Intergenerational Justice and Youth Participation

This report examines intergenerational justice and youth participation mechanisms across Europe, emphasizing the ethical obligation to protect future generations and the necessity of diverse, meaningful youth engagement in environmental and societal governance.

• Intergenerational justice is defined as an ethical obligation to satisfy current needs without harming future generations, incorporating distributive, procedural, and recognitional dimensions. A comprehensive approach requires integrating responsibilities across past, present, and future timelines while combining restorative, procedural, and distributive strategies to address historical injustices.
• Youth participants view intergenerational justice as both a practical and ethical matter, seeing themselves as current stakeholders and representatives for future generations. However, this role is dependent on the presence of institutional support, transparent feedback, and meaningful participation. They advocate for cross-generational dialogue to promote long-term thinking, shared responsibility, and empathy.
• Effective youth engagement requires recognizing diversity and can lead to increased innovation, accountability, transparency, and the development of civic skills. Youth concerns are wide-ranging, covering global and local issues such as biodiversity loss, climate change, urban green spaces, and mental health, with a preference for integrated technical, social, and governance solutions over single-issue approaches.
• The report identifies several participatory mechanisms used in Europe to engage youth, including participatory budgeting, Youth Councils, youth impact assessments, capacity-building programs, Local Conferences of Youth, and Youth Climate and Nature Councils. Improving these mechanisms necessitates better institutional capacity, accountability, diversity of representation, and intergenerational dialogue.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2025). Intergenerational Justice and Youth Participation. https://www.sei.org/publications/intergenerational-justice-and-youth-participation/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Intergenerational Justice and Youth Participation. 2025. https://www.sei.org/publications/intergenerational-justice-and-youth-participation/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Intergenerational Justice and Youth Participation |date=3 December 2025 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/intergenerational-justice-and-youth-participation/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2025intergenerational, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Intergenerational Justice and Youth Participation}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2025}, month = dec, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/intergenerational-justice-and-youth-participation/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }