Coping with intergenerational conflicts is one of the fundamental keys to building a sustainable society. However, current decision-making systems tend to be inclined towards the preferences of present generations, simply because future generations do not yet exist and therefore cannot participate in present-day negotiating processes. In this paper, with an aim towards reconciling possible intergenerational conflicts, we present the first attempt at creating a participatory intergenerational deliberation practice by creating "imaginary future generation" groups to represent future generations and negotiate with present-generation groups regarding future visions and associated decision making. To accomplish this, a series of workshops were organized in a local municipality in Japan in which participating imaginary future-generation groups and present-generation groups first deliberated separately, and then worked together, to form a consensus over prioritizing policy measures associated with their separate visions of the municipality in 2060. We then analyzed deliberation and consensusbuilding processes used and observed a stark contrast in deliberation styles and priorities between the groups. For example, imaginary future-generation-group measures were primarily characterized by utilizing existing local resources, while the present-generation groups aimed more at solving current problems. Notably, the consensus-building processes resulted in choosing more than half of the measures originally proposed by the imaginary future-generation groups, thereby indicating that decision-making preferences had shifted to future generations. We contend that our approach, which is based on introducing imaginary future-generation groups as stakeholders, could provide indicators towards coping with intergenerational conflicts via present-day decision-making processes.
BackgroundDuckweed (family Lemnaceae) has recently been recognized as an ideal biomass feedstock for biofuel production due to its rapid growth and high starch content, which inspired interest in improving their productivity. Since microbes that co-exist with plants are known to have significant effects on their growth according to the previous studies for terrestrial plants, this study has attempted to understand the plant–microbial interactions of a duckweed, Lemna minor, focusing on the growth promotion/inhibition effects so as to assess the possibility of accelerated duckweed production by modifying co-existing bacterial community.ResultsCo-cultivation of aseptic L. minor and bacterial communities collected from various aquatic environments resulted in changes in duckweed growth ranging from −24 to +14% compared to aseptic control. A number of bacterial strains were isolated from both growth-promoting and growth-inhibitory communities, and examined for their co-existing effects on duckweed growth. Irrespective of the source, each strain showed promotive, inhibitory, or neutral effects when individually co-cultured with L. minor. To further analyze the interactions among these bacterial strains in a community, binary combinations of promotive and inhibitory strains were co-cultured with aseptic L. minor, resulting in that combinations of promotive–promotive or inhibitory–inhibitory strains generally showed effects similar to those of individual strains. However, combinations of promotive–inhibitory strains tended to show inhibitory effects while only Aquitalea magnusonii H3 exerted its plant growth-promoting effect in all combinations tested.ConclusionSignificant change in biomass production was observed when duckweed was co-cultivated with environmental bacterial communities. Promotive, neutral, and inhibitory bacteria in the community would synergistically determine the effects. The results indicate the possibility of improving duckweed biomass production via regulation of co-existing bacterial communities.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13068-017-0746-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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