State decisions regarding a repository for high-level radioactive waste have an extraordinary intergenerational significance. The academic legal discussion has increasingly strengthened the status of future generations in constitutional law. In its recent decision on the German Climate Protection Act, the Federal Constitutional Court equally emphasised that state actors have an obligation to protect future generations. Fundamental rights of future generations thus have an anticipated effect in the present.

In public decisions with long-term implications, decisions of the present generation will affect long-term welfare, including future generations. However, only the present generation is able to participate in such decision-making processes. In this study, we invited “Imaginary Future Generations” (IFGs), as participants in a discussion who take on the role of members of future generations to argue on behalf of their future interests to engage in present-day deliberations among residents of a Japanese town.

The interests of children in a climate-challenged future are under-represented within UK policy-making and public discourse. Debates on intergenerational equity have centred on economic logic rather than the moral issue of harms to the next generation, or the responsibilities of today’s generation. Civil movements play an important role in changing public and political thinking on this issue; however, research on intergenerational climate justice activism has so far been confined to the youth movement.

Two Andean countries – Ecuador and Bolivia – have politically recognized the rights of nature, an idea that is also gaining traction at the sub-federal in the United States. The origins of the concept can be traced to the cultures of indigenous peoples of the Americas as well as to the work of American legal scholar Christopher Stone. Recognition of nature’s rights holds out the possibility of an alternative approach to environmental management and politics, as well as to a fundamentally redefined relationship between nature and society.

This paper discusses why there is a growing need for intergenerational programs and approaches to public policy. It suggests they provide some important and unique contributions to contemporary American society. These contributions include responding to challenges emerging from an aging society; by developing productive roles for the aging population, bridging stereotypes associated with age, and promoting understanding between the generations that discourages generational competition;.

In recent years, sustainable futures have gained momentum in the political discourse on shaping policies to better cope with future challenges in Europe and around the globe. Society’s transformation towards sustainability—formerly the exclusive domain of sustainability scholars and a few politicians and activists—has begun to become a topic of interest more widely debated in mass media and among the general public. For example, a 2019 Forsa survey revealed that most Germans perceive climate change as the country’s most urgent problem.

After decades of preparation, the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel has reached the construction stage in Finland, and the neighboring Sweden is likely to soon follow in the footsteps. These Nordic countries rely on a similar technical concept based on passive safety, advocated as a means of minimizing the burden to future generations. The scholarly literature on the ethics of nuclear waste management has thus far paid little attention to the views of the broader publics on the associated ethical challenges.

After decades of ineffective state-led global climate governance that has been dominated by mostly short-term Northern political and corporate interests, we are now witnessing an increased recognition of the planetary scale of the climate crisis and its impacts on present and future life on Earth. The Anthropocene is argued to be the new geological epoch and is associated with fast-approaching planetary boundaries and a new understanding of promethean humans as a powerful geological force.

With the termination of the Yucca Mountain project, which was proposed to be our nation’s first repository for the disposal of military and civilian spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, the future of nuclear waste management and disposal in this country became increasingly uncertain. Interim storage has been advocated by many as a temporary solution while a permanent solution is studied for potentially several more decades to come.

Nuclear waste management seems to exist in a perpetual state of crises. For 50 years the nuclear states of the world have fought, and generally lost, the battle to deal with the nuclear waste problem. Worldwide, there is a growing acknowledgement within industry and government that social and ethical issues are just as important as technical issues when developing safe programs for nuclear waste management. This paper is a review of some of the outstanding social and ethical issues that are influencing discussions on nuclear waste management around the world.

Human societies face various unsustainability problems, often characterized as “wicked” in the sense that they have no single definitive formulation. Thus, the role of creativity or insight in solving such problems has attracted a lot of attention from scholars. Therefore, this study investigated how an emerging methodology, Future Design (and its unique intervention of asking problem solvers to take a future generation’s perspective), can facilitate insight problem solving (IPS) and the generation of sustainable solutions.

The Forum on Stakeholder Confidence (FSC) was established by the NEA Radioactive Waste Management Committee (RWMC) in 2000 and serves as a platform for understanding stakeholder dialogue and discussing methods to develop shared confidence, informed consent and approval of radioactive waste (RW) management solutions.

