Artificial neural networks and inclusive growth: A customized measurement approach and empirical analysis for the MENA region

Abstract This short article provides an introduction to the special issue “Gosseries on Intergenerational Justice,” so as to guide interested readers. In the first half of the article, we provide a short introduction to Axel Gosseries’s book What Is Intergenerational Justice? where we distill the essence of each chapter. In the second half, we succinctly summarize the main points in each of the special issue’s contributions (to which Gosseries responds in the “reply to critics” article that concludes the special issue).

ABSTRACT Generational equity issues, spanning politics, environmental sustainability, health care, and economic policy, are increasingly visible in public discourse, yet remain underexplored in gerontological education. This article presents an innovative graduate-level social work course that centers intergenerational justice as a framework for engaging students and lifelong learners in aging-related social justice topics. Through thematic modules, experiential activities, and interdisciplinary content, the course invites students to examine justice across and within age groups, challenging ageist assumptions and fostering cross-generational empathy. A unique iteration of the course incorporated older adult learners through partnership with a lifelong learning institute, enriching classroom dialogue and modeling inclusive pedagogy. Evaluation data revealed high student satisfaction, increased engagement, and reduced ageist attitudes across generations. Lessons learned highlight the importance of thoughtful facilitation, institutional support, and curricular adaptability. This course offers a replicable model for integrating aging content into generalist education and specialized courses that address equity across the lifespan. By reframing aging as a dynamic and justice-oriented domain, intergenerational justice education may help attract students with diverse interests to gerontology and address workforce gaps in aging-related fields.

Radioactive waste management is not only a technical and administrative concern but also an ethical, ecological, and intergenerational responsibility. This article reconstructs the concept of eco-maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah as a normative framework for strengthening corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies in radioactive waste management in Banten and West Java, Indonesia. Existing regulatory frameworks tend to prioritize procedural compliance, risk control, and institutional administration, while giving limited attention to moral accountability, ecological justice, and community-based responsibility. Using a normative legal method supported by conceptual and policy analysis, this study examines statutory regulations, corporate reports, international safety standards, and relevant Islamic legal literature. The findings show that eco-maqāṣid, particularly the protection of life, future generations, and the environment, offer a transformative ethical foundation for developing Sharia-based CSR in radioactive waste governance. The cases of Banten and West Java demonstrate the urgency of integrating Islamic environmental ethics into risk mitigation, public transparency, community participation, and corporate accountability. The study’s main novelty lies in proposing Eco-Sharia Governance, a maqāṣid-based policy model that bridges national legal frameworks, international radioactive waste standards, SDGs 3, 6, 12, and 13, and Islamic ethical values. This model contributes to a more holistic approach to radioactive waste management by shifting CSR from mere corporate obligation toward ecological responsibility, public safety, and intergenerational justice

ABSTRACT This article considers the implications of the Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations for the pharmaceutical industry. The Principles set out international human rights law’s stance on the obligations and responsibilities of states and non-state actors regarding the human rights of future generations, rooted in environmental and intergenerational justice. The industry presents a conflicting duality between rights fulfilment and rights infringement, developing and providing essential medicines, whilst also contributing to environmental harms, inequitable innovation models, resource depletion and barriers to treatment. This paper argues that the Principles highlight core responsibilities for the industry. These not only relate to environmental reforms, but also to the adoption of prospective due diligence; forward-looking innovation, reduction in barriers to access and the continued production of essential medicines. The paper concludes that whilst currently non-binding, the evolving international recognition of the rights of future generations and the pressing climate crisis places a growing normative and practical weight upon the pharmaceutical industry to adapt their approach to better account for the rights of future as well as current generations.

ABSTRACT This article proposes a transdisciplinary approach to understanding ancestry as a social value, articulating temporal, social, and symbolic-affective dimensions that sustain belonging, continuity, and intergenerational justice. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in quilombola, Indigenous, and peripheral communities, it introduces a conceptual model in which individual vectors (race, ethnicity, genetic heritage) are interwoven with collective values (memory, identity, care). Grounded in contributions from diverse fields, the article argues that ancestry constitutes an ethical-political system of bonds with concrete applications in education, culture, and public policy. It also acknowledges the concept’s ambivalences, including the risks of exclusionary normativities and cultural fetishization. As proposed here, ancestry is less an essence than a living practice of collective reconstruction, offering an ethics of continuity capable of regenerating bonds in times of affective, environmental, and social collapse.

