The observatory helps decision makers to act in ways that are more intergenerationally fair within communities, countries, regions and across global systems.

It has been established to:

1. Drive awareness of intergenerational issues and build coalitions for change across communities
2. Build demonstrator projects that help ensure decisions are made in ways that are intergenerationally fair
3. Hold each other to account for the short-term and long-term impact of our decisions on all generations.

Watch a talk about intergenerational fairness and strategic foresight

The School of International Futures and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation have created a methodology to assess whether a decision is fair to different generations, now and in the future.

It can be applied by national and local governments, independent institutions, international organisations, foundations, businesses and special interest groups to evaluate the impact of decisions on present and future generations.

The policy assessment methodology has been successfully piloted by independent institutions across Portugal on live policy areas (for example, Banco de Portugal on Pensions Reform), and on legislation moving through UK parliament by volunteers overseen by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Future Generations. 

The policy assessment methodology is freely available for use under the Creative Commons license for non-commercial use.

Learn more about the assessment framework launch in Portugal or get in touch with the team if you have any questions.

The expertise and communities behind this framework

To design this framework, we drew upon a 50-year legacy of different communities who have wrestled with the questions of effective long-term decision-making.

Over 400 experts, citizens, researchers and policymakers contributed to this work through roundtables, interviews, reviews and pilot testing of the framework.

These include technical contributions from leading experts such as Roman Krzanic and from our Advisory Board who provided guidance and insight on this journey: Fatima Azevedo,
Ricardo Borges de Castro, Jim Dator, Jane Davidson, John Keane, Simon Webb.

Training on the framework

The Framework helps assess the impact of public policies on present and future generations and make decisions better informed by the long-term.

SOIF is currently offering free training events including a one-hour introductory class, and a three-hour training that will help you get started with policy assessment.

The one-hour introductory class:

• explores what Intergenerational Fairness is and why it is critical
• introduces strategic foresight approaches to improve long-term decision making
• introduces the Framework for Intergenerational Fairness
• helps identify how it can be used in your work.

The three-hour class Introduces the framework and teaches how to use the methodology on a real policy example:

• provides a detailed walkthrough of the policy assessment methodology
• helps you practice using the tool on an example policy.