Intergenerational Foresight 2026

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Oceania What if the next era of credible leadership demanded not just more information but deeper wisdom, in which sacred knowledge and ancestral accountability became strategic assets for resilient governance and we reshaped concepts of credibility to include sacred ways of knowing, being and doing? Across ASEAN and Oceania, governance is entering a new era of credibility. Leaders have more data, more dashboards and more analytical capacity than ever before. Yet trust is eroding, legitimacy is becoming harder to sustain and people increasingly question the ethics, coherence and long-term consequences of decisions made under pressure.101 This erosion of trust and legitimacy is a central intergenerational challenge. When governments treat credibility as a function of technical expertise and short-term performance, they tend to prioritize what they can measure quickly over what they must protect over the long term.In the context of volatility, this creates a decision trap. Systems optimize for speed and control, while social cohesion, moral authority and long-horizon stewardship weaken. Future generations inherit the costs of that erosion in the form of fragile institutions, degraded ecosystems and diminished capacity to respond to shocks. This provocation asks leaders to reconsider what credibility means. It argues that resilient governance requires epistemologies that strengthen discernment, relational accountability and responsibility across time. In this region, sacred, ancestral and faith-informed systems offer living governance resources that can help meet that need. G Intergenerational Foresight: An Approach for Long-Term Responsibility in Governance 38