Reflections on WIFW 2020: COVID-19 edition

For a second year, the Worldwide Intergenerational Fairness Week (6–12 July 2020) has been marked by a series of blog articles from around the globe – this time focusing on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on young people. As the world tentatively emerges, blinking, from lockdown, the international public sphere seems in agreement: this… Read more »

The scars of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic is laying bare intergenerational inequities that have already deepened after the Global Financial Crisis and will be significant challenges for the post-COVID recovery, argues Lukas Sustala, Director of NEOS Lab, the Vienna-based think tank and academy of NEOS, a liberal Austrian party. In his book Zu spät zur Party (“Too late to… Read more »

Plagues and Intergenerational Justice

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that future generations have to be protected by wise precautions – both medically and economically. Jörg Tremmel, professor at the Institute of Political Science at the Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany, shows how intergenerational interests are served by an assertive vaccination policy.

COVID-19 warns us: we need global environmental law

COVID-19 is a warning to us: our behaviour risks the destruction of the planet, and the obliteration of humankind – and we need not just international environmental law but fully enforceable global law to prevent it. Sándor Fülöp is an environmental lawyer who held the office of the first Parliamentary Commissioner for future generations in… Read more »

Australia under COVID-19: still “the lucky country”?

The disease itself may have touched Australia relatively lightly, but the wider consequences have hit the young particularly hard, especially in employment. Danielle Wood and Owain Emslie, CEO and Senior Associate respectively at the Grattan Institute in Melbourne, reveal the facts and figures, and the broader patterns that underlie them.

Education post-COVID – a life or death decision?

COVID-19 has placed education at high risk around the world. In Wales, the way forward is guided by Well-being of Future Generations Act of 2015. Jane Davidson, Pro Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at University of Wales Trinity Saint David, was a leading architect of that groundbreaking legislation when, from 2007 to 2011, she was Minister for Environment,… Read more »

Fairy tales and reality: making sense of COVID-19 in Italy

Children in Italy have had a baffling time in the topsy-turvy world of COVID-19. How are they going to cope with the new normal, and what echoes of it will reverberate in the long-term future? Martin Solly, professor at the Department of Culture, Politics and Society at the University of Turin, envisages the pandemic through… Read more »

The corona crisis and the future of Europe

Although Maria Lenk’s passport says “German”, she considers herself European through and through. But COVID-19 has tested the unity of the European Union, and as well as faith of young people in its institutions. Now is a critical moment to address this deficit. Maria advocates for the interests of young and future generations as member… Read more »