Intergenerational justice and sustainability

In contemporary Portuguese society, faced with serious demographic and economic problems, questions about intergenerational equity and social sustainability are becoming increasingly important:

• is there a future subject (a future generation) who can and should be considered to have rights at the present time?
• who should be involved in defining this framework?
• how can society be aware of its values and reflect them in its global framework of rights and obligations?
• how do public policies and the constitutional framework itself affect the distribution of resources and consequently intergenerational equity?

This set of texts published by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos seeks to discuss these questions, addressing the philosophical foundations and constitutional theory underlying this discussion, as well as the public and business policies that could respond to the problems associated with it, such as:

• public debt;
• public spending;
• environmental policies;
• the labour market;
• Social Security and the pension system.

Through these texts, Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos seeks to fulfil one of its founding principles, that of contributing to a more informed society and, because it is more informed, a freer society with better public policies.