By Javier Surasky-
The Summit of the Future, which will convene in September 2024 in New York, will adopt a final document, the Pact for the Future. It will be accompanied by two additional documents that, if agreed upon, will be integrated as annexes: the Global Digital Compact, which is expected to lay the groundwork for a global governance debate on digital technologies, and the Declaration on Future Generations.
The three documents are currently undergoing negotiations, which are being described as the least participatory and transparent process undertaken by a United Nations conference in the past 30 years. This has been referred to as an “old-fashioned” negotiation process, but it can also be seen as a setback for multilateralism, as it goes against the objective of the Summit, which is to strengthen and adapt multilateralism to current times.
In this analysis, we will focus on the Declaration on Future Generations, specifically on the first revision of its text, which was released in late May 2024 by the co-facilitators of the negotiation process, the representatives of the Netherlands and Jamaica at the United Nations.
Structure of the Document
Following a well-established format, the first revision of the Declaration on Future Generations (DGF-Rev1) is organized into a preamble, a chapter on guiding principles, a chapter on commitments, and concludes with a section on actions to be taken. Let us examine each of them in more detail.
The preamble begins by affirming that the DGF is built upon the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with guidance from the 2030 Agenda, the Political Declaration of the Second Summit on the Sustainable Development Goals, and international law.
However, there is no reference to multilateral environmental agreements as the basis or guidance for the Declaration. The preamble only reaffirms the obligations undertaken by States in the Rio Declaration of 1992. It is striking that there is no mention of the Paris Agreement, which also does not include any reference to future generations. This is a missed opportunity.
Undoubtedly, the most significant element of the preamble is the inclusion of the first international definition of “future generations”: “future generations are all those generations that do not yet exist, and who will inherit this planet” (DGF-Rev1, paragraph 3bis).
Another consensus is established by recognizing that “investing in building a strong foundation for lasting international peace and security, sustainable development, the promotion, protection and fulfilment of human rights for all and the observance of the rule of law is the most effective way to safeguard the needs and interests of future generations.”
Therefore, States commit to “build a stronger, more resilient and rules-based multilateral system, with the United Nations at its core, underpinned by confidence and trust, for the benefit of present and future generations” (paragraphs 7 and 9).
While there are calls for intergenerational solidarity and dialogue, the increasingly important concept of “intergenerational justice" is absent from the rest of the document. Intergenerational justice can be defined as “the process by which we bring the past and the future into the present to protect the interests and rights of current and future generations.” (here) [1]
The absence of consideration for intergenerational justice is one of the major shortcomings of the DGF-Rev1. This is not the time for an extensive treatment of the topic, but it is worth mentioning that even during the adoption of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, Thomas Jefferson engaged in a debate with Edmund Burke about whether it was just to establish a Constitution that would affect the sovereignty of future generations. The theories of justice by Rawls and Amartya Sen also consider future generations.
In any case, the guiding principles that follow the preamble seem to have forgotten the core of the document. Most of them simply reiterate pre-existing principles without explicitly including future generations.
The commitments included in the DGF-Revi 1 are eight:
- Maintenance of international peace and security.
- Promotion and protection of human rights.
- Duty to ensure that future generations can thrive and achieve sustainable development.
- Right to a healthy environment.
- Secure, protected, ethical, and reliable technology and innovation to promote inclusive digital transformation.
- Gender equality and empowerment of women and girls.
- Full participation of persons with disabilities.
- A strong, efficient, inclusive, transparent, effective, and robust multilateral system.
As can be seen, there are no “new principles" or “new formulation of old principles,” with the only exception being the reference to digital transformation, which is addressed in the Global Digital Compact and has gained significant prominence in international debates in recent years.
This absence becomes even more visible in the chapter on commitments, which includes 12 promises that can be organized into four groups:
- Previously assumed commitments: Include establishing gender equality promotion programs, protecting Indigenous peoples, and caring for the environment (DGF-Rev1, paragraphs 19, 21bis, and 23).
- Previously assumed commitments that explicitly establish links with future generations: Among them, food security and poverty eradication “to ensure that the needs and interests of both present and future generations across all regions will be fully safeguarded” (DGF-Rev1, paragraph 22), or the right to education and health (paragraphs 26 and 27).
- New commitments, partially directed towards future generations: The inclusion of references to preserving the “heritage of humanity” alongside the preservation of cultural diversity (DGF-Rev1, paragraph 21).
