Intergenerational Equity Research Articles

Performing science, performative science: a science and technology studies (STS) reflection on the pioneering pathways of the HADES underground research laboratory (URL)

Abstract. Developing and implementing a project for managing high-level radioactive waste over extensive periods of time is a multifaceted challenge. Among others, it entails demonstrating the feasibility, safety and overall performance of the proposed waste management strategy. However, how to tackle such a demonstration when the periods over which the waste needs to be isolated and contained extend over thousands of years? In the development of geological disposal facilities, a key role in this matter is played by underground research laboratories (URLs), which aim to provide a setting to study how different techniques and materials perform in a realistic environment. Insights gained into URLs are expected to be translatable to the performance and timescales of an actual repository, hence offering a tool to make a seemingly distant future comprehensible today. In this contribution, we use the HADES (High-Activity Disposal Experimental Site) URL in Mol, Belgium, as an example to illustrate how URLs are producing knowledge and insights, and how in this way they are also actively performing the possible future(s) of radioactive waste management. Building on insights gained in the field of science and technology studies (STS), this paper emphasizes how knowledge production is a complex process characterized by the interplay of heterogeneous – and sometimes rather trivial – elements and actors interlinked through a range of explicit and implicit decisions. We argue that tracing these elements and decisions, making them explicit and reflecting upon them are of key importance, as knowledge production not only describes a possible future but also actively contributes to “making the future” by emphasizing what is considered possible and imaginable – and what is not. This paper will therefore also focus on what the implications of making the future could entail from an ethical perspective, with a particular focus on deliberation and intergenerational justice.

Intergenerational rights are children's rights: Upholding the right to a healthy environment through the UNCRC

This article reflects on intersections between intergenerational equity, children's rights and the rights of future generations. Recent climate cases involving children and youth are considered, and the fact that few rely on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is analysed. It is emphasised that intergenerational rights are children's rights – children are a crucial link between current and future generations. In particular the principle of the best interests of the child, which is widespread in national legal systems, should be relied upon more frequently in climate cases. Arguments can be made that failing to accord sufficient attention to children's rights and interests in climate policies violates the best interests principle. Relying on the CRC may increase the chance of successful outcomes in environmental and climate cases; progressing the right to a healthy environment for all. It will also ensure that adequate attention for children's rights is embedded in such cases.

Intergenerational actuarial fairness when longevity increases: Amending the retirement age

Continuous longevity improvements and population ageing have led countries to modify national public pension schemes by increasing standard and early retirement ages in a discretionary, scheduled, or automatic way, and making it harder for people to retire prematurely. To this end, countries have adopted alternative retirement age strategies, but our analyses show that the measures taken are often poorly designed and consequently misaligned with the pension scheme's ultimate goals. This paper discusses how to implement automatic indexation of the retirement age to life expectancy developments while respecting the principles of intergenerational actuarial fairness and neutrality among generations of the respective policy scheme design. With stable demographic conditions, we show in policy designs in which extended working lives translate into additional pension entitlements, the pension age must be automatically updated to keep the period in retirement constant. Alternatively, policy designs that pursue a fixed replacement rate are consistent with retirement age policies targeting a constant balance between active years in the workforce and years in retirement. Under conditions of population ageing, the statutory pension age will have to increase at a faster rate to meet the intergenerational equity criteria. The empirical strategy employed a Bayesian Model Ensemble approach to stochastic mortality modelling to address model risk and generate forecasts of intergenerationally and actuarially fair pension ages for 23 countries from 2000 to 2050. The findings show that the pension age increases needed to accommodate the effect of longevity developments on pay-as-you-go equilibrium and to reinstate equity between generations are sizeable and well beyond those employed and/or legislated in most countries. A new wave of pension reforms may be at the doorsteps.

Human Rights and the Global Plastics Treaty to Protect Health, Ocean Ecosystems and Our Climate

Abstract The global plastics pollution crisis has multiple visible and invisible effects on marine, land and air environments. Fossil fuel-based plastics production is projected to triple by 2060, driving a plastics lifecycle that exacerbates climate change, contaminates ecosystems and poses risks to human rights, especially the human right to health. Existing governance measures help tackle plastics waste pollution but cannot effectively address its systemic nature. Drafting a Global Plastics Treaty, due for adoption in 2025, is an opportunity to design ambitious international plastics governance. This article argues for a human rights-based approach to the proposed treaty’s framing and substance by integrating, in particular, the human right to health, supplemented by the human right to a healthy environment. Embedding human rights considerations through a precautionary and preventative approach, shifting responsibility to polluters and showing concern for intergenerational equity would combat plastics pollution, accelerate climate action, protect ocean ecosystems and safeguard human rights.

