In times of climate change and public debt, a concern for intergenerational justice should lead us to have a closer look at theories of intergenerational justice. It should also press us to provide institutional design proposals to change the decision-making world that surrounds us. This book provides an exhaustive overview of the most important institutional proposals as well as a systematic and theoretical discussion of their respective features and advantages. It focuses on institutional proposals aimed at taking the interests of future generations more seriously, and does so from the perspective of applied political philosophy, being explicit about the underlying normative choices and the latest developments in the social sciences. It provides citizens, activists, firms, charities, public authorities, policy-analysts, students, and academics with the body of knowledge necessary to understand what our institutional options are and what they entail if we are concerned about today's excessive short-termism.

This important book focuses on how newly emerging institutions for future generations can contribute to tackling large scale global environmental problems, such as threats to biodiversity and climate change. It is especially timely given the new global impetus for decarbonisation, as well as the huge growth of climate litigation and climate protest movements, often led by young people.

Distributive justice has come to the fore in political philosophy: how should we arrange our social and economic institutions so as to distribute benefits and burdens fairly? Thirty-eight leading figures from philosophy and political theory present specially written critical assessments of the key issues in this flourishing area of research.

The recent austerity measures currently adopted in numerous European countries assume that a rise in public debt should automatically result in cuts to social programmes and the privatisation of “inefficiently” managed resources. This type of reasoning is being used to justify the destruction of social rights of citizens for the profit of the private sector, resulting in more limited access to the most fundamental resources such as water, nature, housing, culture, knowledge and information, mainly for the most vulnerable members of society. Such a view, informed solely by short-term growth and profit cycles, is endangering access to those resources not only for current generations but for future ones as well. This book is an attempt to go beyond liberal approaches to intergenerational and distributive justice. It emphasises the role of commons and communities of the commons, driven by the desire to defend and perpetuate those fundamental resources under the threat of expropriation by the state and the market. This book also offers policy makers and citizens, who wish to accept their political responsibility by being active and refusing corporate ideology, some best practices as well as methods and solutions for renewing the configurations of societal relationships through commons, thereby integrating the interests of future generations in the European Community’s decision-making processes and institutions. This is a contribution by the Council of Europe and the International University College of Turin to the protection of the dignity of every person, especially of those who, even though unable to enjoy existing social rights, have the right to benefit from choices and policies that ensure that human life remains unspoiled

In times of climate change and public debt, a concern for intergenerational justice should lead us to have a closer look at theories of intergenerational justice. It should also press us to provide institutional design proposals to change the decision-making world that surrounds us. This book provides an exhaustive overview of the most important institutional proposals as well as a systematic and theoretical discussion of their respective features and advantages. It focuses on institutional proposals aimed at taking the interests of future generations more seriously, and does so from the perspective of applied political philosophy, being explicit about the underlying normative choices and the latest developments in the social sciences. It provides citizens, activists, firms, charities, public authorities, policy-analysts, students, and academics with the body of knowledge necessary to understand what our institutional options are and what they entail if we are concerned about today's excessive short-termism.

This book discusses imaginary future generations and how current decision-making will influence those future generations. Markets and democracies focus on the present and therefore tend to make us forget that we are living in the present, with ancestors preceding and descendants succeeding us. Markets are excellent devices to equate supply and demand in the short term, but not for allocating resources between current and future generations, since future generations do not exist yet. Democracy is also not “applicable” for future generations, since citizens vote for candidates who will serve members of their, i.e., the current, generation. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the authors discusses imaginary future generations and future ministries in the context of current decision-making in fields such as the environment, urban management, forestry, water management, and finance. The idea of imaginary future generations comes from the Native American Iroquois, who had strong norms that compelled them to incorporate the interests of people seven generations ahead when making decisions.

In this book Professor Weiss combines thorough research and careful analysis with imaginative solutions and a moral fervour, to show how rules of international law can be applied in an intertemporal dimension, and how the basic principles of the intergenerational equity can be developed to provide new standards for human behaviour. She manages to communicate to the reader not only that the situation is getting desperate but also that human intelligence can in time devise adequate remedies, without destroying completely our way of life.

Peter Lawrence�s Justice for Future Generations breaks new ground by using a multidisciplinary approach to tackle the issue of what ethical obligations current generations have towards future generations in addressing the threat of climate change. This

The Routledge Handbook of Global Sustainability Governance provides a state-of-the-art review of core debates and contributions that offer a more normative, critical, and transformatively aspirational view on global sustainability governance. In this landmark text, an international group of acclaimed scholars provides an overview of key analytical and normative perspectives, material and ideational structural barriers to sustainability transformation, and transformative strategies. Drawing on pivotal new and contemporary research, the volume highlights aspects to be considered and blind spots to be avoided when trying to understand and implement global sustainability governance. In this context, the authors of this book debunk many myths about all-too optimistic accounts of progress towards a sustainability transition. Simultaneously, they suggest approaches that have the potential for real sustainability transformation and systemic change, while acknowledging existing hurdles. The wide-ranging chapters in the collection are organised into four key parts: • Part 1: Conceptual lenses • Part 2: Ethics, principles, and debates • Part 3: Key challenges • Part 4: Transformative approaches This handbook will serve as an important resource for academics and practitioners working in the fields of sustainability governance and environmental politics.

The human condition teems with institutions – intertemporal social arrangements that shape human relations in support of particular values – and the social scientific work developed over the last five decades aimed at understanding them is similarly vast and diverse. This book synthesizes scholarship from across the social sciences, with special focus on political science, sociology, economics, and organizational studies. Drawing out institutions' essentially social and temporal qualities and their varying relationships to efficiency and power, the authors identify more underlying similarity in understandings of institutional origins, maintenance, and change than emerges from overviews from within any given disciplinary tradition. Most importantly, Theories of Institutions identifies dozens of avenues for cross-fertilization, the pursuit of which can help keep this broad and inherently diverse field of study vibrant for future generations of scholars.