Two key barriers stand in the way to operationalising the concept of intergenerational fairness in public policy. First, we need to close the constituency gap. Younger and future generations don’t have a vote, so their interests aren’t always heard. Second, we need to close the data gap. There isn’t reliable or comprehensive information on the long-term impact of most policies necessary to make fair decisions for current and future generations. The intergenerational framework provides a unique practical and pragmatic solution that can be used by government and society to support intergenerational dialogue. It sets out an approach to bring together participatory approaches, strategic foresight, and intergenerational fairness as part of a national (or sub-national) dialogue, that can then inform decision-making and assessment. The assessment tool—an important part of the framework—is designed to be simple to use. Anyone from a Secretary of the UN, to a youth activist can use the tool.

• The framework has been developed but not all aspects of the framework have been implemented. The assessment tool is the most advanced, having been piloted and implemented in the UK as part of the Future Check process organised by SOIF and All Parliamentary Group for Future Generations (APPG-FG).
• It has been adopted by various institutions and adapted for use in social mobility. The Portuguese President has committed to its use to support policy development.
• Training is currently being offered, free of charge, to those who want to start to adopt the framework supporting uptake and knowledge diffusion.
• The framework and toolkit, developed with the support of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal has been released under a creative commons license

• The framework was developed in collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal. They have been championing the need for intergenerational justice and have encouraged their network of Portuguese policy makers in being early adopters of the framework.
• Some of the pilots of the policy assessment toolkit included Banco de Portugal, Portuguese President’s office, UK Social Mobility Commission, and the APPG-Future Genereations in the UK. The pilots have provided useful feedback for

• People come to the topic of intergenerational fairness from different angles and interests. For example, housing, healthcare, pensions, transportation, COVID, climate change – are all experienced different by different age groups and across time.
• The Future Check helps citizens, democracy activists and civil society groups to drive political accountability in government around intergenerational issues. This is done by supporting under-represented groups, including future generations, to use Fu

The Portuguese President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, announced that he will champion intergenerational fairness, including training the Portuguese President’s staff in our intergenerational fairness assessment method. The pilot gained positive feedback from organisations including the Bank of Portugal, the national audit body, the Court of Auditors, and the Finance Council. We have also demonstrated through the pilot that Future Check can work and connect citizen voice to parliamentary processes both by bringing in trained citizen volunteers to perform assessments, and by providing structure for expert led assessments to place insights from diverse groups of citizens at the centre. Qualitative feedback was captured through the APPG pilot, receiving positive feedback from both users and parliamentarians. We are currently building a network of users who are experimenting with the toolkit and will be capturing additional evidence of use, uptake and impact from the international community.

Over the course of the 5-year+ collaboration the issue has moved from the periphery to the centre as interest has grown, becoming a key political issue. The three-part framework—intergenerational assessment, national dialogue, and institutional ownership—has yet to be implemented to its full potential. While we have designed a National Dialogue on the “Portugal We Want” with institutional partners it does not yet have the political mandate to be piloted or implemented due to changing political priorities. We are continuing to work in Portugal and internationally to drive the potential for a full national dialogue. In the meantime, we are continuing to train and implement the assessment tool; and support organisations and institutions to build their capacity and capability and think through the institutional structures needed to implement the framework. We are also hoping to develop a more user-friendly interface, and a version that can be used by youth in their communities.

Ensuring effective long-term decision-making is hard. It requires decision-makers across public, private and civil society to be incentivised, and for all citizens to be empowered to have a say around the future. To do this requires change at different levels. Success may come from: building on current initiatives and mandates outlined in the UN Secretary General’s Our Common Agenda; and Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union; engagement with advocates across government; driving conversations to hold governments to account; translating the insights from the citizen-led process and puttubg them in the hands of sector campaigners; weaving networks and coalition-building to engage and connect democracy activists, civil society, youth with parliament and government; and campaigns to ensure IGF is part of the public and global conscience.

We have adapted the policy assessment toolkit to assess UK policy and legislation against criteria related to social mobility, alongside intergenerational fairness. We engaged stakeholders and conducted a literature review to create an initial prototype which was tested and refined during a piloting phase. The principles and tools contained in the framework has the potential to be applied to a broad range of decision-making, not just policy in away that builds solidarity, respects current and future generations and provides scrutiny. The framework has the potential to be used to provide both “outside-in” and “inside-out” pressure, and for different purposes. Helping different stakeholders communicate in a way that empowers all generations, helping citizens to have a voice and engage meaningfully in conversations whether as legislators, policymakers, companies, civil society or as citizens.

Decisions being made today, will have distributional costs and benefits that play out over long timescales impacting future generations. The intergenerational framework provides a framework to take this agenda forward through intergenerational assessment, intergenerational dialogues, and institutional accountability, however, there are different approaches to embedding the IGF principle into policy, legislation, financing, taxation, audit planning and scrutiny. Intergenerational policy assessment is particularly helpful as a way of helping stakeholders see a tangible way of making progress and taking action. To ensure meaningful and lasting change, you need to start to integrate this into your ecosystem; building the support and interest from senior decision-makers, developing network of allies and collaborators, and where possible investing in process and structures to sustain this over time.

While we have focused on the framework and toolkit, and its application to the APPG-Future Generations; we would suggest that to help champion the uptake of this work it could be helpful to bring in an alternative political voice for instance the President of Portugal, Ruby Gropas, or a colleague, who is championing this approach within the European Commission, or another advocate to support the event in Dubai. We would happily help to make these connections and look forward to exploring this with you.