Addressing Intergenerational Inequity in Tobacco-Harm: What Helps Children of Smokers to Remain Nonsmokers?

Children of people who smoke are more likely to take up smoking themselves. In Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), adolescent smoking declined dramatically between 2000 and 2016 despite limited change in parental smoking, demonstrating that the cycle can be broken. This study aimed to identify modifiable factors associated with never smoking in Year 10 students (14-15 years) who had at least one caregiver who smoked. We used data from the Youth Insights Survey (2016 and 2018, pooled, N = 5,422) and identified students with at least one caregiver (mother, father, grandparent, other caregiver) who smoked (N = 2,205). To investigate modifiable factors potentially associated with nonsmoking we used logistic regression with marginally adjusted prevalence estimates. Overall, 41% of students had at least one caregiver who smoked. In this group, the majority (65%) had never smoked themselves. After adjustment, never-smoking was more prevalent among students attending low-deprivation (more affluent) schools (73% had never smoked) compared to high-deprivation schools (44%); students not exposed to others' smoking inside the home (72%) or in cars (70%) in the past week compared to those exposed (59% and 51%, respectively); and students whose parents would be upset if they were caught smoking (68% vs 49% for those whose parents would not be upset), or who had high self-esteem (69% vs 55% for those with low self-esteem). Modifiable factors independently associated with non-smoking in adolescents with caregiver(s) who smoked were: nonexposure to smoking inside the home and in cars, parental expectations of nonsmoking, and high self-esteem. Even in countries like NZ with relatively low adult smoking rates, children's exposure to caregiver smoking may be prevalent, particularly in structurally disadvantaged populations. This study suggests that action to promote smokefree homes and cars, build high self-esteem in young people, and communicate expectations of non-smoking are likely to help children of people who smoke to remain nonsmokers. A comprehensive approach that also addresses "upstream" factors (eg, socioeconomic deprivation) and underlying causes of structural inequity (eg, institutional racism) is needed. Such policy and community action may help to break intergenerational cycles of tobacco use and health inequity.

Ubuntu: An Underutilised Foundational Constitutional Principle of South African Environmental Law

Ubuntu: An Underutilised Foundational Constitutional Principle of South African Environmental Law

Meeting Lofty Aspirations? English National Planning Policy, International Law, and Climate Change

Abstract The National Planning Policy Framework (nppf) is the primary expression of central government planning policy for England. Given the importance of the planning system for a transition to a more sustainable future, including seeking to reduce and avoid greenhouse gas emissions, the nppf is a highly significant document. The nppf refers to the ideas of sustainable development and intergenerational equity, important in international environmental law. However, intergenerational equity has scarcely featured in the many legal challenges regarding the interpretation of the nppf. Having considered the extent to which the nppf achieves the aspirations set out in the instruments to which it refers, this article suggests potential changes to policy so as to provide greater support to the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Ethics, climate change and health - a landscape review.

Anthropogenic climate change is unequivocal, and many of its physical health impacts have been identified, although further research is required into the mental health and wellbeing effects of climate change. There is a lack of understanding of the importance of ethics in policy-responses to health and climate change which is also linked to the lack of specific action-guiding ethical resources for researchers and practitioners. There is a marked paucity of ethically-informed health input into economic policy-responses to climate change-an area of important future work. The interaction between health, climate change and ethics is technically and theoretically complex and work in this area is fragmentary, unfocussed, and underdeveloped. Research and reflection on climate and health is fragmented and plagued by disciplinary silos and exponentially increasing literature means that the field cannot be synthesised using conventional methods. Reviewing the literature in these fields is therefore methodologically challenging. Although many of the normative challenges in responding to climate change have been identified, available theoretical approaches are insufficiently robust, and this may be linked to the lack of action-guiding support for practitioners. There is a lack of ethical reflection on research into climate change responses. Low-HDI (Human Development Index) countries are under-represented in research and publication both in the health-impacts of climate change, and normative reflection on health and climate change policy. There is a noticeable lack of ethical commentary on a range of key topics in the environmental health literature including population, pollution, transport, energy, food, and water use. Serious work is required to synthesise the principles governing policy responses to health and climate change, particularly in relation to value conflicts between the human and non-human world and the challenges presented by questions of intergenerational justice.

