Future generations and anticipation
Many of the decisions institutions take today, on infrastructure, land, water, debt and technology, will be lived with by people not yet born. Governance for future generations asks how institutions can weigh those long-horizon consequences when electoral, budget and reporting cycles are short. The Global Risks Forum (GRF) convenes institutions to build anticipation into their arrangements: using foresight to examine multiple futures, stating who speaks for long-term interests and testing whether decisions remain sound across plausible scenarios. Its Foresight Nexus community leads the specialist work.
- 01In briefThe short answer
- 02The governance questionsWhat anticipation asks of institutions
- 03Institutional designsHow states have tried to give the future a seat
- 04PracticeTurning long horizons into decisions today
- 05Foresight methodsHow institutions examine multiple futures
- 06Reference pointsInstruments and practice
- 07Connected workWhere this area connects
GRF · Institution · service level R0
The short answer.
Governance for future generations asks how institutions can weigh the long-horizon consequences of today's decisions on infrastructure, land, water, debt and technology when electoral, budget and reporting cycles are short. GRF convenes institutions to build anticipation into their arrangements, using foresight to examine multiple futures.
Energy demand and corridors in Western Europe.
Where demand concentrates in cities and the rail, road and port corridors that move fuel and equipment, shown for Western Europe as an example geography for this subject.
What anticipation asks of institutions.
Long-horizon consequences
Which decisions lock in consequences for decades, and are those consequences assessed before the decision is taken?
Who speaks for the future
Which institution, office or procedure represents long-term interests when short-term pressures dominate?
Decisions across futures
Does a plan still work if the future differs from the central forecast?
How states have tried to give the future a seat.
| Design | Example | Lever it uses |
|---|---|---|
| Statutory duty and commissioner | Wales, Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 | Public bodies must set well-being objectives; a commissioner reviews and advises |
| Parliamentary committee | Finland, Committee for the Future of the Eduskunta | Parliament reviews a government futures report each term |
| Foresight unit at the centre of government | Strategic foresight units in several cabinets and the European Commission's annual foresight report | Horizon scanning feeds the policy cycle |
| Global commitments | Declaration on Future Generations, annexed to the Pact for the Future (2024) | Member states agreed guiding principles and a high-level review planned for 2028 |
The UN post of a Special Envoy for Future Generations was planned under the Declaration; a 2026 progress review reported the appointment on hold pending decisions by member states. Pages here describe what each design does, not which is best.
Turning long horizons into decisions today.
- Intergenerational impact screening: a structured question set applied to a draft decision, borrowed from impact assessment practice.
- Scenario stress-test of a long-lived asset, such as a dam or a coastal defence, against several plausible futures.
- Youth and future-focused deliberation, recorded with the same rules as any GRF dialogue.
Method depth sits with Foresight Nexus; long-horizon finance, such as sovereign funds and pension liabilities, is read on GRA's sovereign capital platform.
How institutions examine multiple futures.
- 01
Horizon scanning
Systematic attention to early signals of change, recorded with their sources.
- 02
Scenario design
Several plausible futures, built to differ in the ways that matter for the decision, not to predict one outcome.
- 03
Stress testing
Testing plans and arrangements against each scenario to find where they fail.
- 04
Forecasting with uncertainty
Quantitative forecasts where data allows, always with their uncertainty stated.
- 05
Institutional learning
Recording which assumptions changed and why, so that foresight improves over cycles.
Scenarios are tools for examining choices. They are not predictions, and no scenario published by GRF is a forecast of what will happen.
Instruments and practice.
- The Pact for the Future and the Declaration on Future Generations adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, as references for dialogue.
- National and subnational institutions that some states have created to represent long-term interests, examined comparatively.
- Intergenerational fairness in decisions on debt, infrastructure, land use and technology.
Named instruments are references for dialogue, not claims of alignment. GRF does not assess any institution's conformity with them.
Where this area connects.
Foresight Nexus is GRF's established community for strategic foresight, multiple futures and institutional anticipation, and foresight and future-oriented resources collects GRF's published work. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI) builds models and scenarios and runs future-oriented laboratories. Related GRF areas are climate and nature governance and digital and AI governance. The framework is on risk governance.
Terms used on this page.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Future generations | All the generations that do not yet exist and will inherit the planet, in the sense of the UN Declaration on Future Generations adopted with the Pact for the Future. |
| Anticipatory governance | Using foresight systematically in policy-making and institutions so they can act on emerging change. |
| Statutory long-term duty | A legal obligation on public bodies to consider the long-term effects of their decisions, as in the Wales Well-being of Future Generations Act. |
| Strategic foresight | A structured and systematic way of using ideas about the future to anticipate and prepare for change, in OECD usage. |
Where this page's references lead.
The bodies and documents this page is read against. Status and editions change; each link goes to the issuing body.
Questions and answers.
Does GRF publish forecasts?
How can a ministry use foresight with GRF?
Who represents future generations in GRF dialogues?
Around GRF.
Start with an enquiry.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.