The movement to care for future generations

Here Elizabeth Dirth, Managing Director of ZOE Institute and a member of the Network of Institutions and Leaders for Future Generations, reflects on the long history of the movement to care for future generations, and on how the movement will look back on this moment, 2024, in years to come?

Read our full timeline of the history of the movement to care for future generations

The bestselling novel, Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, makes a reference in its opening pages to the Network of Institutions and Leaders for Future Generations. The book takes this real-world network as a precursor to its fictionalisation of a world rising to the challenge of protecting the future.

I have had the privilege of supporting the Network of Institutions and Leaders for Future Generation (NiFG) for more than three years. And in 2023 ZOE Institute took on the role of secretariat and membership support for NIFG. The network is a knowledge-sharing space for pioneering leaders and government bodies working in the interests of future generations. It has a growing membership of individuals and organisations from around the globe.

My experiences as part of this future-oriented network, and my research before that, has allowed me to observe the budding movement of people globally trying to put into practice future-thinking policy. The groundswell of activity I see at the moment, made me want to take a moment to reflect on the history of the movement to care for future generations, and on what lies ahead.

On who’s shoulders do we stand? And how will the movement look back on this moment, 2024, in years to come?

In my view, the history of the movement to care for future generations can be best characterised in multiple ‘waves’.

Wave one: Since ancient times

The first wave is undeniably the longest, and is in fact ongoing, because it is rooted in indigenous communities and cultures for whom principles of intergenerational solidarity are intrinsic to their values, principles, ways of organising and ways of life.

The notion of caring for future generations has always existed and some of the most interesting thought leadership on this topic still remains from this perspective. There is still much to learn and pay attention to from indigenous peoples’ thinking on future generations – from   the ‘seventh generation principle’, to the idea of the rights of nature and buen vivir.

Wave two: 1972-2000

The second wave started around the time of the UN Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972, and carried on through the 1990s, so included the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the UNESCO Declaration in 1997. In this wave the term ‘sustainable development’ entered the mainstream and encapsulated the idea of protection and care for future generations. The major theme of this period was the institutionalisation of sustainable development in the international arena.

Crucially at this time, sustainable development also started to pave the way for long-term thinking for economic development. Long-term thinking and care for future generations was linked to environmental risks like climate change, resource use, etc. but also to economic development, inequality, health, and other global issues.

In the late 20th Century, young people and indigenous people were already taking centre stage in some international forums. Leaders like Mary Robinson and Severn Suzuki started to emerge as figures working at the intersection of key long-term challenges in sustainable development.

Wave three: 2000-2017

In the third wave, future generations terminology takes centre stage. This was buoyed by the UN Secretary General who published the UN’s first publication on Intergenerational solidarity and the needs of future generations which made a proposal for how this could be operationalised in international governance architecture.

Around the same time, a number of national level institutions that had come to exist started to join forces to form a Network of Institutions and Leaders for Future Generations. This network emerged as an important transnational voice on how to govern with future generations in mind.

The Network of Institutions for Future Generations was instigated by Marcel Szabó, the then Ombudsperson for Future Generations in Hungary – a post that had come into existence in 2007. Inspired by the ‘Future We Want’ outcome document of the Rio+20 Summit, the Hungarian institution hosted a conference that brought together diverse national institutions committed to intergenerational solidarity.

The third wave also saw further institutionalisation of future generations at a national level.

For example, the Commission for Future Generations of the Knesset was created in 2001 in the Israeli Parliament. After some time, Shlomo Shoham and his group of experts developed real influence across a wide policy spectrum.

In Wales, the Well-being of Future Generations Act in 2015 established a Future Generations Commissioner role. The process that led up to the act ensured that the institution had broad support and participation from Welsh society and across government. In 2018, Gibraltar appointed Daniella Tilbury as its first Commissioner for Sustainable Development and Future Generations.

In addition, a movement of non-government actors began to emerge specifically focussed on future generations. In 2007 the World Future Council was established, and in 2010 Mary Robinson established her Centre for Climate Justice. In 2017 the ‘Global Guardians: A voice for Future Generations’ group was created by New York-based permanent representatives to the UN from around the world.

Wave four: 2018-2020

The fourth wave was a turning point. It can be characterised by a moment of mass public awakening.

This wave linked concern for future generations and the climate crisis and catapulted it to the top of the political agenda.

While young voices have always been present, this was the first time they united behind a discourse of fighting the climate crisis for their future and that of future generations. Greta Thunberg’s iconic speech at the UN climate talks in 2018 strengthened momentum around the Fridays for Future movement. This movement mobilised interventions in over 1,000 cities around the world, with an ever-larger number of people attending its marches until 2020 when the trend was halted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This wave of public awakening was also buoyed by publicly accessible books on this topic, like The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric and Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, which contributed to a growing public consciousness.

This growing consciousness also came from a new type of litigation emerging. More young people began to defend their right to life, right to future conditions, right to a healthy environment, in court.

These strategic litigation examples were about raising the public profiles about the rights of young people and future generations, as well as about building accountability for that using the law and legal systems. Court cases were brought in the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, and other countries, as well at international level.

Lawyers and legal researchers around the world started converging to develop the legal nuance behind these claims. This manifested in the 2017 Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations.

Wave five: 2020 to present

Today in 2024, we are, I think, in the fifth wave.

In the fifth wave, we’re operationalising. There are enough national level institutions which have been around long enough that we can start to tell stories about where these governance processes have had impact and are working to protect and care for the long-term. We see future generations governance operationalising locally, nationally and internationally.

Public consciousness, political commitments, implementation and knowledge building are converging in new ways.

We are learning from climate policy the potential of long-term thinking to address a specific crisis in a way that will help us better deal with other long term risks like health and bio-security.

There is a tremendous amount of implementation momentum – from parliamentary bodies, legislature, foresight units, commissioners, judicial decisions. But most exciting, are examples that are harder to see. Like new legislation being drafted in Scotland, Japan, the UK, and Ireland; new parliamentary initiatives like that in Australia; political convenings like the Ministers of the Future meetings that European Commissioner Sefcovic has been convening in the EU. An immense web of praxis is emerging.

Youth movements are now coordinating with the School of International Futures, the Network of Institutions and Leaders for Future Generations, civil society organisations and other actors and communities of practice.

Wave six? 

While the fifth wave is currently crashing onto the sand, further out at sea, there is a new wave forming.  

That wave is accountability: 

Can structures for intergenerational solidarity reach the next level and deliver genuine protection for future generations?  

ZOE Institute has developed a detailed proposal for a European Commissioner for Future Generations to enshrine long-term thinking across EU legislation after the 2024 European elections.  

At the UN level, for the first time a UN Declaration on Future Generations and a UN special envoy are being discussed. There are high hopes that the UN Summit for the Future in September 2024 will deliver on these. 

I see real potential that when people look at the history of the movement to care for future generations in years to come 2024 will stand out and people will see it as a significant moment when we started making decisions based on the Onondaga nation principle: “What about the seventh generation? Where are you taking them? What will they have?”.  

 

Read our full timeline of the history of the movement to care for future generations