INTER-GOVERNMENTAL JUSTICE

Source: The Hindu

Intergenerational justice is essentially concerned with the duties and responsibilities that present generations have to past and future generations.
Moral considerations ought to be considered when thinking through these duties and responsibilities.
This entry expressly focuses on a discussion of how we might have a moral duty to protect future generations.
Work has been done in articulating the historical aspects of past pollution and responsibilities inherited from past generations.
Our duties to future generations are less clear and typically framed in a language of human rights or distributive justice.

The horrific destruction in the two World Wars created a new breed of global institutions to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, rebuild shattered economies and maintain global peace.
These were the United Nations, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Power was retained by the victors: UN five-member Security Council, World Bank and IMF.
The UN General Assembly is theoretically democratic. But the real power of guns and money is controlled by the Security Council and Washington Institutions.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is back in the picture to keep the centre of gravity of global power in the West.

Institutions of global governance have failed in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
New Ideas for global governance are required. A new concept of "intergenerational justice" is gaining traction as a better way of producing a more equitable global order.
Arresting mankind's breakneck destruction of the planet has a great advance in technologies.
Older generations listening to younger generations, rather than younger people following their elders, may be a radical civilisational shift.
The problem is that if youth apply the same old ways being taught in universities and also learned to work, they will make global problems worse.

To extract resources from the planet to create new products for human benefit is to progress and disseminated widely through "STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education.
To find new technological approaches to repair the damage caused to the planet by those technologies.
Owners of technologies become wealthier in scientific circles.
The suffering of people harmed by the constant growth of economies is advised to be patient until the size of the pie produced is large enough to share with them.
Time is running out, the climate is heating up and Inequalities are growing.
People are losing their patience, new ways must be found to solve complex global problems.

The prevalent scientific theory of change is both "outside in" and "top-down".
Scientific experts try to be "Objective" about the systems they study by placing their minds outside the systems.
Their supposedly objective perches, they try to map the system's shapes detachedly., Unlike scientific design, thinkers try to design systems objectively natural systems thinkers learn to live with and within the systems that give them life.
The global approach to governance is "Outside-in" and also "top-down".
Many disciplines must be brought together to understand the social, economic and physical facets of complex issues such as climate change.
Stakeholders' conflicting needs must be aligned. Central coordination seems essential for large-scale change.
The standard model of a hierarchical organisation is applied in the corporate sector in national governments and international development organisations too.

The wrong approach for solving complex global problems.
The ground problems are not equipped to find effective solutions for large-scale outcomes.
One-size solutions cannot fit all and only solutions do not work well but trust also breaks down between the leaders on top of large international organisations and people on the ground.
This is a principal cause of the rise of populism and revolts against "the Establishment" of ideas and institutions governing the world.

The G7 was formed in the 1970s when the World Bank and IMF are unable to prevent the global economic crisis caused by large "oil shocks".
The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan and Italy formed the G6.
Canada and later the European Union joined later.
Russia was invited later (G8) When the Soviet Union collapsed and was swiftly removed in the Crimean war (2014).
The G7 was expanded to the G20 in the 1990s, when China, Russia, India, Indonesia and other large economies were added.
The G20 is being cracked up because the G7 wants to throw Russia out.
India will be the chair of the G20 this year and must try to keep the group together.
Power must shift between generations to create a more equitable global order.
Less than 10 per of the world's citizens and 6 per cent of the World's children below 10 years are in the G7.
It must shift from the older, so-called "advanced" countries to younger "emerging" economies.
The G7 and the Security Council must invite the rest to find new solutions to global problems.

Inter-generational dialogue is imperative. Though all countries are ageing, older persons in economies are not burdens to be cast aside.
In a larger process of evolution, all must listen to others' aspirations and wisdom.
Emerging economies must not be arrogantly considered, in the colonial legacy, as a white man's burden to be improved by a more advanced West.
Many native communities have not yet lost their wisdom of living within natural systems and living as families and communities.
Such wisdom on the ground needs to be cycled to the top to save the world for everyone.

The UN's Sustainable Development Goals list 17 complex global problems.
They appear in different forms everywhere in the world.
Centrally managed organisations cannot solve such problems.
Local systems solutions, cooperatively implemented within their communities by old and young persons together are the way to solve these global systemic problems.

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