The spatial planning of Industrial Forest Plantations (HTI) in Indonesia faces increasing challenges as economic expansion frequently generates ecological degradation and disaster risks. This article examines the need to reconstruct legal policies governing HTI spatial planning to integrate disaster-mitigation and ecological-justice principles. Using normative legal research with statutory, conceptual, and comparative approaches, this study analyzes Law No. 6 of 2023 and related forestry regulations, supported by empirical environmental data from the WALHI Environmental Outlook (2025) and KSDAE reports. The findings reveal that the current spatial planning framework facilitates what can be described as “legal deforestation,” where forest exploitation significantly exceeds the state’s ecological recovery capacity. This imbalance contributes to increasing hydrological disasters and socio-ecological injustices affecting local and indigenous communities. Comparative insights from Nordic forestry governance highlight the importance of transparent geospatial monitoring and balanced forest management. This article proposes a legal reconstruction model that integrates the Rights of Nature, ecological disaster risk insurance, and stronger supremacy of spatial planning. Such reforms are essential to align Indonesia’s forestry governance with global environmental standards and to ensure intergenerational ecological justice.

The ageing population is a critical global issue shaped by demographic transitions. Despite growing research, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of trends, contributors, and thematic evolution is lacking. This study aims to map the research landscape on population ageing from 1940 to 2024, identifying publication trends, key contributors, dominant themes, and emerging technological interventions. Following PRISMA guidelines, a systematic search was conducted in the Scopus database. After screening titles, abstracts, and full texts according to predefined criteria, 2,568 publications were included. Bibliometric analyses were performed using biblioMagika, VOSviewer, and Biblioshiny to examine publication growth, citation patterns, co-authorship networks, and keyword co-occurrence. Sensitivity analyses using year-by-year preliminary data were employed to assess trend robustness. Findings reveal sustained growth in ageing-related research through the sensitivity analysis, reflecting global interest. Key themes unveiled in this study are Health and chronic diseases (e.g., geriatric care, longevity), Cognitive health and technology integration (e.g., AI, smart homes), Socio-economic aspects (e.g., pensions, intergenerational equity). Also, Artificial intelligence and smart technologies emerged as pivotal for older adult care innovation. The U.S., U.K., and Canada led in contributions, with interdisciplinary collaboration driving advancements. The study reveals the need for interdisciplinary research to address ageing challenges, offering policymakers and stakeholders a roadmap for future priorities. Emerging technologies like AI present transformative opportunities but require ethical and equitable implementation. Limitations include database coverage biases. Future research should explore multiple bases, regional disparities and practical applications of technological solutions.

This article examines intergenerational justice from a legal perspective by focusing on employment regulation and by addressing a preliminary question: how the legally relevant category of the ‘older worker’ is constructed in legal systems in which age operates both as a protected ground and as a recurrent regulatory criterion. Within the EU multilevel framework, the analysis draws on Directive 2000/78/EC - particularly Article 6 - and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union to show that EU equality law does not establish a single, fixed age marker for identifying who qualifies as an older worker, but instead bases age-based differentiation around justification requirements and structured proportionality review. Building on this premise, the article turns to Italy as a case study, reconstructing the statutory age criteria and eligibility conditions through which labour and social security rules allocate opportunities, duties and protection, and shape pathways of retention and exit across the working life cycle. Intergenerational justice is understood here as fairness between age groups coexisting in the workforce. The core question is whether the resulting regulatory architecture produces a balanced allocation of opportunities, burdens and protections across age positions, not only in distributive terms, but also in terms of relational equality and the legal conditions for quality work across the life course. In this sense, the article argues that intergenerational balance cannot be inferred from resource distribution alone, since working conditions and legal entitlements may enable or constrain longer working lives and shape older workers’ willingness and capacity to remain in employment. On this basis, the article seeks to clarify the legal notion of the ‘older worker’, with two main objectives: first, to use it as an analytical lens through which to assess age-based regulation in labour law; and second, to frame it as a category that may be necessary for shaping a more balanced regulation of the labour market and the employment relationship in light of the changing age composition of the workforce.