Integrasi Green Waqf Melalui Platform Digital Crowdfunding dan Dampak Sosialnya Bagi Masyarakat

This study aims at finding out the integration of green waqf through the crowdfunding digital platform and the social impacts provided for the community. This research applies library research method and qualitative analysis approach. The integration of green waqf through the crowdfunding digital platform and its relationship to embody the sustainable development between generations. Green waqf is one of instruments of Islamic law to deal with the problems of the ummah, one of which is environmental problems related to sustainable development and intergenerational justice. This research was conducted qualitatively using analytical descriptive design. The results show that green waqf is able to balance development and environmental sustainability that leads to sustainable environmental preservation and equality between generations, where future generations are still at the same level of utilization as the current generation, in terms of variety of choices and access to resources. natural. Green waqf is an environmental conservation innovation movement that begins with raising funds through a crowdfunding mechanism, which results in the purchase of critical land to be reforested. As the critical land gets verdant and has ecological value, it will be donated to the village community on the condition that the forest must be maintained and must not be damaged. Green waqf does not only answer the problem of natural damage, but also brings benefits from various aspects of ecology, energy sustainability, social, economic, and community welfare.

International Law Must Respond to the Reality of Future Generations: A Reply to Stephen Humphreys

Abstract Stephen Humphreys in his article ‘Against Future Generations’ in this journal argues against intergenerational framings in the climate context, claiming that such framings work against future generations by carrying forward today’s structural inequalities into the future. He contends that those using such framings tend to subordinate global intra-generational equity to local intergenerational equity, glossing over very significant differences in power and wealth amongst those impacted by climate change. This response to Humphreys’ article argues that Humphreys has set up a false dichotomy: it is not only developed countries that care about future generations – developing countries are concerned about addressing poverty now and their own future generations. Humphreys’ claim that climate litigation has and should limit itself to harms to persons alive now is also unconvincing. Most climate litigation involving children or young people to date has included claims brought by them both in relation to their own interests (now and in the future) and on behalf of future generations. The response points to cases where, contrary to Humphreys’ position – harms extending to future generations have made a substantive difference in legal outcomes.

Children’s Human Right to Be Heard at the Ocean-climate Nexus

Abstract This article aims to clarify the obligations of States under the law of the sea to put children’s human rights at the heart of decision-making on the protection of the marine environment, particularly at the ocean-climate nexus. The relevance of the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and in particular, children’s human right to be heard in the context of existing provisions on deep-sea mining activities under the International Seabed Authority and the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction are discussed. Reflections on more ambitious approaches to integrating intergenerational dialogue within international ocean fora, as ways to implement intergenerational equity and protect humankind at the ocean-climate nexus, on the basis of good practices in the area of children’s human rights are offered.

The Law Is Elastic but Does Not Bend: A Literal Interpretation of European Union Chemical Legislation Could Leave Health and the Environment Unprotected

AbstractThis piece addresses Case C-458/19 P before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) concerning a substance of long-term exposure, namely bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP). The case concerned the interplay of two complex procedures of European chemical law, namely: the procedure for authorising the use of a substance listed in Annex XIV of Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 (REACH Regulation); and the procedure for listing a substance in Annex XIV of the REACH Regulation on the basis of its intrinsic properties as a substance of very high concern for the risks it poses, or may pose, to human and environmental health. The significance of this judgment is that it provides a better understanding of how Article 60(4) of the REACH Regulation is interpreted in an analogous manner in relation to other provisions of the same Regulation. Whether DEHP is a question of reproductive toxicity (Article 57(c) of the REACH Regulation) or endocrine-disrupting properties (Article 57(f) of the REACH Regulation), this judgment offers insights into the limits of the CJEU’s willingness and/or ability to use a teleological approach to interpret legislation in this area. Furthermore, this work supports the possibility of applying the principle of intergenerational equity to issues related to long-term exposure such as this one.

