can address the needs and concerns of both older and younger, current and future, generations.
Starting the search for solutions
That’s been our approach at the School of International Futures (SOIF) and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, where we have been working up a way to assess proposed policies against a set of intergenerational fairness criteria.
We hope that policymakers will come to think of policy measures not just in terms of short-term outcomes, but also as “inheritance planning” — considering our collective legacy to future generations
We are collaborating on a two-year project to develop a methodological framework that enables policymakers, civil society and citizens to assess any specific policy against intergenerational fairness indicators, both at the design stage and after implementation.
Our aim is to identify whether a given policy is storing up long-term harms or “robbing from” the future to “pay” the present. Over time, we hope that the use of the framework — coupled with public engagement — will generate a common set of expectations and language around intergenerational fairness across governments and in wider society.
We hope that policymakers will come to think of policy measures not just in terms of short-term outcomes, but also as “inheritance planning” — considering our collective legacy to future generations. As public philosopher Roman Krznaric argues in his new book — we need to become better ancestors.
The work sits within the wider Gulbenkian Foundation Intergenerational Fairness initiative, in which teams of researchers in Portugal and internationally are identifying possible generational inequalities and developing concrete proposals to prevent future intergenerational imbalances.
It’s important to recognise that assessing any policy is not a simple “once-and-for-all” measure of fairness or unfairness
Here are four key principles and approaches to inter-generationally fair policymaking that we’ve learned. The approach is being explored with reference to the Portuguese system in the first instance, but we see these principles as internationally applicable.
- Run regular “national conversations” to (a) engage the public in exploring possible futures for their country, and (b) devise the detailed measures of intergenerational fairness for the framework. This country-wide conversation, repeated regularly to get a “legitimacy refresh”, would explore future scenarios and give citizens a central role as guardians of the interests of future generations and the unborn. Singapore, Oman and Slovenia (to name a few) have run recent participative national planning exercises, but one of the more advanced models in terms of linking this to policy-making is “The Wales We Want” national conversation.
- Give immediate responsibility for “vetting” policy for its fairness or unfairness to an independent government body or bodies. The role of guardian and advocate of fairer policy should sit with either a new, purpose-built office of the Commissioner or Ombudsman for Future Generations, or existing independent bodies such as national audit offices and parliamentary scrutiny committees. All departments will need to apply the framework to their new policies, so civil servants will also need to be clear about what it is and how to use it. Over time, we hope that policymakers, aware their ideas will undergo this “test”, will build in intergenerational fairness from the outset.
- Put in place the wider conditions to lock in the institutional and public pressure for the new framework to work. We need a governance ecosystem and institutional ‘scaffolding’ that will incentivise (and put pressure on) politicians and civil servants to use the new framework — including important support from international bodies (such as OECD guidance, EU directives and UN frameworks).
- Activate “outside-in” (public-on-government) pressure. Far-reaching change to the way policy is made won’t come from a technocratic discussion among politicians and civil servants. The catalyst has to be public pressure. Over time, the success of any new framework to measure intergenerational fairness would be whether interest groups, civil society organisations, media, and the public clearly understand what it does, and influence policy through their expectations and scrutiny.
Throughout, it’s important to recognise that assessing any policy is not a simple “once-and-for-all” measure of fairness or unfairness. It is necessarily hypothetical because it relates to the future. It’s thus important to explore different future scenarios to establish (or “windtunnel”) how future generations’ interests could be affected in different future worlds, and to revisit the assessment made on a regular basis — for example, reassessing an existing policy when new indicators emerge about the future (such as new UN climate change forecasts).
What’s next? Growing the global momentum
The moment is ripe. A recent WHO/UNICEF report, A Future for the World’s Children?, found that current policies are failing future generations in every country in the world.
Policymakers in a growing number of countries are coming to recognise that the interests, needs, and even the legal rights of future generations need to be factored in. The principles of ‘future-just’ law-making were adopted by the world’s governments at the UN’s Johannesburg summit in 2002, which pledged sustainable development to serve “the generations that will inherit this Earth”. The UN wrote in 2013 that “the needs of future generations and intergenerational solidarity” should be factored into policymaking. Finland was an early mover, establishing a Committee for the Future; Norway has an Ombudsman for Children and Tunisia has proposed a Commission for the Rights of Future Generations.
The momentum behind fairness to future generations is undeniably building. Helpfully, it’s an idea with appeal across the political spectrum, reflecting concepts of social justice, human rights, tackling inequality at source and the importance of the legacy we leave our children.
The next stage in the SOIF/Gulbenkian Foundation project is to pilot the framework, testing it out against specific policy areas. More broadly, intergenerational fairness will remain a key part of the Gulbenkian Foundation’s vision of preparing the citizens of the future, and SOIF will remain active in the campaign to build intergenerational fairness into policymaking in the UK, Portugal and beyond — keeping politicians who have committed to protecting future generations’ interests to their word, even when it comes to hard choices between long-term and short-term.
Ultimately, we hope to see intergenerational fairness principles, and methods for assessing fairness, embedded at the national level by all governments
We do, though, recognise the barriers to adoption. We recognise the challenge we will face in cutting through the noise of today’s priorities and crises to be heard.
Historically, the biggest issue was a lack of will on the part of policymakers, though in places, that is changing. Perhaps an equal issue is a lack of capacity — a poor understanding of how intergenerational fairness principles could be put into practice. One way of addressing that is to give a platform to policymakers interested in this agenda. We see Portugal playing a leading role in implementing these approaches — building on their strong track record as innovators in drug policy, environmental policy and most recently migration policy amid Covid-19.
Ultimately, we hope to see intergenerational fairness principles, and methods for assessing fairness, embedded at the national level by all governments but also in transnational frameworks such as the post-2030 successor to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The importance of this agenda is only increasing amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which — with its varied impacts on different generations — is shining a light on intergenerational dynamics and the challenges of a just response.
As global best practice grows, we hope that making policy fair to future generations will become a core consideration for policymakers, a touchstone for advocates of social justice, and a key demand that publics make of their politicians.
If you have thoughts, ideas, comments or suggestions, we would love to hear them. Please email Cat Tully.
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This article was originally published on Apolitical, the global learning platform for government.
Cat Tully founded the School of International Futures (SOIF) in 2011 and is its Managing Director. Luis Lobo Xavier is Director of Strategy & Planning at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, an international foundation based in Portugal whose statutory aims are in the fields of arts, social welfare, education and science.
(Picture credit: Death to the stock photo)