ABSTRACT This article examines the effects of population ageing on the composition of government spending in 25 European Union member states from 1995 to 2023. Empirical evidence indicates that demographic ageing leads to shifts in government spending priorities. In particular, government spending tends to increase on social protection, general public services, health, and defence, while decreasing on housing and community amenities, environmental protection, and education. These results suggest that demographic ageing contributes to a reallocation of government spending toward age-related functions, accompanied by relative reductions in other areas. Overall, the findings highlight the potential structural implications of population ageing for fiscal sustainability and intergenerational equity, emphasizing the importance of public policies that are adaptable to long-term demographic changes.

The global legal landscape is witnessing a ‘constitutional turn’ in environmental litigation. As the physical impacts of climate change intensify, litigants are shifting from administrative challenges toward fundamental rights‑based claims. Courts across jurisdictions are recognizing a ‘right against climate change’ through doctrines such as the Living Tree, proportionality, and intergenerational equity. At the same time, pharmaceutical sciences are innovating drug delivery systems—nano carriers, inhalable formulations, and sustained-release implants—to mitigate climate-linked health burdens. Through this study, the researcher integrates jurisprudential and biomedical perspectives, arguing that climate justice must extend to drug administration. By combining constitutional principles of fairness, intergenerational responsibility, and ecological sustainability with pharmaceutical innovation, the study proposes a justice-oriented framework for climate-health governance in the Anthropocene(1). It concludes that while the right presents significant challenges to the doctrine of polycentricity, it serves as an essential ‘intertemporal guarantee of freedom' in the Anthropocene (1,2).

ABSTRACT This study examines how experts strategically mobilize ideas through framing and narrative in deliberative polling. Analyzing South Korea’s 2024 pension reform deliberation, we investigate how competing expert panels utilize the valence and polysemic ideas of sustainability and solidarity as coalition magnets to influence public discourse. This study combines computational text analysis and qualitative interpretation through frequency analysis, Clauset–Newman–Moore community detection in word co-occurrence networks, sentence-level term frequency–inverse document frequency analysis, and framing and narrative analysis of salient passages. The analysis shows that competing experts strategically framed these ideas through distinct narratives: fiscal stability advocates emphasized financial sustainability and intergenerational equity through decline narratives, while income security proponents used control narratives to emphasize social responsibility and government intervention. The findings contribute to deliberative democracy research by demonstrating that experts strategically use framing and narrative to shape lay citizens’ preferences and advance preferred policy alternatives.

ABSTRACT The global extractive mining industry has undergone significant expansion over recent decades, triggering severe ecological and social impacts that threaten vulnerable communities. Amid these challenges, environmental non‐governmental organizations (ENGOs) play an increasingly vital role in advocating for equitable and sustainable mining governance. However, existing research on ENGO advocacy remains fragmented across disciplines, necessitating a systematic review to identify patterns of strategies, constraints, and outcomes of NGO activism in diverse mining regions globally. This study employs a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) following the PRISMA 2020 protocol, with searches in Scopus and Web of Science yielding 143 articles, screened and resulting in 39 publications meeting the inclusion criteria (published ≥2015, English language, focused on environmental NGOs in mining). The reviewed articles were predominantly qualitative (30; 77%), with quantitative (4; 10%) and mixed methods (5; 13%) approaches comprising the remainder. Articles were assessed using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) and analyzed thematically using NVivo 14. The findings identify six key advocacy strategies emphasizing digital campaigns and community collaboration, reflecting a transformation toward hybrid environmental activism. Simultaneously, NGOs confront persistent structural barriers operating across macro, meso, and micro levels, including state repression, corporate dominance, and community co‐optation. Nevertheless, advocacy efforts have produced five significant achievements: governance reform, community empowerment, regulatory change, socio‐ecological impacts, and enhanced public accountability. Community empowerment emerges as the most prominent impact, underscoring that affected communities exercise autonomous collective agency amplified—rather than created—by NGO intervention. This study proposes a hybrid environmental activism framework grounded in environmental justice principles that integrates social movement theory with environmental governance perspectives, and recommends further research on gender dimensions, intergenerational justice, and socio‐ecological resilience in mining contexts. This systematic review synthesizes global evidence on environmental NGO advocacy in mining regions, revealing hybrid activism that merges digital campaigns, legal strategies, and community collaboration. Despite multilayered structural barriers, such advocacy advances governance reform, community empowerment, and transparency through a hybrid framework.

