The Futures Balance

" We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our grandchildren."

Let's revisit the essence of sustainable development: it's about meeting today's needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet theirs. Therefore, sustainable development requires striking a balance between immediate needs and long-term considerations.  

Current mainstream policies and decision-making, including financial strategies, often rely on traditional economic and social development models that overlook this balance. These approaches tend to prioritize short-term gains over the creation of inclusive, equitable and lasting comprehensive wealth. They also ignore the unintended consequences of investments made today to promote sustainable development. For example, technology could be leveraged as an asset for sustainable development and the creation of comprehensive wealth, but only if it’s properly ringfenced. This short-sightedness leads to 'bad intergenerational debt', burdening future generations with more liabilities than assets.

Today, humanity’s current bias towards the short-term hinders its ability to address the complex, interconnected challenges it faces, threatening long-term sustainable development, intergenerational equity and, essentially, livable futures. Instead of fostering an extractive lifestyle, we need to recognize our debt to the future and shift towards practices that build valuable, sustainable assets for both people and the planet. Encouraging a mindset and behavioural change towards long-term thinking and transparency about our futures footprint is crucial.  

How can decision makers and policies accurately account for the future, its people, liabilities and assets?

The Futures Balance is a visionary accounting and planning framework and tool for long-term sustainability, prosperity, and well-being, anchored in the principle of intergenerational equity. It is intended to support policy and decision-makers in better understanding the consequences of their actions (or inactions) in creating (or reducing) debt for future generations.

It does so by amplifying investments areas that help to not only preserve but also build assets for a sustainable futures, eventually promoting the transition towards regenerative development. With the help of the Futures Balance, policy- and decision-makers will be able to identify, prioritize and increase investments in areas that create capital and opportunities for sustainable development, while reducing, or even better, eliminating investments in areas that constitute a burden, towards increasing debt to future generations.  

By highlighting our "debt to the future" and breaking down its complex implications, the Futures Balance framework and tool shows how our current actions can either create opportunities and assets for sustainable development or impose liabilities on future generations. It suggests practical ways to both identify and reduce this debt, guiding investment and policy decisions towards a future rich in assets and opportunities. 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.

The approach is inspired by accounting and the use of a balance sheet. It expands existing intergenerational approaches, such as generational accounting, by looking beyond taxation as a liability (or burden) facing current and future generations. Embedded in the emerging field of economics for the future, the Futures Balance framework and tool will also integrate existing methods and approaches for forward-looking policy planning, such as futures thinking, participatory foresight and predictive analytics.

An increased awareness of our 'debt' to future generations and our 'futures footprint'.

An enhanced comprehension of the long-term consequences, ripple- and spillover effects of current decisions and actions by both policymakers and other decision makers.

An improved ability for policymakers and decision makers to navigate uncertainties.

A mindset shift and augmented ability among policymakers and decision makers to choose investments that yield long-term benefits and assets, coupled with the rejection of investments that impose future liabilities.  

An eradication of our debt to the future.