Using Intergenerational Equity to Build Solidarity Across Generations
A collaboration between UNESCO and UN Global Pulse provides concrete tools to promote intergenerational equity in the UN system.
By Amy Lynn Smith — Independent Writer + Strategist and Lucia Soriano Irigaray — Strategic Foresight Analyst, UN Global Pulse
Everyone — present and future generations — has the right to a healthy and prosperous life in harmony with nature. Achieving this depends on our ability to ensure that the actions of today tread the fine line between meeting the immediate needs of the present and safeguarding the rights of the generations to come.
This commitment to intergenerational equity (IGE) is a fundamental principle outlined in Our Common Agenda, the UN Secretary-General’s vision for the future of global cooperation. By embracing IGE, the UN aims to deepen the responsibility toward future generations. The decisions we make today, echoing through time, will sculpt the contours of the future for younger and future generations.
This principle builds on the UN’s long history of acknowledging the importance of future generations, dating back to the UN Charter of 1945. Later, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) General Conference adopted a declaration on the “Responsibilities of the Present Generations Towards Future Generations” in 1997.
Recently, UNESCO and UN Global Pulse joined forces in a pilot experiment to promote an IGE mindset into organizational culture and foster its integration into UN strategies, policies, and ways of working. One of the key outcomes was a toolkit based on foresight and futures studies to encourage entities across the UN to embrace an intergenerational mindset and build organizational capacity to do so.
A second outcome of the collaboration is a report, which provides more robust detail on the importance of IGE in ensuring that the UN’s efforts make the world better for people today and for generations to come, especially as longer lifespans mean that there will be four generations co-existing at any time.
The project identified seven focal points for capabilities to support mainstreaming IGE, including giving people a sense of agency, intercultural awareness, considering the past and present, appreciating novelty, and temporal empathy.
To demonstrate the importance of IGE to members of the UN family, UNESCO and UN Global Pulse organised a webinar in April 2023. This event, held in collaboration with the School of International Futures, had as its objective raising awareness of IGE and the recent activities across the UN system to promote it.
During the webinar, Christin Pfeiffer, Futures Literacy & Foresight Lead at UNESCO at that time, presented some of the principles for strengthening IGE. These principles include promoting a vision for future generations based on human rights and equity, pursuing fairness between present and future generations, ensuring meaningful representation of future generations and their interests — and thinking, planning, and acting accordingly — and strengthening inclusive partnerships and global collaboration, among others. These are all principles any UN agency can use to foster IGE.
Learning about best practices in IGE
Throughout the webinar, speakers shared thoughts on lessons learned so far. Along with members of the host organizations, presenters included Sophie Howe, Former First Future Generations Commissioner in Wales — the first country to pass legislation to protect future generations, which requires decision-makers to demonstrate how current actions meet the needs of future generations. Howe believes that legislation is the only way to invest in foresight. “We need people to demand it, especially young people,” she said.
What’s more, Howe explained that citizens provided input about the world they want for the future, emphasised the importance of foresight in protecting future generations, and stated that Wales’ “long-term wellbeing goals” for its people and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are “two sides of the same coin.”
Another presenter, Alexandre Caldas, Chief of Country Outreach, Technology, Innovation and Big Data Branch at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), wasn’t the only speaker to point out that the welfare of both people and the planet must be considered when planning for the future. He pointed out that one size does not fit all, so policies must be developed that can be adapted for varying needs, something UNESCO and Global Pulse took into account when developing the toolkit. He also emphasised that the “soft participation” of youth isn’t enough. “We need to bring in young people for decision-making at all levels,” he said.
UNICEF is already championing a Youth Foresight Fellows programme. One of the fellows, Joshua Steib, spoke passionately about the role of young people in shaping the future.
“We need to imagine the future we want to have if we want to have it, which means making foresight accessible,” he said. “My ideal vision for 2050 would be that decision-makers finally stood up to their task: to mainstream foresight education and youth participation on all levels. Then we can solve the biggest problems of our time in no time.”
Developing resources for capability-building in the UN system
At the end of the webinar, Tiina Neuvonen, Strategic Foresight Lead at UN Global Pulse, emphasised the collaborative efforts across the UN system to promote the mainstreaming of intergenerational thinking. These collective endeavours have gained even more significance with the recent launch of the United Nations System Common Principles on Future Generations. The resources are available to everyone, and the toolkit is designed to evolve with the feedback from users. In this spirit of collective growth and learning, users are not only encouraged to provide feedback after using the toolkit but also to share their own inventive tools and experiences. The aim is to continually enrich the toolkit with new insights and ideas as the world evolves.
Building the future is a dynamic and ever-changing process, closely mirroring the shifting landscape of our world. At UN Global Pulse, the commitment to keep IGE at the forefront of daily work with its partners is unwavering, with the ultimate goal of inspiring others to do the same, positioning intergenerational equity as a cornerstone in envisioning a UN 2.0 to collectively shape a brighter and fairer future for all generations.