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractThis study examines how foreign direct investment (FDI) has affected manufacturing carbon emissions in eight ASEAN economies from 2005 to 2022 using panel data from the World Bank and UNCTAD and employing random effects and feasible generalized least squares estimators. The preferred specification indicates that a 1 percentage point increase in manufacturing-adjusted FDI inflows (as a share of GDP) is associated with a 0.018-unit rise in log manufacturing CO₂ emissions (approximately 1.8%). Simultaneously, population size (coefficient ≈ 0.94) and fossil fuel energy consumption (coefficient ≈ 0.053) exert strong positive and statistically significant effects. By contrast, per capita income and its squared term are not significant, providing no support for a Kuznets type nonlinear income-emissions relationship, and lagged emissions add little once contemporaneous drivers and error structures are controlled for. The results suggest that FDI has primarily flowed into emissions-intensive manufacturing activities, with limited evidence of broad-based clean technology transfer, thereby risking a lock-in of carbon-intensive development that undermines ASEAN’s Net Zero ambitions and intergenerational equity. The paper argues that tighter environmental standards for FDI, an accelerated energy transition away from fossil fuels, and integrated population planning is needed to reconcile manufacturing-led industrial expansion with sustainability goals in ASEAN. It also offers sector specific evidence to guide FDI governance and energy policy in middle-income countries.

ABSTRACT Irreversible and inevitable climate change will, and already has, negatively affected the lives, livelihoods, and health of many communities around the world as well as of future generations. Yet, climate-affected communities often have little responsibility for bringing about these consequences. This has led some scholars to argue that climate-affected communities, now and in the future, have a ‘right to climate adaptation:’ the right to demand adaptive assistance and freedom. In this paper, I ask what normative commitments that should be respected when implementing the right to climate adaptation within national and international climate policy and legislation. In particular, I identify three core normative commitments of the right to climate adaptation, namely (i) a commitment to conceptualizing socioeconomic justice in multi-dimensional terms, taking into account the context-sensitivity of climate-vulnerabilities and adaptive needs; (ii) a commitment to intergenerational justice, both forward-looking in order to anticipate adaptation needs of future generations, but also backwards-looking by recognizing the historical injustices that have brought about current climate-vulnerabilities and thus to provide reparations for past harms; and (iii) the commitments to provide basic adaptation and to respect autonomous adaptation.

BackgroundEducation is an important determinant of health throughout the life course. However, less is understood about whether and how intergenerational educational mobility—comparing an individual’s own and their parents’ education—is associated with depressive symptoms among aging populations across diverse settings. This study examines this association and its mediating pathways.MethodsUsing data from six harmonized longitudinal aging studies: the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and its partner studies in England, European countries, South Korea, Mexico, and China, we conducted cross-sectional (n = 94,655) and longitudinal analyses (n = 56,817) to first establish the association across diverse populations, and then strengthen causal inference by examining whether educational mobility relates to depressive symptoms over time. Educational mobility was categorized as stably low, downwardly mobile, stably middle, upwardly mobile, and stably high group based on country- and cohort-specific percentiles. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Euro-D or CES-D. We also examined the moderating role of gender in these associations. Mediating pathways through household wealth, social activeness, and multimorbidity were also explored.ResultsLongitudinal analyses revealed consistent gradient associations across countries. Compared to the stably low group, downwardly mobile (OR: 0.84, 95% CI: 0.76–0.93), stably middle (OR: 0.78, 95% CI: 0.72–0.84), upwardly mobile (OR: 0.74, 95% CI: 0.67–0.83), and stably high (OR: 0.65, 95% CI: 0.53–0.80) showed lower odds of depressive symptoms. Gender differences emerged in European countries and South Korea, where women had lower odds than men in downwardly mobile and stably high groups. Cross-sectional results showed similar but stronger patterns. Household wealth was the most consistent mediator, explaining 24–34% of the association in the USA and comparable proportions elsewhere except for South Korea. Social activeness and multimorbidity also showed important but varying mediating proportions across countries.ConclusionsAdvantaged educational mobility is associated with reduced depressive symptoms in mid- and later-life. Household wealth, social activeness, and multimorbidity contribute as important mediators. Future policies are needed to promote intergenerational educational equity and implement integrated strategies to reduce mental health disparities.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12916-026-04808-w.

