Governing means looking ahead. Time to act

Governing means looking ahead, as the saying goes. In practice, however, it does not happen enough. “Citizens, investors and farmers are desperate for clarity about where and how we will live, work and grow food in the future, but at present they are not getting enough of it,” says Wieke Pot, Associate Professor in the Public Administration and Policy chair group at WUR. “The choices we make now have consequences for the longer term. We need to avoid building houses in polders that may be under water in the future.”

The same applies to many other issues. Companies want to know where their energy and water will come from and where heavy industry can be located. Bulb growers want to know whether the Westland can still be protected against saline groundwater. Farmers want to know when water levels in peat meadow areas will be raised to slow land subsidence and reduce CO₂ emissions.

Climate policy is also stagnating, Pot observes. The previous cabinet weakened climate policy, and it remains to be seen whether the current cabinet will restore sufficient momentum. According to Pot, it is high time for the government to develop a long-term climate vision. The Scientific Climate Council, of which Pot is a member, already advised the government in the summer of 2025 to draw up such a vision, one that would guide the design, implementation and evaluation of climate policy.

“It is important that the government now provides clarity about the direction of the transition and makes clear what is possible and what is not. Not for a period of ten or twenty years, but through a vision that looks several generations ahead. A liveable and safe future for current and future generations requires a long-term vision.”

The Netherlands does not lack ideas and visions for the future, Pot says. Researchers think tanks and companies are all working actively on the long term. But these visions are not finding their way into politics, she concludes.

One concrete way to change this would be to establish a Parliamentary Committee for the Future. Not every Member of Parliament deals with every topic. That is why the House of Representatives works with committees, such as those for Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs or Defence. According to Pot, there should also be a committee for the future. “The House of Representatives is where the battle of ideas takes place,” she says. “It is important that the future is discussed there more often. A Parliamentary Committee for the Future is one way to achieve that.”

In such a committee, MPs could discuss bills or hear from experts about relevant foresight studies. Policies that affect the future should be discussed by this committee, for instance on climate, agriculture, industry, defence or water safety. The committee could also assess the future impact of proposed legislation, for example through a generational test.

Finland already has such a parliamentary committee for the future. Research into the Finnish experience shows that it works, Pot says. Parliamentarians talk about the future more often and make use of foresight studies. In addition, the Finnish committee acts as a training institute. “Parliamentarians who sit on this committee are actively trained in long-term thinking. It also became a prestigious committee,” says Pot. “Its members often later became ministers or prime ministers.”

There are more ways to embed future thinking more firmly in politics, Pot says. A coordinating minister for climate should oversee the development of a future vision for a climate-neutral and climate-resilient Netherlands. There should also be more coordination on long-term thinking between ministries. “For example, through an interdepartmental working group under the responsibility of senior civil servants, which would coordinate with other departments and levels of government on bottlenecks and choices in the direction of climate policy.”

Other public authorities should also bring the future more clearly into view, Pot believes. “Municipalities, provinces or water authorities could appoint people as future scouts. They would identify trends and actively bring the long term into decision-making.”

Other long-term institutions already exist elsewhere in the world, such as the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in New Zealand. These are authoritative, independent advisers to public bodies who seek to represent the interests of future generations and a healthy living environment.

The Netherlands also has an institution that puts the long term first: the Delta Commissioner, who implements the Delta Programme. The Delta Programme is intended to ensure that the Netherlands has enough fresh water in the long term and can cope with flooding and other climate risks, such as drought.
Pot: “The importance of this is so great that a separate budget fund has been set up for it. The Delta Fund guarantees that tens of billions of euros will be available until 2050 to protect us against flooding and water scarcity. That fund is secured for the longer term and can only be spent on the intended water objectives. There should not be continuous political debate about that. In essence, that is undemocratic. But it is necessary.”

At the same time, you cannot do this for every issue, Pot says. “And therefore, not for climate policy either. Otherwise, we would restrict our democracy.” Precisely for that reason, she argues, it is important not only to have strong coordination from above, but also to involve citizens from the bottom up in a long-term vision for climate.

One way to do this is through a citizens’ assembly, says Pot. In 2025, a national citizens’ assembly on climate was held in which 175 randomly selected participants from across the country, with different backgrounds and a wide range of views on climate policy, worked together to develop solutions to climate change. “With input from thousands of others, and from many experts. It produced far-reaching proposals on how we can adapt our consumption so that it is less harmful to the climate.”

The problem with a citizens’ assembly, Pot says, is that there is no guarantee that politicians will adopt its recommendations, even if agreements are made in advance. “After this citizens’ assembly, the key task now is therefore to implement its proposals.”

There is also another way to involve citizens from the bottom up in long-term climate goals: by creating space for citizen initiatives, Pot says. “All kinds of people in the Netherlands are greening their neighbourhoods, producing energy together in energy cooperatives, preparing for more heat in the city or sharing cars. These people do not so much have a vision of the future. They are shaping that future.”

But government often creates obstacles for these initiatives. Citizens may be quite willing to manage green spaces, for example, but not in the way a municipality is used to working with a landscaping company. “Public authorities must be willing to set different rules for these social initiatives.”
The government must now choose a transition pathway, Pot concludes. “In the nitrogen crisis, politicians kept things as they were for too long and failed to choose a clear vision for the future in time. As a result, the problem became much bigger than it needed to be. The same threatens to happen with water quality. And climate is the next sword of Damocles.”

Still, Pot does not want to think in terms of doom. “Win-win solutions are possible. But they do require vision.” That calls for future thinkers: people who are able to include the long term in their thinking. “That is what we train our students to do. We teach them techniques to explore and imagine the future, and then to develop bolder policy proposals for making regions around the world future-proof. Policymakers and parliamentarians can do the same by assessing policy proposals more concretely for their long-term consequences and durability.”