Director-General's remarks at the Beyond Lab Event: "What's Next on Accounting for the Future?"

Beyond Lab Event at Building Bridges Week 2025:
What’s Next on Accounting for the Future?

Tuesday, 30 September 2025 at 2.00 p.m.
Room Lausanne, Varembé Conference Centre (CCV)

Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear colleagues and friends,

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to this latest edition of the What’s Next series, convened by the Beyond Lab as part of Building Bridges Week. Let me thank our partners and speakers for joining us for this important exchange.

We stand at a pivotal moment. With less than six years to 2030, only 18% of the SDGs are on track. The triple planetary crisis, deepening inequalities, and disruptive technological shifts make it clear that our current course of action and approaches to addressing these challenges is not enough. As the UN Secretary-General said in opening last week’s General Assembly, ‘The pillars of peace and progress are buckling under the weight of impunity, inequality, and indifference.’

Yet, at the same time, we see inspiring movements of hope: people everywhere, especially young people, are demanding change, leading innovative solutions in their communities. Researchers, academics, scientists are rethinking models of development and progress, and broad coalitions across sectors are working for high impact and tangible change. Building Bridges, as part of which we gather today, is an example of such a coalition.

This is exactly the spirit of the work by the Beyond Lab at UN Geneva: To challenge the status quo and the ‘conventional’. To ask difficult questions, to listen across sectors, disciplines and generations and to chart pathways for systemic change we want and need to see in our world.

In particular, the Youth Moving Beyond GDP initiative, has demonstrated how intergenerational perspectives are being brought to the global stage and connected with key inter-governmental decision-making processes, where young people are given an equal voice to challenge the limits of conventional economic thinking and calling for measures that reflect well-being, equity and planetary health in a comprehensive way.

Their insights are now feeding into key intergovernmental processes in the UN and beyond, including through the Youth Network on Beyond GDP that was launched at the recent International Conference on Financing for Development in Spain. The Youth Network on Beyond GDP is an inter-generational sounding board providing input into the UN high-level expert group on Beyond GDP that has been appointed by the UN Secretary-General. It is time that we move away from ‘tokensim’ towards genuine and meaningful inclusion of young people in policy and decision making.

Today, we are taking this conversation further, importantly as part of this sixth edition of Building Bridges, which was co-created by the Beyond Lab.

We are asking: How do we account for the future in the decisions we take today? How do we ensure that sustainability becomes not just a political goal, but a way of life embedded in our systems, institutions, and cultures? And how do we ensure our economies and financial systems are designed around inter-generational equity and impact as a key principle, to be sustainable, inclusive and resilient?

For economic systems to be truly sustainable, we need financial institutions to move beyond immediate returns and short-term planning, and to consider the long-term social, environmental, and economic impacts of investments and decisions. By putting intergenerational equity at the center of governance and financial discussions and decision making, I believe we can foster genuine collaboration across sectors and stakeholders—creating a financial sector that not only drives sustainability now but is fundamentally fair and beneficial for both present and future generations.

The United Nations and International Geneva is uniquely positioned to advance this agenda. The Pact for the Future adopted in New York provides a mandate to rethink how we measure progress and development and safeguard future generations. The 4th Financing for Development Conference held in Sevilla this summer confirmed this commitment. Building on this momentum, our task is to make intergenerational equity and long-term accountability central to policy and decision-making, not as aspirations, but as operational realities and key principles.

This afternoon, as we explore futures-thinking, accountability, and innovative solutions, let us be guided by a hopeful vision: A vision in which today’s choices and decisions – policies and investments - become assets, not liabilities, for tomorrow. A vision where International Geneva continues to serve as a hub for pioneering ideas and as a shaper of the next global agenda and vision, beyond 2030.

I look forward to the reflections ahead, and I thank you for joining us in this journey.