Civil infrastructure facilities play a central role in the economic, social and political health of modern society and their safety, integrity and functionality must be maintained at manageable cost over their service lives through design and periodic maintenance. Hurricanes and tropical cyclones, tornadoes, earthquakes and floods are paramount among the potentially devastating and costly natural disasters impacting civil infrastructure. Even larger losses may occur in the future, given the population growth and economic development accompanying urbanization in potentially hazardous areas of the world. Moreover, in recent years, the effects that global climate change might have on both the frequency and severity of extreme events from natural hazards and their effect on civil infrastructure facilities have become a major concern for decision makers. Potential influences of climate change on civil infrastructure are even greater for certain facilities with service periods of 100 years or more, which are substantially longer than those previously considered in life-cycle engineering and may extend across multiple generations. Customary risk-informed decision frameworks may not be applicable to such long-term event horizons, because they tend to devalue the importance of current decisions for future generations, causing an ethical and moral dilemma for current decision-makers. Thus, intergenerational risk-informed decision frameworks that consider facility performance over service periods well in excess of 100 years and extend across multiple generations must be developed. This dissertation addresses risk-informed decision-making for civil infrastructure exposed to natural hazards, with a particular focus on the equitable transfer of risk across multiple generations. Risk-informed decision tools applied to extended service periods require careful modifications to current life-cycle engineering analysis methods to account for values and decision preferences of both current and future generations and to achieve decisions that will be sustainable in the long term. The methodology for supporting equitable and socio-economical sustainable decisions regarding long-term public safety incorporates two essential ingredients of such decisions: global climate change effect on stochastic models of extreme events from natural hazards and intergenerational discounting methods for equitable risk-sharing. Several specific civil infrastructure applications are investigated: a levee situated in a flood-prone city; an existing dam built in a strong earthquake-prone area; and a special moment resisting steel frame building designed to withstand hurricanes in Miami, FL. These investigations have led to the conclusion that risks can and should be shared across multiple generations; that the proposed intergenerational decision methods can achieve goals of intergenerational equity and sustainability in engineering decision-making that are reflective of the welfare and aspirations of both current and future generations; and that intergenerational equity can be achieved at reasonable cost.

This dissertation presents a clear and systematic method for conducting cumulative effects assessments in the United States in a manner consistent with the 1997 guidelines of the President's Council on Environmental Quality and the 1999 guidance of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Federal Activities. This method has been developed in a collaborative process with federal and State of Alaska regulatory agency scrutiny during the renewal of the federal and state right-of-way leases for the Trans Alaska Pipeline System in 2004 and in the June 2004 Alaska Groundfish Fisheries Final Programmatic Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement prepared for the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Region. The dissertation describes the process through which the cumulative effects assessment method presented here was developed and presents this approach as a predictive tool with the potential to improve the implementation of sustainable development in the United States. In this context, the dissertation presents an overview of sustainability theory, distinguishing and reviewing representative examples from two major sectors of the sustainable development literature, called here the intergenerational equity strand and the human development strand. It identifies weaknesses in three key areas of the intergenerational equity strand -- lack of theorectical cohesion, insufficient tools for implementation, and an imbalance between normative goals and practical feasibility -- and argues that the human development strand, with its empirical emphasis on metrics and institutional frameworks, offers a model that can serve as a basis for unifying the two strands by providing a theoretical core, implementation tools, and practicable goals. Finally, the dissertation argues that sustainable development is implemented most effectively when it is enabled by institutions that facilitate public involvement, particularly participation by the broadest feasible representation of the affected stakeholders, and that such institutional mobilization can provide a stable and enduring basis to foster the intergenerational equity that is the central, distinguishing feature of sustainability. / text

