University of Florida = username $REMOTE_ASSR = IP address Tue, 14 Jun 2016 17:04:34 = Date & Time Environmental Values 22 (2013): 317–337 © 2013 The White Horse Press. doi: 10.3197/096327113X13648087563665 Submitted 20 April 2011, accepted 18 October 2011 Deliberating Intergenerational Environmental Equity: A Pragmatic, Future Studies Approach MATTHEW COTTON Department of Town and Regional Planning Faculty of Social Sciences University of Sheffeld Sheffeld, S10 2TN, UK Email: m.cotton@sheffeld.ac.uk ABSTRACT Across the applied ethics literatures are a growing number of ethical tools: decision-support methodologies that encourage multi-stakeholder deliberative engagement with the social and moral issues arising from technology assess- ment and environmental management processes. This article presents a novel ethical tool for deliberation on the issue of environmental justice between cur- rent and future generations over long time frames. This ethical tool combines two approaches, linking John Dewey’s concept of dramatic rehearsal – an em- pathetic and imaginative ethical deliberation process; with the methodologies of backcasting – a type of scenario planning technique drawn from the future studies literature. The proposed hybrid ‘Deweyan Backcasting’ approach com- bines a creative process of devising multi-stakeholder visions of potentially desirable futures, with practical evaluation of the technical, social and political networks necessary to make such futures happen. It is suggested that such a model can provide a fruitful means for evaluating intergenerational environ- mental equity issues in long-range policy and planning. KEYWORDS Intergenerational equity, environmental pragmatism, ethical tools, John Dewey, Dramatic Rehearsal, backcasting