History has been made this morning of Sunday 22 Sep 2024 at the United Nations  HQ in New York

Author: Dr Nsah Mala (Kenneth Nsah)

History has been made this morning of Sunday 22 Sep 2024 at the United Nations HQ in New York: The #SummitOftheFuture opened with the overwhelming adoption of the Pact for the Future and its two annexes, Declaration on Future Generations and Global Digital Compact. CONGRATULATIONS to everyone who has contributed to this great achievement!

It's a new dawn for renewed multilateral cooperation with long-term governance the wellbeing of present and future generations in focus, deploying foresight in addressing global challenges.

From the Brundtland Report - Our Common Future - through UNESCO's Declaration on the Responsibility of Present Generations towards Future Generations through the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act and Wales Commissioner for Future Generations, and other examples, there has been solid groundwork for a #youth and #futuregens agenda.

UN SG António Guterres has shown clairvoyant leadership on #OurCommonAgenda, and UNGA President Philemon Yang has chaired this historic GA and Summit. I am extremely happy that Cameroon has played this role, not only through Ambassador Yang at UNGA as chair of this once-in-a-generation Summit but also by organising a recent Pre-Summit Consultation at MINREX in Yaoundé.

I'm honoured to have been involved in this process through School of International Futures (SOIF) / Next Generation Foresight Practitioners and UNESCO-MOST Bridges Coalition / Global South Studies Center University of Cologne.

In partnership, here in NYC, last Thursday, SOIF hosted the Building Hopeful Futures Festival, yesterday BRIDGES organised a high-level panel on mobilising the outcomes of the Summit, and today SOIF launched a Handbook for Implementing the Declaration on Future Generations, leveraging the Wales Protocol on Future Generations and other examples from around the world: Cameroon, Kenya, Finland, EU, Australia, etc.

Now is time to match words to action by the actualisation of the Summit outcomes.

Thus, today is just the beginning of the global journey of promoting sustainability and the wellbeing of present and future generations through justice, anticipatory governance, and reinvigorated multilateralism.

Africa has a key place in this!

Let the UN SG hasten to appoint a Special Envoy for Future Generations.

Following indigenous wisdom, let's all work towards becoming Good Ancestors for future generations of humans and nonhumans.

Implementation! Implementation! Implementation!