Over the past number of decades, Canadian governments (both federal and provincial) have made commitments to preserving and protecting the natural environment and to using its components efficiently in order to benefit both current and future generations. These commitments, this thesis argues, translate into duties to strive for sustainable economic growth and intergenerational equity. One of the key challenges is to figure out which are the best policy tools and legal instruments that are capable of leading Canada towards these goals. Unfortunately, the economic measures typically employed by decision makers (GDP, GNP, productivity) tend to exclude or under represent natural capital, which may lead to decisions which actually degrade and deplete the natural environment and therefore violate the aforementioned legal commitments. One clear strategy to help Canada meet its commitments to sustainable economic growth and intergenerational equity is to ensure it uses its natural capital as efficiently as possible. This thesis proposes that green productivity is a useful tool for improving decision making because it considers the efficiency of use of natural capital a criteria important to helping achieve both sustainable economic growth and intergenerational equity. Green productivity is presented in this thesis as an umbrella term for productivity measures which include or account for, in some way, the (mis)use of natural capital. Specifically, the dissertation discuses three measures of green productivity used within economics: natural resource productivity, environmentally adjusted productivity, and natural capital and the residual. In addition to exploring the differences between these three measures of green productivity, the dissertation shows that they can be used to improve decision making in a number of ways, including as a broader public policy agenda item used by the government to target sustainability objectives. Additionally, measures of green productivity can be used to identify more specific policy and legal instrument goals, in designing and evaluating legal instruments, and in stakeholder consultation. For example, natural resource productivity can help identify leaders and laggards, thereby allowing decision makers to target certain industries or areas which are lagging. It can also help decision makers learn from leading jurisdictions which may ultimately lead to the implementation of new ideas in legal instrument design. The dissertation concludes with a case study of one type of green productivity measure (water productivity) in order to illustrate how the information it produces could be applied by decision makers.

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / This exploratory study is based on the case of the Rusitu Valley, a low income rural community in Zimbabwe. Data was collected using largely qualitative methods and quantitative methods were used to obtain supportive descriptive statistics. Information elicited from focus group discussions conducted with members of the Rusitu Valley community as well as responses obtained from a brief structured questionnaire were used to abstract the Rusitu Valley as a complex adaptive system. Input from in-depth interviews with government representatives in energy policy, local government and non-governmental organisations as well as a review of secondary sources was used to support the analysis and confirm the contextual validity of the study. This study revealed that there is intimate connection between renewable energy technologies and sustainable community development. A key finding was that the contribution of renewable energy technologies in Rusitu Valley is mostly towards the economic dimensions of the community and is relatively limited with regard to social and environmental dimensions. Therefore, this study concluded that renewable energy technologies have not sufficiently contributed towards sustainable community development in the Rusitu Valley. This study also found that the contribution of renewable energy technologies is constrained not only by internal limitations but also external factors. A conclusion drawn from this study was that effective contribution of renewable energy technologies towards social, economic and environmental facets can be enhanced through mainstreaming of renewable energy in policy and planning, as well strengthening institutions and local capacity which would have the overall effect of sustainable community development in low income communities

Cette thèse se propose de montrer l'intérêt de considérer simultanément l'équité intra et intergénérationnelle pour des questions liées à la gestion des ressources environnementales. Plus spécifiquement, la thèse examine les arbitrages entre ces deux dimensions de l’équité pour définir une distribution juste des ressources au cours du temps et au sein des générations. Les inégalités sont considérées à travers deux régions hétérogènes. Le premier chapitre se focalise sur le maintien du niveau maximal de bien-être au cours du temps, à travers le critère maximin, lorsque l'économie a une aversion aux inégalités intragénérationnelles. De manière contre-intuitive, la région la moins dotée en ressources paye un plus lourd tribut pour la durabilité globale. Le second chapitre étudie la croissance vers le niveau maximal soutenable de bien-être, la règle d'or. De la même manière, la région la moins dotée en ressources doit contribuer davantage à cette croissance, en limitant relativement plus sa consommation. Le troisième chapitre étudie les transferts qui doivent être opérés de la région relativement mieux lotie vers celle moins bien lotie. Le transfert doit être soit forfaitaire soit proportionnel à la consommation de la région contributrice, selon que l'objectif est de favoriser ou de limiter sa consommation. Dans tous les cas, la région la plus défavorisée reçoit un transfert compensatoire pour la contrainte qui lui est imposée. / This dissertation proposes to show the interest of considering simultaneously intra and intergenerational equity for environmental resources management issues. More specifically, the dissertation examines the trade-offs between these two dimensions of equity to define an equitable allocation of resources over time and within generations. Inequalities between two heterogeneous regions are considered. The first chapter focuses on sustaining the highest level of welfare over time, through the maximin criterion, when the economy has an intragenerational inequality aversion. Counter-intuitively, the region with the lower resource stock pays a higher price for overall sustainability. The second chapter examines growth toward the maximum sustainable level of welfare, the golden rule. Similarly, the region with the lower resource stock shall contribute more to the growth, by limiting relatively more its consumption. The third chapter examines the transfers that shall be made from the well-off to the worse-off region. The transfer shall either be a lump-sum or proportional to the consumption of the contributing region, depending on whether the objective is to promote or to limit its consumption. In any case, the worst-off region receives a compensatory transfer for the constraint imposed on it.

