This anthology combines an intercultural approach with intergenerational ethics to address critical environmental challenges. Written by scholars from all over the world, including Canada, the US, New Zealand, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Japan, the UK, China, and Spain, this book offers new perspectives on how to foster sustainable societal practises that draw on the past and are fair to future generations. It introduces the Māori idea that views all things and human generations in layered relations; Indigenous accounts of spiralling time and reciprocities among ancestors and descendants; the philosophical dimensions of Chinese conceptions of ancestor spirits and future ghosts; and African accounts of anamnestic solidarity among generations. These ideas influence proposals for how to confront ending worlds and address the environmental future of humanity, making this book a valuable resource for scholars and students of environmental law and policy, environmental humanities, political science, and intercultural and comparative philosophy, as well as policymakers.

In the face of widespread environmental and social destabilization and growing uncertainty about the future of humanity, this collection of essays brings the philosophical tradition of phenomenology to the question of relations between generations to examine our ethical, political, and environmental obligations to future people. Emphasizing phenomenology's rich reflections on the role of time in the constitution of the social-historical world and its relation to the environment, the essays interweave the central themes of mortality, natality, generativity, and amor mundi to build vital bridges between new developments in both eco- and critical phenomenology and important work in intergenerational ethics. Together, the chapters reevaluate the traditional scope and foundational concepts of environmental ethics and social justice, paving the way for a revised understanding of intergenerational responsibilities, culminating in the key insight that future people are of us. The result is an invaluable conceptual toolkit for phenomenologists, ethicists, theorists, students, and activists concerned with environmental justice and climate ethics.

This book challenges mainstream Western IEJ (intergenerational environmental justice) in a manner that privileges indigenous philosophies and highlights the value these philosophies have for solving global environmental problems. Divided into three parts, the book begins by examining the framing of Western liberal environmental, intergenerational and indigenous justice theory and reviews decolonial theory. Using contemporary case studies drawn from the courts, film, biography and protests actions, the second part explores contemporary Māori and Aboriginal experiences of values-conflict in encounters with politics and law. It demonstrates the deep ontological rifts between the philosophies that inform Māori and Aboriginal intergenerational justice (IJ) and those of the West that underpin the politics and law of these two settler states. Existing Western IEJ theories, across distributional, communitarian, human rights based and the capabilities approach to IJ, are tested against obligations and duties of specific Māori and Aboriginal iwi and clans. Finally, in the third part, it explores the ways we relate to time and across generations to create regenerative IJ. Challenging the previous understanding of the conceptualization of time, it posits that it is in how we relate—human to human, human to nonhuman, nonhuman to human—that robust conceptualization of IEJ emerges. This volume presents an imagining of IEJ which accounts for indigenous norms on indigenous terms and explores how this might be applied in national and international responses to climate change and environmental degradation. Demonstrating how assumptions in mainstream justice theory continue to colonise indigenous people and render indigenous knowledge invisible, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental and intergenerational philosophy, political theory, indigenous studies and decolonial studies, and environmental humanities more broadly.

This highly accessible book provides an extensive and comprehensive overview of current research and theory about why and how we should protect future generations. It exposes how and why the interests of people today and those of future generations are often in conflict and what can be done. It rebuts critical concepts such as Parfits' non-identity paradox and Beckerman's denial of any possibility of intergenerational justice. The core of the book is the lucid application of a veil of ignorance to derive principles of intergenerational justice which show that our duties to posterity are stronger than is often supposed. Tremmel's approach demands that each generation both consider and improve the well-being of future generations. To measure the well-being of future generations Tremmel employs the Human Development Index rather than the metrics of utilitarian subjective happiness. The book thus answers in detailed, concrete terms the two most important questions of every theory of intergenerational justice: what to sustain? and how much to sustain?

Eco-Deconstruction marks a new approach to the degradation of the natural environment, including habitat loss, species extinction, and climate change. While the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), with its relentless interrogation of the anthropocentric metaphysics of presence, has already proven highly influential in posthumanism and animal studies, the present volume, drawing on published and unpublished work by Derrida and others, builds on these insights to address the most pressing environmental issues of our time. The volume brings together fifteen prominent scholars, from a wide variety of related fields, including eco-phenomenology, eco-hermeneutics, new materialism, posthumanism, animal studies, vegetal philosophy, science and technology studies, environmental humanities, eco-criticism, earth art and aesthetics, and analytic environmental ethics. Overall, eco-deconstruction offers an account of differential relationality explored in a non-totalizable ecological context that addresses our times in both an ontological and a normative register. The book is divided into four sections. “Diagnosing the Present” suggests that our times are marked by a facile, flattened-out understanding of time and thus in need of deconstructive dispositions. “Ecologies” mobilizes the spectral ontology of deconstruction to argue for an originary environmentality, the constitutive ecological embeddedness of mortal life. “Nuclear and Other Biodegradabilities,” examines remains, including such by-products and disintegrations of human culture as nuclear waste, environmental destruction, and species extinctions. “Environmental Ethics” seeks to uncover a demand for justice, including human responsibility for suffering beings, that emerges precisely as a response to original differentiation and the mortality and unmasterable alterity it installs in living beings. As such, the book will resonate with readers not only of philosophy, but across the humanities and the social and natural sciences.