Liechtenstein faces long-term fiscal pressures from population aging, climate transition, and enhanced security requirements. Using a Marginal Abatement Cost Curve framework, cohort-component demographic modeling, and cross-country benchmarking, staff estimates cumulative annual spending pressures of approximately 3½ percent of GDP by 2050—climate mitigation and adaptation (1.7 percent), pensions (1.5 percent), and security (0.3 percent). Liechtenstein's strong fiscal position—consistent surpluses, near-zero public debt, and substantial net assets—provides space to address these pressures. Systematic integration of long-term projections into budgetary frameworks through regular sustainability assessments and independent evaluation would strengthen transparency, intergenerational equity, and fiscal credibility.

Community attitudes towards offshore wind development have received substantial attention in policy and academic research, however young people's perspectives are under-represented in both, and in public consultation processes. This study focuses on young adults' perspectives on the declaration of a proposed offshore wind zone in the Illawarra region, 60 km south of Sydney, Australia. Interviews with 95 participants aged 18–30 showed a high rate of support for offshore wind, alongside strong place attachment. Participants also expressed significant climate change concern and identified localised climate change impacts on the Illawarra coastline. For this cohort, place attachment did not result in project opposition. Instead, they reframed support for offshore wind development as place-protective behaviour. The young adult interviewees also brought distant places and future time into the ambit of their care and concern. They expressed a relational and interconnected sense of place, and a sense of responsibility to take local action that benefits the Illawarra, while also promoting distributive and intergenerational justice. We argue that young adults need to be included more equitably in academic research and community consultation on renewable energy transitions, and that their inclusion has significant potential to shift the direction and priorities of public debate on this complex issue.

Despite the need to limit climate change and transition to low-carbon energy, there is disagreement about how to share the burden of reducing CO2 emissions. We assess different approaches to global mitigation, accounting for three key factors: avoided climate harms, health (co)benefits from improved air quality, and the economic cost of CO2 policies. We then rank the approaches according to different preferences for inter-generational and intra-generational equity. We compare a reference scenario to three scenarios that limit warming to 2°C: one through least cost, one that shifts mitigation burden towards higher-income countries (referred to as the international equity scenario), and a third that is identical to international equity, but within which low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) also adopt air quality policies to reduce air pollution to the levels that occur in least-cost. Emissions and policy costs are modelled with Global Change Analysis Model, air quality with GEOS-Chem, health impacts with the Global Exposure Mortality Model, and climate benefits with Greenhouse Gas Impact Value Estimator. Climate action to limit global warming to 2°C results in more than 13·5 million avoided premature deaths from air pollution between 2020 and 2050, mostly in middle-income countries. Opting for the least-cost scenario rather than international equity reduces the mitigation burden for LMICs but also reduces their health co-benefits by several million deaths, highlighting a trade-off between mitigation effort (an important component of climate justice) and the urgent need to reduce environmental health burdens in LMICs. The extent to which equity is prioritised determines what to do about that trade-off; as more priority is given to lower-income countries, the international equity scenario is preferred. The most favourable scenario is the combined international equity and air quality scenario, whereby higher-income countries pay more climate mitigation costs, and LMICs use the cost savings to implement conventional air quality controls that offset foregone health co-benefits. Justice-centred climate mitigation strategies must ensure that LMICs do not miss an opportunity to realise transformative reductions in air pollution. United States National Science Foundation.

Abstract This paper outlines central challenges that climate change presents for environmental ethics, and some important responses to it. We briefly introduce key ideas from environmental ethics and note the importance of nonanthropocentrism to the history of environmental ethics. We point out that while philosophers have previously engaged with the impacts of climate change, their primary focus has typically been on intra- and intergenerational justice between humans. More recently, however, environmental ethicists have developed wide-ranging responses to climate change, recognizing that its pervasive nature makes defending traditional values (such as wildness) and strategies (such as setting aside reserves) difficult in practice. We conclude by outlining divergent ways of developing environmental ethics in the light of climate change.