Harvard professor Michael Sandel asks us to ‘awaken the restlessness of reason, and see where it might lead….’ Veena Vasista FRSA argues for a 21^st century framework for more reflective, deliberative and ethical policymaking.

In June 2011, I saw a picture of a Xingu River Peoples’ Chief sobbing upon hearing that the news that the President of Brazil had approved the Belo Monte dam project. Social and environmental justice activists have been campaigning against the dam since it was first proposed in the 1970s.

Campaigns have mitigated its potential harm but a significant destructive impact still remains: the dam will displace anywhere from 20,000 (official statistics) to 40,000 (according to social justice activists) indigenous peoples and have an immeasurable impact on plant and animal life. (more…)

Human beings may recognise the debt they owe to their forebears. We may even understand our interdependence to those who live on the other side of the world. But what about those yet to come? Marek Kohn explores the question of our intergenerational duties.

To do right by the future, one has to be able to imagine it. What will the world be like in 2100 and how will it be shaped by choices made today? What will it be like in 2200, or 3000; and how on earth can we work out what our responsibilities, if any, are to people living so many centuries from now? The farther the horizon, the more the scene whites out. Even the trustiest moral compasses are useless.

These questions are as pressing as they are elusive. Scientific projections indicate that human activities risk changing the climate and the planet’s ecosystems in ways that could be catastrophic and irreversible. If greenhouse gases cause the temperature to rise by several degrees, it may stay that way for many centuries, while the seas rise inexorably as they warm and expand. To avoid that risk, carbon emissions must be drastically reduced over the next few decades, which means taking strategic decisions now. Choices made in the next ten years could shape the world for the next thousand years.

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Charities and social enterprises are funding new ways to raise money. Michael Norton FRSA and founder of Buzzbnk believes crowdfunding brings both financial and social benefits.

When I began helping organisations to fundraise 35 years ago there was not much around to help organisations with their fundraising, communications and management. How times have changed!

Everything has become much more professional; in the 1970s, an Amnesty International group would be given three prisoners and told to do what they could to get them released. Today you subscribe to a rapid response network and become part of an internet campaign clicking away to show what you feel about a particular issue.

The bulk of the work done by most big charities is now undertaken by professional staff, with volunteers slotted in around them. In the 1970s, fundraising was far less advanced and the returns for those who fathomed how to do it were good. Today fundraising has become much more mechanized and returns for many have decreased as everyone competes in the same pool of potential donors.

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