Futures Digest #4: The Pact for the Future for a New Global Vision
On September 22, 2024, world leaders at the UNGA adopted a future-oriented and action-driven pact that reflects insights from a long journey and sets the stage for a new multilateralism.
After years of preparations, suggestions, hearings, pre-meetings, submissions, and discussions, world leaders at the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a Pact for the Future (A/RES/79/1) on September 22, 2024—an in-depth, inter-governmentally negotiated, action-oriented pact that includes a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations.
The Pact for the Future represents the outcome of a comprehensive, years-long effort to reshape international collaboration in response to current realities and the emerging challenges of the future. It is based on two decisions made by the UNGA at the beginning of this decade, which serve as foundational pillars for its implementation.
The first decision relates to the twelve commitments approved at the seventy-fifth General Assembly in 2020, marking the organization's anniversary: leave no one behind; protect our planet; promote peace and prevent conflicts; uphold international law and ensure justice; place women and girls in the center; build trust; improve digital cooperation; upgrade the United Nations (UN); ensure sustainable financing; boost partnerships; listen to and work with youth; and be prepared for future crises. To achieve these goals, they emphasized the need for a revitalized, inclusive, networked, and effective multilateralism.
The second decision pertains to the report “Our Common Agenda,” prepared by Secretary-General António Guterres under the mandate of the Assembly and presented in 2021. The agenda reflects the outcome of a year-long process involving Member States, intellectuals—futures organizations included, young people, and civil society, plus an electronic survey that was answered by one and a half million people and polls in 70 countries. The Agenda is structured into main areas related to establishing a new social contract centered on human rights; renewing solidarity with younger and future generations; a new global deal to deliver public goods and address major risks, and adapting the UN to a new era. As emphasized by The Millennium Project (see Section 5 of the recently published State of the Future 20.0), the Agenda contains important foresight elements and proposes to reach effective commitments through key moments along with the Pact and its annexes, such as the Summit on transforming education, held in 2022; a Social Summit, to be held in 2025; and the Summit of the Future, held in September 2024.
The Pact for the Future is organized into five areas, leading to fifty-six actions that affirm commitments to achieve concrete deliverables.
Sustainable development and financing for development encompass 12 actions focusing on eradicating poverty, ending hunger, closing financing gaps, achieving gender equality and environmental protection, and promoting culture and inclusive and peaceful societies, while ensuring the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda by that year and beyond.
The fifteen actions outlined in International Peace and Security focus on establishing and maintaining peaceful, inclusive, and just societies. These actions aim to protect civilians, support humanitarian needs, promote international cooperation and conflict resolution, fulfill disarmament obligations, address security threats like terrorism, organized crime, and nuclear weapons, and adapt peace operations to contemporary and emerging challenges, such as preventing an arms race and advancing discussions on lethal autonomous weapons systems. Additionally, these actions emphasize harnessing new technologies while managing associated risks.
Science, technology and innovation and digital cooperation include six actions leveraging them to benefit people and the planet, strengthening capacities in developing countries, ensuring human rights and gender equality, integrating indigenous and local knowledge, and enhancing the UN's role in fostering international cooperation in these fields.
The four actions included in Youth and future generations emphasize investing in the social and economic development of children and youth, promoting their human rights and social inclusion, and enhancing meaningful youth participation both nationally and internationally.
Transforming Global Governance includes nineteen actions focused on revitalizing the multilateral system by reforming the Security Council for greater inclusivity and accountability, strengthening the roles of the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and the Peacebuilding Commission, and accelerating reforms of the international financial architecture to support sustainable development, address the needs of developing countries, and effectively respond to global challenges. Key themes of the Pact can be explored on a dedicated UN site.
The Global Digital Compact (GDC), outlined in Annex 1, focuses on the specific objective to harness digital and emerging technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), for sustainable development while managing associated risks. The Compact serves as a comprehensive global framework for digital cooperation. It includes five objectives related to closing digital divides, expanding inclusion in the digital economy, fostering a secure digital space that respects human rights, advancing equitable data governance, and enhancing international governance of AI for the benefit of humanity. Based on specific principles related to digital cooperation, each objective details commitments to achieve meaningful and measurable actions by 2030. These should promote agile and adaptable cooperation in a rapidly evolving digital landscape in collaboration with the private sector, the civil society, international organizations, and the technical and academic communities. The implementation of the Global Digital Compact must take into account different national realities, capacities, and levels of development, respecting national policies and priorities and legal frameworks. To facilitate this, a follow-up and review process is also included, aiming to create an implementation map for monitoring progress and a high-level, inclusive review meeting to be held during the eighty-second General Assembly session.