The contributors to this volume undertake to establish the foundations and definitions of intergenerational justice and to explore its capacity to guide us in policy and public opinion judgments we must make to face unprecedented issues. . . We are changing the biosphere and using resources to an extent never contemplated in the history of ethics. Deterioration of our oceans, loss of topsoil, insecurity about potable water supplies, the ozone hole, global warming, and the question about how to handle high-level nuclear waste which remains lethal perhaps 400,000 years from now, are some examples whose consequences reach far beyond inherited principles and policies of responsibility to others. This Handbook works to open a path for debate, extension of our tradition and invention of new thinking on these issues. Craig Walton, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, US More than a Handbook, this collection is a landmark work showing the way to a new ethics of intergenerational responsibility. It raises, in the most comprehensive way, the overarching ethical questions of our time, What are the rights of future generations? and How might present generations establish a philosophical foundation for its responsibilities to generations to come? . Peter Blaze Corcoran, Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education, Florida Gulf Coast University, US This important book provides a rich menu of history, current theory, and future directions in constitutional law, philosophy of rights and justice, and the relations of economics and politics to time, institutions, and the common good. It is enlivened by back-and-forth discussions among the authors (including some disagreements), as well as by applications to important contemporary issues such as climate change, nuclear waste, and public debt. Theoretic considerations are nicely balanced with examples of the means adopted in a number of countries to establish a legal foundation for protection of the quality of life for future generations. Neva Goodwin, Tufts University, US Do we owe the future anything? If so, what and why? Our capacity to affect the lives of future generations is greater than ever before, but what principles should regulate our relationship with people who don t yet exist? This Handbook offers a comprehensive survey of the key debates and pathbreaking accounts of potential ways forward both ethical and institutional. Andrew Dobson, The Open University, UK This Handbook provides a detailed overview of various issues related to intergenerational justice. Comprising articles written by a distinguished group of scholars from the international scientific community, the Handbook is divided into two main thematic sections foundations and definitions of intergenerational justice and institutionalization of intergenerational justice. The first part clarifies basic terms and traces back the origins of the idea of intergenerational justice. It also focuses on the problem of intergenerational buck-passing in the ecological context; for example in relation to nuclear waste and the greenhouse effect. At the same time, it also sheds light on the relationship between intergenerational justice and economics, addressing issues such as public debt and financial sustainability. The innovative second part of the volume highlights how posterity can be institutionally protected, such as by inserting relevant clauses into national constitutions. Reading this volume is the best way to gain an overall knowledge of intergenerational justice an extremely salient and topical issue of our time. The Handbook is an important contribution to the literature and will be of great interest to academics and graduate students as well as readers interested in wider human rights issues.

Justice, Society and Nature examines the moral response which the world must make to the ecological crisis if there is to be real change in the global society and economy to favour ecological integrity. From its base in the idea of the self, through principles of political justice, to the justice of global institutions, the authors trace the layered structure of the philosophy of justice as it applies to environmental and ecological issues. Philosophical ideas are treated in a straightforward and easily understandable way with reference to practical examples. Moving straight to the heart of pressing international and national concerns, the authors explore the issues of environment and development, fair treatment of humans and non-humans, and the justice of the social and economic systems which affect the health and safety of the peoples of the world. Current grass-roots concerns such as the environmental justice movement in the USA, and the ethics of the international regulation of development are examined in depth. The authors take debates beyond mere complaint about the injustice of the world economy, and suggest what should now be done to do justice to nature.

Environmental Ethics offers an up-to-date and balanced overview of environmental ethics, focusing on theory and practice. Written in clear and engaging prose, the book provides an historical perspective on the relationship between humans and nature and explores the limitations and possibilities of classical ethical theories in relation to the environment. In addition, the book discusses major theoretical approaches to environmental ethics and addresses contemporary environmental issues such as climate change and ecological restoration. Connections between theory and practice are highlighted throughout, showing how values guide environmental policies and practices, and conversely, how actions and institutions shape environmental values.

This open access book brings together discourse on children and peace from the 15th International Symposium on the Contributions of Psychology to Peace, covering issues pertinent to children and peace and approaches to making their world safer, fairer and more sustainable. The book is divided into nine sections that examine traditional themes (social construction and deconstruction of diversity, intergenerational transitions and memories of war, and multiculturalism), as well as contemporary issues such as Europe’s “migration crisis”, radicalization and violent extremism, and violence in families, schools and communities. Chapters contextualize each issue within specific social ecological frameworks in order to reflect on the multiplicity of influences that affect different outcomes and to discuss how the findings can be applied in different contexts. The volume also provides solutions and hope through its focus on youth empowerment and peacebuilding programs for children and families. This forward-thinking volume offers a multitude of views, approaches, and strategies for research and activism drawn from peace psychology scholars and United Nations researchers and practitioners. This book's multi-layered emphasis on context, structural determinants of peace and conflict, and use of research for action towards social cohesion for children and youth has not been brought together in other peace psychology literature to the same extent. Children and Peace: From Research to Action will be a useful resource for peace psychology academics and students, as well as social and developmental psychology academics and students, peace and development practitioners and activists, policy makers who need to make decisions about the matters covered in the book, child rights advocates and members of multilateral organizations such as the UN.