Current Academic Award

The Foun­da­tion for the Rights of Future Gen­er­a­tions (FRFG) and the Inter­gen­er­a­tional Foun­da­tion (IF) joint­ly pro­mote and award two bien­ni­al prizes, in alter­nate years: the Demog­ra­phy Prize and the Inter­gen­er­a­tional Jus­tice Prize. A total of €10,000 – gen­er­ous­ly endowed by the Stiftung Apfel­baum – is award­ed each year and divid­ed among the win­ning entrants.

 

Intergenerational Justice Prize 2022

Write an essay on

“Existential and Unknown Risks for Future Generations”

***DEADLINE 31 MAY 2022***

The Foun­da­tion for the Rights of Future Gen­er­a­tions (FRFG) and the Lon­don based Inter­gen­er­a­tional Foun­da­tion (IF) joint­ly award the bien­ni­al Inter­gen­er­a­tional Jus­tice Prize, endowed with EUR 10,000 (ten thou­sand euros) in total prize-mon­ey. The prize was ini­ti­at­ed and is fund­ed by the Apfel­baum Foundation.

Aim of the competition

Through the prize, the FRFG and IF seek to pro­mote dis­cus­sion about inter­gen­er­a­tional jus­tice in soci­ety, and, by pro­vid­ing a schol­ar­ly basis to the debate, estab­lish new per­spec­tives for deci­sion-mak­ers. The invi­ta­tion to enter the com­pe­ti­tion is extend­ed espe­cial­ly to young aca­d­e­mics and stu­dents from all disciplines.

Topic Abstract

Exis­ten­tial risks are defined to be all poten­tial dan­gers that could destroy human­i­ty or deprive it of its dis­cre­tionary. Human­i­ty does not have to go extinct for this. It would suf­fice if human­i­ty suf­fered an irre­versible col­lapse of its civil­i­sa­tion, or if it could no longer freely con­trol its own fate. Such risks can be of man-made or nat­ur­al ori­gin – what is more, they can also be unknown to us today.

What makes deal­ing with exis­ten­tial and unknown risks par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult is that we have not been able to gain any expe­ri­ence with them yet. There is this notion that exis­ten­tial risks will fail to mate­ri­alise or at least not occur dur­ing our lifetime.

From a geo­log­i­cal-his­tor­i­cal point of view human­i­ty is still at the very begin­ning; most indi­vid­u­als – unless a cat­a­stroph­ic event wipes out human­i­ty – are yet to be born. Thus, proac­tive action is required on our part in order to give these future gen­er­a­tions the chance to realise humanity’s poten­tial. Today’s gen­er­a­tion, as a result of the increased means of self-destruc­tion, is called upon to be more con­sid­er­ate than any pre­vi­ous generation.

Submissions

We here­by ask for con­tri­bu­tions that con­sid­er and analyse the top­ic from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. In order to receive the com­plete sub­mis­sion require­ments (for­mal require­ments and an offi­cial reg­is­tra­tion form) for those who are inter­est­ed, please con­tact us via e‑mail at kontakt@srzg.de or Liz Emer­son at info@if.org.uk with the sub­ject „Inter­gen­er­a­tional Jus­tice Prize 2022“.

The sub­mit­ted papers should be inno­v­a­tive, cre­ative and with a focus on civ­il soci­ety issues, with prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions. The FRFG and IF par­tic­u­lar­ly appre­ci­ate par­tic­i­pants try­ing to explain com­plex ideas in as sim­ple and acces­si­ble terms as pos­si­ble. Sub­mit­ted research papers may employ all pos­si­ble method­olog­i­cal approaches.

The best entries, as judged by a pro­fes­sion­al jury, will be con­sid­ered for pub­li­ca­tion in the next issue of The Inter­gen­er­a­tional Jus­tice Review.