Intergenerational Foresight 2026

released in phases tied to structural milestones, so improvements in underlying conditions measure progress. This approach is comparable to milestone- based disbursement models used elsewhere,36 while adding a missing element in many systems: formal community authority at the fiscal gate. Prototype 2: Community-Led Bailout Protocol A Community-Led Bailout Protocol would provide the procedural spine. It would standardize how stakeholders negotiate, record and uphold conditionality, so that recovery legitimacy does not depend on a particular administration. The protocol would set minimum conditions for shared power and transparency while allowing stakeholders to tailor outcomes to the context. The protocol mandates a representative community council with defined seats for youth, elders, Indigenous partners and local civil society. The council would hold co-signatory authority over the structural reform plan and the power to amend its terms. Selection rules are pre-negotiated and public. Many contexts may require a hybrid approach that combines representation from established organizations, neighbourhood associations and lottery-selected residents to balance organized voice with broad inclusion and mitigate elite capture. Dispute resolution is built into the process through pre-agreed neutral mechanisms that require a return to negotiation under revised parameters. Transparency is treated as a necessary asset. Terms, milestones and reporting are published on an open registry. Enforcement is pre-committed through clear triggers, so missed milestones prompt a rule-based response that is publicly legible. Elements of this design are scattered across the region in fragments. Community benefits agreements can be legally binding. Disaster recovery regimes can require public action plans and participation. Impact and benefit agreements can formalize commitments with Indigenous communities. Parametric insurance mechanisms, such as the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, demonstrate what rule-based speed can look like at the regional scale. The prototypes integrate these elements at the fiscal gate where governments and institutions disburse public funds.Conditionality as protection: avoiding punitive models The central design risk is clear. Conditionality can reproduce inequity when it becomes punitive, extractive, or administratively exclusionary. This proposal distinguishes itself from austerity-driven conditionality.37 In this model, conditionality is protection. It is designed to ensure that public money does not perpetuate harm and that recovery does not become another form of extraction. Three safeguards are central. Firstly, conditions are defined through equity- centred criteria tied to long-horizon outcomes, including measurable reductions in climate and infrastructure risk, demonstrated inclusion of community priorities and durable local capacity. Secondly, roles are designed to ensure that responsibility is shared and accountability is traceable. Governments initiate the process and provide funding. Community councils co-design and co-sign milestones. Independent verification reduces chances of capture. Public reporting sustains accountability beyond the news cycle.38 Thirdly, equity screening is built into the gate. Health Equity Impact Assessment approaches help identify unintended impacts and mitigate harm before decisions lock in.39 Decision-makers can apply these screens to energy and infrastructure decisions, including affordability and access measures such as household energy burden. When parties miss milestones, responses are structured around support and redesign rather than withdrawal or shifting harm to residents. These prototypes make the Conditional Bailout governable by treating crisis capital as a generative resource, communities as enduring stewards and the future as a legitimate party to the agreement. In doing so, they shift recovery from a palliative response to a regenerative one, embedding learning as a permanent feature of recovery through regular review and transparent reporting that strengthen institutional memory over time. The Conditional Bailout principle extends beyond North America and the Caribbean because the underlying governance failure is widely shared. Across regions, institutions routinely socialize risk, privatize rewards and exclude the intelligence of those most affected from decision-making. Similar dynamics are evident in European banking rescues that reinforced “too big to fail” institutions, sovereign debt negotiations that constrained policy autonomy in the Majority World and in post-disaster reconstruction processes that prioritized financial stabilization over community recovery. This provocation reframes leadership responsibility as the stewardship of public capital to protect long- term resilience. It offers a practical interpretation of fiduciary duty that prioritizes the best interests of present and future generations. When applied in recovery contexts, it can shape funding for long- horizon resilience investments and democratic GLOBAL RELEVANCE Intergenerational Foresight: An Approach for Long-Term Responsibility in Governance 24