We live through three main life segments of the Past, Present and the Future.

The two life segments of the Past and the Present constitute concrete life experiences which become the life compass to direct a person’s future decisions, actions and inactions.

Drawing attention to what I have described as the “Future Factor” is necessary because the Past and the Present are part of our life experiences that guide and shape our future plans to be as close to reality as possible.

The difficulty of planning for the future is that decision-making into the future is expected to be affected by socio-economic factors such as health issues, political dynamics, economic changes, priorities setting and many factors which cannot be predicted with perfect accuracy are expected to be part of the future planning processes.

As an easy way out of the complexities of the future planning process, it is human nature to have an easy route to life by living without the future featuring in our planning process as individuals, society, businesses and nations.

In many circumstances, the “Future Factor” does not feature in our planning process. The deception is that the political managers of our economy cover up the absence of the “Future Factor” in our planning process with palliatives which blur the absence of the “Future Factor” in our planning process.

It is interesting to note that the leaders of past generations in our indigenous families took decisions with future generations in the centre of their planning processes.

Many wars over land, conquests and decisions relating to natural resources like forests, minerals such as gold were exploited and protected with traditional beliefs as valued treasures for the benefit of current generation and preserved for future generations.

The get-rich quick and monetized mentality of the current generation have destroyed the many legacies of treasures including but not limited to our forests, rivers and Mountains.

Sadly, our generation of political leaders, Technocrats, Traditional leaders etc pride themselves with surface mining operations, Galamsey which according to them, had attracted businnesses to their communities which hitherto were areas of peasant farming.

Those who live today and do not place the “Future Factor” into their lives do not believe in nurturing sustainable relations between human activity and natural environment for the benefit of today’s generation and future generations.

Such leaders in our society are mostly marked by their ingratitude to God for the many precious natural wealth that are gratuitously made available to our generation to use and preserve for the many generations that would come after our generation.

The inability of our generation to place premium on the “Future Factor” in our planning processes because we believe in the now without building the “Future Factor “ into our plans had contributed to our worsening social and economic problems.

When we live in the now with no future in mind , we tend to see each transaction as a one-off activity which works in our favour without protecting our natural wealth as precious legacies for future generations.

In most cases a generation of people with no “Future Factor” in their kplans is bound to squander the most precious aspects of nature’s gifts in very bad agreements that benefit people and generations of other countries thus depriving current and future owners of our natural endowments of pristine forests, minerals, rivers, mountains, wildlife from being beneficiaries of our God-given wealth.

In such situations like what is happening in Ghana today with the level of environmental and social cost associated with the extraction of the many minerals that we are endowed with, outweigh the value of the minerals such as gold that leave the shores of our country.

The cost of the environmental degradation and social costs of extracting our minerals would have to be borne by current and future generations.

This example is not only in the extractive sector. There is bound to be similar situations in other sectors which cumulatively will erode our God-given blessings and leave us with the curses of the exploitation of our resources . The main reason for this is that we failed to consider the “Future Factor” in our planning process.

Those who came to our part of the world to capture our strong men and women as slaves to work as machines to develop their countries considered the “ Future Factor” which means that they considered their current generations in the implementation of the obnoxious and extreme, crude and shameful capitalist business model of SLAVERY where human beings were captured and exported under very inhuman conditions and sold on Slave Markets for their Slave Masters to earn profits in the devilish trade where human beings were the goods.

When we put the “Future Factor” in our planning, we are able to protect the interest of current and future generations. If we fail to do so, we would end up destroying the destiny of both current and future generations.

Our political leaders would be compelled to become authentic, hardworking and honest when development plans for our nation are conceived based on factors including the “Future Factor”, because that would compel our leaders to think in the long term to prevent the short term adhoc planning approach.

If the “Future Factor” does not feature in our planning processes, we should not be surprised if we reap Perverse Outcomes in many sectors of our economy because if our planning process become deaf-tone to issues of future generations and play ostrich, it would become a ticking time-bomb waiting to detonate.