“Old things made new”: Transfusive rejuvenescence in M. E. Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne” and H. G. Wells’s “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”

Abstract In 1897, congratulating Bram Stoker on the release of Dracula, the writer M. E. Braddon tries to establish precedence for herself by classifying the novel not, as we might expect, as a story of vampirism, but as one of “transfusion”. Taking this designation as its cue, this article recovers examples of what I term “transfusive rejuvenescence fiction”, in which a prolongation of life or restoration of youth is achieved via corporeal transferal. It contextualizes this sub-genre by charting how a revival of interest in blood transfusion’s rejuvenatory promise occurred alongside shifts in the attitudes to age and aging – to old age especially. Contrary to medical writers, who optimistically envisaged transfusion as an integral part of a “sentimental economy” – in which blood is donated out of “fellow-feeling” – transfusive rejuvenescence fiction raises the prospect of bloodborne youthfulness becoming commodified and circulating according to the tenets of the capitalist marketplace. In these fictions, transfusion serves as an evocative and versatile figure for expressing anxieties around the increasingly urgent question of provision for old age and the issues of intergenerational equity implied therein. To prove the argument, this article performs a comparative reading of Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne” and H. G. Wells’s “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”, both of 1896. The comparable but distinctive approaches taken by these two short stories means that examining them in tandem provides us with a fuller picture of the contributions that transfusive rejuvenescence fiction made to fin-de-siècle discourses of age and aging.

Closing Ventanas to open doors: an ethical approach to public health research in areas of high climate vulnerability

In the context of climate change, the complex relationship between humanity and nature is revealed. This context provides an excellent opportunity to understand the tensions, ethical, and philosophical aspects involved in health research in areas of high climatic vulnerability. To address this problem, the situation of the Concón, Quintero, and Puchuncaví area, one of the five environmental sacrifice zones established in Chile, is used as a case study. After years of studies on the harmful health effects of this industrial center and governmental inaction, the executive power decided to close the Codelco Ventanas Division Smelter. This closure allows us to reflect on the opportunities for developing ethical public health research in areas of high climate vulnerability, in addition to making clear the role of public health professionals under the principle of responsibility, using environmental, climate, and intergenerational justice

Zipper arguments and duties regarding future generations

Most of us believe that it would be unjust to act with indifference about the plight of future generations. Zipper arguments in intergenerational justice aim to show that we have duties of justice regarding future generations, regardless of whether we have duties of justice to future generations. By doing so, such arguments circumvent the foundational challenges that come with theorising duties to remote future generations, which result from the non-existence, non-identity and non-contemporaneity of future generations. I argue that zipper arguments face several significant challenges. The ought-implies-can challenge points out that because prior generations determine what later generations can transfer, they determine how much they ought to transfer. In addition, both intentional and non-intentional non-compliance can break the chain of duties towards future generations on which zipper arguments rely. Some versions are surprisingly resilient especially in real-world circumstances. This paper does not show that zipper arguments inevitably fail, but all ways forward come at significant theoretical costs. Unless the challenges posed here are met (or shown as irrelevant), theorists of justice cannot side-track the foundational challenges that come with doing intergenerational justice.

A problem of generations? Habitus, social processes and climate change

PurposeThis conceptual paper focusses on climate change as a social issue and therefore as a social scientific problem. According to young climate activists, Greta Thunberg being the most widely known, climate change is specifically a problem of generations. Typically, the discourse on responsibility focusses on the technical and philosophical questions posed by the study into “intra-” and “inter-generational justice”. It is the purpose of this paper to present sociological conceptual tools with which to both analyze and propose solutions to specific social problems caused by current generations that will affect future generations.Design/methodology/approachFigurational process sociology develops and tests models of long-term, unplanned developments, which produce the conditions in which short-term practices of informing and planning social interventions are bound up.FindingsThe paper reveals the significance of sociological models that can describe and explain social processes and long-term developments in human habitus that have important explanatory value for understanding contemporary social problems such as human-caused climate change.Originality/valueThe concepts and analytical frames of reference provided by figurational process sociology provide crucial insights into the problem of generations and can help reveal how this social dynamic contributes to challenges facing young climate activists calling for rapid “ecologization” processes and increased human restraint with regard to the natural environment.

