Ombudspersons for future generations: Bringing intergenerational justice into the heart of policymaking

National and international policymaking is inherently constricted to short-term thinking by electoral cycles, and waylaid from a sustainable path by the obsession with profit margins. Heads of Government spend so much of their time defending their incumbent seat that their policymaking is primarily focused on gaining and retaining votes. The electorate, i.e., people over the age of 18, misses out a substantial chunk of the demographic—namely, those under 18, the generations that are yet unborn, and the generations deceased. As the philosopher Edmund Burke wrote: “[Society is] a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” Society is not, as it has become, a game of political horse-trading between the ruling party and the opposition which tries to court capricious swing voters.