Intergenerational justice, social cohesion and sustainability: a systematic review

Abstract

The future generations’ dependence on the present generation with regard to choice behaviour has strengthened since the mid-twentieth century due to developments in the technological, demographic and social domains, raising the question about whether present generations have acted fairly or complied with their obligations towards coming generations. The main goal of this paper was to conduct a literature review that sheds light on the research carried out on intergenerational dialogue.

In the research for studies on intergenerational dialogue, two databases were considered: EBSCO and Science Direct.  The year of publication of the collected papers was limited to publications released between 2015 and 2020. The research returned a total of 4063 scientific papers pertinent to this work that were furthered narrowed to a total of 12 articles.

So far, literature on the Intergenerational Justice or intergenerational dialogue does not explore how intergenerational dialogue can help to resolve issues of unfairness across generations. Our suggestion is to decrease intergenerational distance from a social and historical point of view; to increase awareness and care in living and future cohorts in order to avoid this problem in the future; to foster intergenerational dialogue, cohesion and co-action.