The Legacy Maker scenario: Human material and environmental legacies as the lynchpin to global policy challenges

• In Event: 50620 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 12: Environmental Temporalities and Transitions

Abstract

Interrelated social and environmental challenges call for ideation and responses that integrate the environmental and the social. Arising from the global megatrends of wealth inequality and environmental degradation, two scenarios are outlined. The first scenario pertains to “the world as it is” where increasing concentration of wealth and aggravation of environmental crises is forecast by scientists and international organizations. In response to the widely recognized destructive aspects of Scenario 1, an alternative scenario is constructed, drawing on considerations that would guide a hypothetical Legacy Maker addressing the crises of Scenario 1 in the interest of ‘heirs’ including future generations and the more-than-human. This collective legacy-making is grounded in the cognitive dissonance experienced in view of the implications of Scenario 1, terror management related to human and ecosystems demise, concern with survival of assets (ecosystems), and altruistic principles of inheritance allocation. The Legacy Maker scenario entails orientation to (1) the future, (2) the more-than-human, and (3) justice as recognition and restitution. Legacy-making serves as a theoretical yet policy-oriented heuristic device for approaching the intertwined global challenges of inequality and environmental destruction.

Authors

• Virpi Marianna Timonen, University of Helsinki

• Federica Previtali

• Friedemann Yi-Neumann

• Malin Bäckman

• Eunsil Shin