The cost of climate policy depends on the no-policy alternative without which the opportunity cost of climate action cannot be determined. This reference path has to reflect the current failure in the market for carbon emissions: due to a negative externality, private investment decisions do not consider the climate damage they entail; agents overinvest in conventional capital and underinvest in climate capital. Internalization of climate damage lowers the private return to capital; agents reduce investment in favor of mitigation and consumption. Optimal climate mitigation increases welfare of the present and the future. Simulation of the inefficient no-policy scenario in DICE-07 confirms that this point numerically. (author's abstract)

Obiettivo della presente ricerca è quello di studiare la condizione dei giovani in Italia nella prima decade del 2000 e di suggerire qualche policy per intervenire in questa situazione. La decisione di analizzare la povertà urbana e la deprivazione nel primo capitolo, e di analizzare l’equità e la mobilità intergenerazionale nel secondo e nel terzo, è strettamente collegata con la volontà di chi scrive di identificare nuovi strumenti di policy che possono intervenire a vantaggio dell’opportunità e dell’equità dei giovani. Il lavoro si divide in due parti. Nella prima parte si è fatta un'analisi della povertà urbana nella città di Milano: in questo ambito si è analizzato il flusso migratorio nelle zone di Milano considerando la dotazione strutturale delle zone stesse, procedendo con la creazione di indici di misurazione delle public facilities dedicate ai giovani e giovanissimi. In seguito alla creazione di indicatori di misurazione della dotazione di scuole, centri culturali, centri di aggregazione giovanili, centri sportivi, consultori specializzati per giovani, abbiamo individuato una correlazione tra i servizi forniti e la presenza di una specifica coorte di popolazione. Nella seconda parte si è analizzato l’andamento dell’equità intergenerazionale e della mobilità intergenerazionale. Nel secondo capitolo è stata fatta una review della letteratura pre esisteste in materia considerando la trasmissione intergenerazionale della povertà e la mobilità intergenerazionale con lo scopo di analizzare la metodologia di misurazione più appropriato. Inoltre sono stati presi in analisi le principali analisi a livello internazionale, ma si è anche fatto particolare riferimento alla letteratura relativa al caso Italiano. In seguito si è proceduto con un’analisi del livello di equità intergenerazionale in Italia , utilizzando i dati dell’Indagine sui Consumi delle Famiglie della Banca d’Italia. / The aim of the present research is to study the youth condition in Italy in the first decade of 2000 and to suggest some regulatory policy on this situation. The decision to investigate on urban poverty and deprivation in the first chapter, and to analyze intergenerational equity and mobility in the second and in the third chapters, is strictly related to the willingness of the writer to identify new policy instruments that can intervene in favor of young's opportunities and equity. The research is divided into two parts. In the first chapter we have done an analysis of the urban poverty in the city of Milan. To do this we have analyzed the movement of citizens in the different area of Milan, considering the availability of public facilities dedicated to young. After a creation of the indicators to assess the endowment benchmarks for school, cultural structure, Young Meeting Centers, sports centers, health centers specialized for young people, we have detected a connection between the services furnished and the presence of a specific population-based cohort. In the second part we have analysed the trend of intergenerational mobility and intergenerational equity. In the second chapter, we develop a literature review of the primary researches on intergenerational transmission of poverty and intergenerational mobility with the aim to analyze the most appropriate and recognized methodology to measure this data in Italy. In the third paper, we have measured the trend of intergenerational mobility in Italy, considering data from Bank of Italy SHIW.

