Intergenerational Foresight 2026

From principles to practice: regional provocations Cultivating intergenerational foresight is an ongoing practice that develops through engagement, reflection, and adaptation. The regional provocations that follow extend this work through regionally grounded application. Rather than providing policy recommendations or implementation roadmaps, each provocation raises a deliberately constructed strategic question. These questions aim to uncover blind spots, challenge existing assumptions and expand collective imagination about long-term responsibility. Across regions, the provocations demonstrate how intergenerational foresight is practiced under different demographic, institutional, and cultural conditions. They show how demographic structure, institutional maturity, cultural norms, and exposure to systemic risk influence long-term governance challenges and how shared foresight across generations and geographies can reshape what becomes visible, contestable, and actionable. Many enduring challenges remain because prevailing ways of framing problems limit which futures are considered valid. When foresight progresses too swiftly toward closure through targets, tools, or predefined best practices, it risks perpetuating current power structures and short-term mindsets rather than questioning them. Provocations aim to disrupt this cycle. They help keep complexity visible at points where it might otherwise be oversimplified or prematurely settled. By revealing assumptions embedded in current governance models, provocations prompt us to question how success, risk, and legitimacy are defined over time. They also foster dialogue across generations and sectors, enabling perspectives often marginalized in formal decision-making to influence how challenges are understood. Provocations are not meant as proposals to be adopted or solutions to be implemented. Instead, they serve as strategic tools that allow leaders and institutions to scrutinize their decision-making frameworks, reflect on how authority is exercised, and assess whether current approaches are sufficient to govern in the face of long-term uncertainty. Intergenerational foresight influenced the regional contributions in three key ways: The result is a set of contributions that do not converge on a single narrative of the future. Their value lies in their diversity and tension, reflecting the reality that long-term governance challenges cannot be reduced to uniform solutions.1 Problem framing Questions were shaped by current limitations, anticipated long-term effects and intergenerational lived experience, thereby expanding the scope of what was regarded as relevant to the issue at hand. 2 Systems awareness Participants examined reinforcing feedback loops, path dependencies and points of irreversibility that conventional planning processes often overlook, situating regional challenges within broader systemic dynamics. 3 Legitimacy and authority The provocations reflect a redistribution of epistemic authority, integrating lived experience, local knowledge and institutional insight alongside formal analysis, rather than privileging any single source of expertise.3.1 Provocations as strategic inquiry 3.2 Shaping the contributions3 Intergenerational Foresight: An Approach for Long-Term Responsibility in Governance 10