Futures Balance

The Challenge

Sustainable development requires balancing near-term priorities with long-term impact. Yet many mainstream policies and investments still rely on models that discount the future, rewarding short-term gains while neglecting inclusive and durable forms of comprehensive wealth. This short-term bias often fails to anticipate the unintended consequences of decisions made today on tomorrow, producing bad intergenerational debt. In a world of interconnected crises, this approach also weakens our ability to respond in a systemic way, eroding intergenerational equity and the prospects for livable futures.

What we need is a shift away from extractive habits and toward choices that build opportunities for people and planet, backed by long-term thinking, wholistic approaches, and clear transparency about our futures footprint. Therefore, how can we:

Better understand and assess the long-term impact of today's decisions - policies, programmes & investments?
Offer innovative, user-friendly, and practical tools and methodologies to support intergenerationally equitable policy making?
Leverage technology for good to promote sustainable development?
And by doing so, boost accountability and our delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)s?

Our Solution

The Futures Balance is an innovative and interactive AI-facilitated tool and method designed to support decision-makers in understanding and addressing the long-term impacts and spillover effects of their policies and investments over time and across policy areas. The tool has been developed in collaboration with EU JRC Decision Analysis Lab and EU Policy Lab, and with TASC Platform at the Geneva Graduate Institute as knowledge partner.

The Futures Balance has two core functions:

Supports decision makers in better understanding and addressing the long-term impacts and spillover effects of policies, programmes and investments – over time and across policy areas.
Supports decision makers in developing of alternative, more long-term, intergenerationally equitable policy, programmes and investment pathways.

Designed for policymakers, over time, this tool could also support the private sector, NGOs, individuals, thought leaders and activists, among others, make more sustainable choices by enhancing transparency about their impact on the future, encouraging a shift in mindset and behaviour towards long-term sustainability.

Our Impact

Facilitating and promoting learning and a mindset shift towards long-term thinking, planning and action among decision-makers towards the creation of comprehensive wealth (i.e. not only economic but also social, human or nature capital).
Navigating uncertainty by better understanding the interconnectedness between different policy domains (trade-offs) and tracing the complex, intended (and unintended) consequences and spillover effects of actions taken today on future development outcomes. By doing so, promoting greater policy coherence.
Providing guidance to policymakers and civil society in identifying assets for the future and in prioritizing decisions and investments to move towardsasset-rich, regenerative futures.
Raising transparency and awareness of our burden or debt to future generations and negative spillover effects, namely impact of actions taken today on long-term sustainable development outcomes (our “futures footprints”),as anchored in the 2030 Agenda.

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