- New commitments focused on future generations: There is only one: built around the promotion of intergenerational solidarity and dialogue (DGF-Rev1, paragraph 22bis).
Moving on to actions, it begins by recognizing that governments have the primary responsibility for the care of future generations. They commit to formulating policies to fulfill the commitments included in the previous chapter through three lines of action: implementation, institutionalization, and monitoring, acting at the national, regional, and global levels.
This is followed by the identification of nine actions that should be implemented, which can again be grouped according to the categories applied to the commitments:
- Previously assumed actions: ensuring inclusive and equitable access to knowledge, science, and information while promoting innovation, critical thinking, and life skills (DFG-Rev.1, paragraph 29) or investing in capacity development to address external shocks (paragraph 31).
- Previously assumed actions that explicitly establish links with future generations: in this group, we include calls to adopt whole-of-government approaches to safeguard the needs and interests of future generations and to establish partnerships with stakeholders, including “intergenerational partnerships,” through a whole-of-society approach to share best practices and develop innovative initiatives aimed at meeting the needs and interests of future generations (DGF-Rev1, paragraphs 32 and 33).
- New actions that partially target future generations, such as the commitment to improvements in data and statistics to strengthen evidence-based decision-making, which now includes the requirement that they be future-proof (DFG-Rev.1, paragraph 28).
- New actions focused on future generations: those included in the DGF-Rev1 have an operational character and aim to impact multilateral governance, namely:
- “Equipping the multilateral system, including the United Nations, to support Member States in their efforts to implement this Declaration and embed future generations and long-term thinking in policy-making processes by fostering cooperation and facilitating greater use of foresight, science and data, and raising awareness of and advising on the likely intergenerational or future impacts of policies and programs” (paragraph 34).
- “Adopting a future-oriented organizational culture that is mainstreamed across the United Nations system to facilitate science- and evidence-based decision-making and working methods by developing diverse capabilities, including foresight and futures literacy, and systematically promoting long-term and intergenerational thinking" (paragraph 35).
Throughout this chapter, the need to use forecasting and perspective tools is emphasized, which ends up being the strongest call throughout the document, repeated over and over again as a requirement for action in favor of future generations.
As an interesting fact, it is worth noting that paragraph 30 refers to taking action to transform national accounting systems and includes the mention of creating a measure of sustainable development that goes beyond GDP, but without achieving a strong connection with the needs of future generations.
Finally, the final paragraph (36) leaves open different avenues to keep the issue of future generations on the agenda of the United Nations, encouraging the Secretary-General to appoint a Special Envoy for Future Generations, a proposal taken from the Secretary-General’s own report Our Common Agenda, which could be accompanied by one or all of the following actions:
- Establish an annual forum or a quinquennial high-level meeting on future generations that will review the Declaration.
- Include the issue of future generations as a theme of the General Assembly’s agenda.
- Request the Secretary-General to submit an annual report to the General Assembly on implementing commitments and incorporating long-term thinking in the interest of future generations within the United Nations system.
Conclusions
Overall, Revision 1 of the Declaration on Future Generations is not identified as carrying concrete advances on the topic. With few exceptions, it repeats existing commitments and promises of action, only partially adapting them to the consideration of future generations.
In principle, only those actions that seek to produce changes in multilateral governance, giving greater consideration to the needs and interests of future generations in their current discussions are operationalizable.
As a final result, we have a document that should strengthen the consideration of those needs and interests but produces limited conceptual or political progress, avoiding the most urgent issues, such as establishing a strategy to deal with the uncertainty of what the needs and desires of future generations will be, providing them with effective representation and not just formal representation in multilateral debates, how to distribute benefits and burdens between current and future generations, or how to promote an institutionalized presence of future generations at the regional or global level. [2]
Our most immediate commitment to future generations is to make a greater effort and increase this document’s ambition and action orientation. They deserve the effort because, as Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, stated, “We owe at least this much to future generations, from whom we have borrowed a fragile planet called Earth.” [3]
[1] For more information on the concept of “intergenerational justice” see Axel Gosseries and Lukas Meyer Intergenerational Justice (Oxford University Press, 2009).
[2] On This issue, we recommend Iñigo González-Ricoy and Axel Gosseries [Eds.] Future Generations (Oxford University Press, 2016).
[2] Strong, M. F. (1992). “Environment and Development. The United Nations Road from Stockholm to Rio”. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 17(2), 112-115. https://doi.org/10.1179/isr.1992.17.2.112