Finally, the Pact also includes a Declaration on Future Generations in Annex 2, a key theme highly valued by experts in futures studies. The Declaration, together with the Pact, underscores the importance of considering “all those generations that do not yet exist, and who will inherit this planet,” whose needs and interests must be safeguarded. The declaration includes guiding principles upon which it is based, and actions to implement, institutionalize, and monitor the above commitments in national, regional, and global policy-making. These actions include measures such as leveraging science and data, ensuring inclusive access to knowledge, strengthening accounting systems, investing in capacity to prepare for challenges and shocks, adopting a whole-of-government approach, and enhancing stakeholder cooperation.
What may immediately catch the eye of a futurist is the recognition, both within the Pact and the specific Declaration, that we must safeguard the needs and interests not only of the present but also of future generations. Futurists have been talking about intergenerational fairness for decades, both as a challenge and as a responsibility, as has the UN, admitting that youth and future generations “will live with the consequences of our actions and our inaction.” The Pact focuses on improving their prospects and those of the generations yet to come by systematically listening to them in participatory policy-making, an opportunity and a duty that is being pursued by futures-oriented organizations as well. It promotes the use of strategic foresight, anticipatory planning, and futures literacy in terms of analysis, planning, and education, and commits to follow up on the Special Envoy for Futures Generations to represent and advocate for future generations, raise awareness of intergenerational impacts of decisions, and facilitate collaboration. The UNGA will convene a high-level plenary during its eighty-third session to review the Declaration's implementation and actions, with the Secretary-General presenting a related report for consideration.
A second prominent point for futurists is the awareness that we are living in a time of profound global transformation - at a faster and faster rate of change and complexity, we would add - where “We are confronted by rising catastrophic and existential risks, many caused by the choices we make”. The urgency to anticipate, assess, and address all those, more or less potential, risks that threaten our lives has been raising concerns for years, prompting actions such as, for instance, a global call for a new UN Office of Strategic or Existential Threats. For these and for all the many challenges that we face and that are included in the outcome, the Pact underlines the fundamental importance of a new multilateralism to ensure a better future for people and planet and to strengthen partnerships with society, perhaps one of the most important ways to address global challenges that are, as The Millennium Project has been stating for years, transnational in nature and transinstitutional and interdisciplinary in solution. The Pact also declares “a more coherent, cooperative, coordinated and multidimensional international response to complex global crises and the central role of the United Nations.” After all, there is “hope and opportunity”, says the Pact by sharing the need highlighted by many to stimulate positive futures, and we can follow “a path for a brighter future for all of humanity” through the actions that the Pact includes.
A third topic that may be futuristically thought-provoking is related to the opportunities and potential risks associated with new and emerging technologies, AI included. Given the recent initiatives on governing the transition to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—see, for instance, a recent global call signed by hundreds of experts—this has become a highly anticipated topic across many fields. The Pact emphasizes how AI could be used to support sustainable development while also highlighting the risk of abuses, inequalities, and human rights violations if not properly regulated. The commitments for an inclusive, open, sustainable, fair, safe, and secure digital future for all include enhancing international governance of AI for the benefit of humanity by assessing and addressing potential impacts, opportunities, risks, future directions, and implications through an agile, multidisciplinary and adaptable multi-stakeholder approach. By acknowledging the UN role in shaping, enabling and supporting such governance, a specific multidisciplinary independent international scientific panel on AI will be established within the UN, in order to promote scientific understanding through evidence-based impact, risk, and opportunity assessments. A procedure for voluntary endorsement of the Compact will be defined in December and a Global Dialogue on the governance of AI will be launched alongside existing relevant UN conferences and meetings.
The Pact is a dense document and contains many other topics, mostly related to some of the major global challenges we have been discussing for years, such as climate change, poverty, hunger, and gender equality, to name a few. This is not surprising, considering the Pact itself states, “Progress on most of the Goals is either moving too slowly or has regressed below the 2015 baseline.” Previous commitments are reconfirmed, and even scaled up, with some “future sparks”, such as, for instance, preventing and combating transnational organized crime through comprehensive strategies, including prevention, early detection, and investigation; requesting the Secretary-General to make recommendations on sustainable development indicators beyond gross domestic product; and continuing the consultations on the proposal for a fourth UN Conference on the Peaceful Exploration of Outer Space (UNISPACE IV) in 2027.
The Pact of the Future continues to shape conversations about the paths we will take moving forward, and establishes review processes for its overall implementation, a coordination office to support its progress, and reports during upcoming sessions of the UNGA.
What are our thoughts on the Pact? Is it what we anticipated after all those years of preparation? As we explore the documents and shape our opinions on this significant milestone, we’ve been wondering what the futures community thinks of this work and its commitments, and we’re reaching out to gather insights and opinions to better understand the Pact and its implications.
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