Year XXXVIII, Number 1, March 2025

In September 2024, In March this year, WFM-IGP, the Climate Governance Commission and 28 cosponsoring organizations launched Mobilizing an Earth Governance Alliance (MEGA) to build cooperation and advocacy on global governance mechanisms to protect the planet.

One of the proposals included in the MEGA platform is for the Appointment of a UN Special Envoy for Future Generations and the establishment of similar representatives for future generations at all governance levels.

This proposal received a huge boost on October 7 at the Hamburg Sustainability Conference when Guy Ryder, UN Under-Secretary-General for Policy, announced that the UN Secretary-General would indeed establish such a position.

The purpose of establishing a UN Envoy for Future Generations and other Institutional Representatives of Future Generations at all levels of governance, is to ensure that decision-making today takes into consideration the needs, well-being and rights of generations to come.

There are already examples of institutional representatives for future generations at local, national and regional levels, such as the Oxfordshire Future Generations Champion, Hungary Ombudsperson for Future Generations, Malta Guardian of Future Generations, Wales Future Generations Commissioner, and Gibraltar Commissioner for Sustainable Development &Future Generations. Until now, no such representative at a global, multilateral level has been established.

In his 2021 Our Common Agenda report the UN Secretary-General proposed the establishment of a UN Special Envoy for Future Generations, drawing from work on this idea by organizations including World Future Council (WFC), and by interest expressed by UN member states at various forums including the 2012 Rio Earth Summit.

The 2024 UN Summit  of the Future provided an opportunity to build traction for this proposal, undertaken through promotion to the Summit by the Earth Governance ImPACT Coalition and Future Generations ImPACT Coalition which were established at the 2024 UN Civil Society Conference in Nairobi, and others including the World Future Council, WFM-IGP, Future of Climate Cooperation and the Office of the Wales Future Generations Commissioner.

Education and advocacy events leading up to the Summit included submissions to the facilitators of the Pact for the Future (Germany and Namibia), lobbying like-minded governments, the global webinar Protecting the Rights and Wellbeing of Future Generations through Institutional Representatives organized by WFM-IGP, and the UN Summit of the Future Action Day event  A Seat at the Table: Why Future Generations Need Institutional Representation organized by the World Future Council.

This advocacy helped build traction and ensure that the proposal was noted in the Declaration on Future Generations which was adopted at the Summit of the Future.