In October 2022, the NEA Forum on Stakeholder Confidence (FSC) organised, in collaboration with the Belgian Agency for Radioactive Waste and Enriched Fissile Materials (ONDRAF/NIRAS), a national workshop in Dessel, Belgium, to explore the topic of stakeholder involvement across generations.

Building on previous work on this topic, participants gathered to discuss how to keep local communities involved in radioactive waste management after site selection, how to engage youth as key stakeholders and which approaches can be used to communicate with stakeholders now and in the future.

Global transformations – from population ageing to digitalisation, rising inequalities and climate change – have created profound uncertainties for young people and future generations, despite unprecedented access to information, education and technology. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing challenges in youth’s mental well-being and employment, while raising concerns about the sustainability of public finances.

This study addresses the concept of smart governance in the context of smart cities, with a focus on analyzing the phenomenon of smart collaboration. Relying on the existing collaboration and participation concepts in the smart city domain, an empirical analysis was undertaken of how ICT can promote collaborative governance and increase the participation and engagement in government. The multiple case studies focus on three cities in Brazil that run municipal operations centers in an effort to “become smarter”: Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, and Belo Horizonte.

Intergenerational justice is an inherent component of nuclear waste management. By looking at challenges of intergenerational justice at various stages of the repository siting process, the following thesis is discussed: Current generations can anticipate notions of intergenerational justice by applying high procedural standards to enable equitable distribution between generations and thus adequately recognize the needs of future generations. Applying high standards in this context means a constantly critical, reflexive, and open process, without bias or selfishness.

This paper reflects on the various possible nuclear power production methods from an ethical perspective. The production and consumption of nuclear power give rise to the problem of intergenerational justice; in other words, we are depleting a nonrenewable resource in the form of uranium while the radiotoxic waste that is generated carries very long-term potential burdens. I argue that the morally desirable option should therefore be to seek to safeguard the interests of future generations.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative® works to ensure that young people — ages 14 to 26 in the United States who have spent at least one day in foster care after their 14th birthday — have the resources, relationships and opportunities to achieve well-being and success. The Jim Casey Initiative does this by focusing on four key indicators: permanency, stable housing, educational success and economic security and pregnancy prevention and parenting support.

Purpose of Review: The nuclear power industry started in the 1950s and has now reached a phase of disposing high-level nuclear waste. Since the 1980s, the United Nations has developed a concept of sustainable development and governments have accordingly made ethical commitments to take responsibility towards future generations. The purpose of this review is to examine ethical dilemmas related to high-level nuclear waste disposal in a long-term perspective including potential access to the waste in the future.

The present report has been prepared pursuant to paragraph 86 of the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, in which the Secretary-General was invited to present a report on the need for promoting intergenerational solidarity for the achievement of sustainable development, taking into account the needs of future generations.

In the fall of 2019, Trøndelag County Council, Norway, organized a Climate Workshop for children and youth. The intention of the workshop was to include children’s and youth’s perspectives as a foundation for a policy document titled “How we do it in Trøndelag. Strategy for transformations to mitigate climate change”. The workshop involved a range of creative and discussion tools for input on sustainable development and climate politics.

Final disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from nuclear power plants (NPPs) is an ethical issue with implications within and across generations. We address this issue from the perspective of nuclear communities that host nuclear waste disposal sites. These are primarily the communities that face injustice due to the potential radiological risks. A resident survey (n = 454) was conducted in two Finnish nuclear communities, i.e. Eurajoki and Pyhäjoki, that are being considered as alternative sites for a second repository for SNF.

1. IFC has prepared a set of Guidance Notes, corresponding to the Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability. These Guidance Notes offer helpful guidance on the requirements contained in the Performance Standards, including reference materials, and on good sustainability practices to improve project performance. These Guidance Notes are not intended to establish policy by themselves; instead, they explain the requirements in the Performance Standards. 

Large-scale investments in land are spreading faster than ever before across the global south. Often these investments target lands governed by customary rights that are not adequately recognized and protected under national laws, or sites where governments lack the capacity to enforce the law. Land deals that change the use of land and natural resources have wide implications for indigenous peoples and local communities who depend primarily on these resources for their livelihoods, welfare and cultural identity.