Intergenerational Foresight 2026

This provocation targets the system at its point of maximum leverage; the moment public money is requested. It turns a bailout from an open cheque into a negotiated reset of rules, ownership and accountability. Each request for major support would trigger a structured co-governance process that sets new baselines for risk-sharing, participation and resilience. Bailouts shape long-term development pathways. These decisions determine whose risks institutions protect, whose harms they defer and which institutions gain the capacity to adapt over time. Decision-makers design a conditional bailout to interrupt the rescue-and-repeat cycle by rewiring incentives, strengthening community authority and embedding long-horizon resilience into the agreement governing recovery. Interviews across the region described crises as X-rays of institutional design. They reveal damaged assets and the decision rules that determine whether public money yields renewal or repetition. Under current rules, funding often returns to the systems that failed. This provocation proposes a shift in decision architecture so that crisis response becomes a pathway to structural repair. Three leverage shifts that make rescue renew Requiring any bailout or major public rescue to include a binding, community-co-designed structural reform plan triggers three high-leverage shifts. 1. Rescue rule reset Governments face intense pressure to act quickly during crises. That pressure is typically spent on short-term restoration. This intervention redirects it. Structural conditions tied to public money convert reflexive rescue into negotiated reform. Redirecting that pressure toward structural conditions tied to public money resets incentives that fuel moral hazard and helps ensure public funds do not underwrite high-risk choices. 2. Power rebalanced at the fiscal gate Bailout approval marks one of the system’s most consequential procedural points, yet insulated decision-makers often control it without bearing the long-term consequences. The provocation requires a representative community council to serve as a co- design partner with authority over the structural terms. Embedding a representative community council with authority over the structural terms shifts legitimacy from consultation to co-governance by embedding place-based intelligence and long-term interests into decisions. Evidence from enforceable community agreements suggests that formalized community power can improve durability and compliance. 3. Learning recovery engine Crisis response often rebuilds without learning. Failures are repeated, documented and then ignored. Binding commitments tied to public funds can create structural lock-in for learning through enforceable milestones, transparent reporting and adaptive reforms. Creating structural lock-in for learning strengthens feedback loops that enable institutions to evolve and redirect extractive recovery dynamics toward long-term resilience. Together, these shifts move the regional logic from rescue and repeat to rescue and renew. They redesign the decision architecture that determines whether crises entrench vulnerability or catalyse structural transformation.RATIONALE Bailouts as foresight leverage points ILLUSTRATIVE PATHWAYS The conditional bailout is a provocation with a practical purpose. It aims to enable a recovery architecture in which public capital serves as a lever for renewal and communities become co-authors of the future. Two prototypes show how institutions can operationalize this approach across contexts. Prototype 1: Conditional Resilience Fund A Conditional Resilience Fund would be a permanent pool of public capital towards regeneration. It is designed to deliver speed through preparation and safeguards through non-bypassable gates. The fund could be activated in response to a declared crisis or a major public rescue request.Governments, communities and institutions establish the enabling infrastructure in advance. They constitute representative community councils, agree on procedural rules and calibrate equity screens during stable periods. When a crisis occurs, the system is activated rather than assembled. The model distinguishes between immediate humanitarian relief, which must flow without delay and larger-scale recovery and resilience capital, which would be governed by conditionality. Funds would flow once a jurisdiction enters a co- governed agreement that identifies structural shifts required to reduce harm and increase resilience over a multi-decade horizon. Funds would be Intergenerational Foresight: An Approach for Long-Term Responsibility in Governance 23