abstract: The sacred San Francisco Peaks in northern Arizona have been at the center of a series of land development controversies since the 1800s. Most recently, a controversy arose over a proposal by the ski area on the Peaks to use 100% reclaimed water to make artificial snow. The current state of the San Francisco Peaks controversy would benefit from a decision-making process that holds sustainability policy at its core. The first step towards a new sustainability-focused deliberative process regarding a complex issue like the San Francisco Peaks controversy requires understanding the issue's origins and the perspectives of the people involved in the issue. My thesis provides an historical analysis of the controversy and examines some of the laws and participatory mechanisms that have shaped the decision-making procedures and power structures from the 19th century to the early 21st century. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Sustainability 2011

The natural process of deterioration is accelerating worldwide, the uptake of natural resources grows exponentially to meet the needs / desires of consumers "new" goods / products affecting the regeneration of and thus can cause its depletion . In this way, in this research will be addressed interactions between economic modernity, ecological crisis and intergenerational equity in the sociojurídica optics in order to provide theoretical and cognitive contributions to the construction of legal mechanisms to minimize / curb heritage degradation process green on a global scale, in order to ensure equitable access to natural resources present generations without compromising them for future generations. The study, regarding the methodological aspect uses input the hypothetical-deductive method by conjecture hypothesis in order to prove their veracity. The research also makes use of dialectical contributions in order to confront the issues raised in order to identify possible ways to solve the problem. At first, it will be addressed, the role of modernity in contemporary ecological crisis, from human conduct, under the economic aegis and its subsequent developments in the phenomenon of globalization and the construction of the technical-scientific model. Secondly, research will address the dialogue under the dialectical prism of overlap between development, sustainability and rights, focusing, in materialisation of the principles of intergenerational equity. Finally, it will be sought to determine how the precept of intergenerational equity can act as reflective-regulating mechanism of equitable access to natural resources for present generations without compromising them for future generations. / O processo de deterioração do natural tem se acelerado em nível mundial, a captação de recursos naturais cresce de maneira exponencial para atender as necessidades/anseios dos consumidores por novos bens/produtos afetando o processo de regeneração destes e assim pode ocasionar o seu exaurimento. Desde modo, na presente pesquisa abordar-se-á as interações entre modernidade econômica, crise ecológica e equidade intergeracional sob a ótica sociojurídica no intuito de fornecer aportes teóricos e cognitivos para a construção de mecanismos jurídicos para minimizar/refrear o processo de degradação do patrimônio ecológico em escala global, com o objetivo de garantir o acesso equitativo aos recursos naturais as gerações presentes sem comprometê-los para as gerações futuras. O estudo, no que tange ao aspecto metodológico usa aporte do método hipotético-dedutivo por meio da conjectura das hipóteses no sentido de comprovar a sua veracidade. A pesquisa, também faz uso de aportes dialéticos com o objetivo de confrontar as questões suscitadas a fim de apontar possíveis caminhos para a solução da problemática. Num primeiro momento, abordar-se-á o papel da modernidade na crise ecológica contemporânea, a partir da conduta humana, sob a égide econômica e seus consequentes desdobramentos no fenômeno da globalização e na construção do modelo técnico-científico. Num segundo momento, a pesquisa tratará do diálogo sob o prisma dialético da imbricação entre desenvolvimento, sustentabilidade e direito, com foco, na materialização dos preceitos da equidade intergeracional. Por fim, buscar-se-á determinar como o preceito da equidade intergeracional poderá atuar como mecanismo reflexivo-regulador do acesso equitativo aos recursos naturais para as gerações presentes sem comprometê-los para as gerações futuras.

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