The Principle of Intergenerational Justice in Environmental Management and Its Relation to the Concept of Sustainable Development

The principle of intergenerational justice and its relationship to the concept of sustainable development in environmental management is an endlessly discussed issue. Considering that the environment is one of the most crucial elements for the survival on Earth, this study constructs the principle of intergenerational justice as an effort towards sustainable development in environmental management, as stipulated in Law Number 32 of 2009 concerning Environmental Protection and Management. This study falls under the category of literature research, examining literature data from law books, journals, legislation, and other relevant references. The research findings indicate that the management and utilization of natural resources between generations should be carried out fairly, meaning that the present generation has an obligation to pass on the environment in a good condition to future generations. Therefore, environmental management and utilization must be based on moral and sustainability principles. The concept of sustainable development embodies the principles of intergenerational justice. In the practice of law enforcement, the principle of intergenerational justice has been implemented by the Philippine government, as exemplified by the Minor Oposa case in 1993, which involved deforestation. In Indonesia itself, the normative principles of intergenerational justice have been accommodated in various principles, as stated in Article 2 of Law Number 32 of 2009 concerning Environmental Protection and Management.

When the Generational Overlap Is the Challenge Rather Than the Solution. On Some Problematic Versions of Transgenerational Justice

Abstract While in the realm of scholarly debate on intergenerational justice the mechanism of a transgenerational intertwinement has been often adopted as a chief conceptual device in view of overcoming ethical short-termism and legitimizing duties towards future generations, this paper aims at showing that there are good reasons for considering the opposite outcome. Drawing on three paradigmatic examples taken from three mainstream approaches in the debate—Rawls’s contractualism, Gauthier’s contractarianism, and indirect reciprocity—I will show how the grammar of presentism is still largely operative under the surface of theories explicitly recurring to such a device and thereby advocating a chain of duties capable to reach the remote future. A short closing section will be devoted to endorsing a radical reorientation in ethics, such that a direct link to future invocations will be considered as a promising strategy for genuinely justifying intergenerational obligations.

Transgenerational Social Structures and Fictional Actors: Community-Based Responsibility for Future Generations

AbstractThe notion of transgenerational community is usually based on two diachronic interactions. The first interaction consists of present generations taking up the legacy (not only economic, but also institutional, artistic, cultural, and so forth) of past generations and giving it continuity, exercising a form of active agency. The second interaction occurs when present generations pass on their legacy to future generations. This is supposed to expand the boundaries of the community in a transgenerational sense (both backward- and forward-looking). In this article we argue that the transgenerational community can be grounded on a different ontological insight: future generations play the role of fictional actors for present generations, i.e., present generations entertain a present-time interaction with future generations, insofar as future generations are functional for the realization of transgenerational actions. This lays the foundations for more solid community-based bonds of intergenerational justice.

Put an eye on the future: Rethinking the theoretical price of fossil energy based on the perspective of intergenerational equity

Discovering the true value of fossil energy resources can make full use of the price regulation leverage to adjust the energy structure, relieve carbon emissions, and gain more time for renewable energy to replace fossil energy. As exhaustible resources, the exploitation and consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas can directly affect the environment and resources reserve of future generations, which will directly destroy the fairness of intergenerational transmission. To make the price of fossil resources work better, the theoretical energy prices composed of production costs (PC), user costs (UC), environmental costs (EC), and especially intergenerational compensation costs (IC) are taken into consideration in this study. In addition, the study probes the impact of the theoretical and actual prices of fossil energy resources on carbon intensity with the path analysis method and detects the key paths. Results show that the theoretical price of natural gas is compensated the most, followed by coal and oil. From the result of intergenerational equity, the theoretical prices of coal and oil have higher impacts on carbon intensity than their actual prices, while the condition of natural gas is not the same. It is necessary for decision-makers to fully consider the characteristics of environmental damage, scarcity, and especially intergenerational compensation when repricing coal and oil price. Fortunately, the actual price of natural gas is the most effective for realizing the intergenerational equality target. It is crucial to put an eye on the future in reexamining fossil energy prices and formulating relevant emission reduction policies.