The changing meanings of environmental action over time: Older adults' perspectives in Italy and Sweden.

This article examines how older adults in Italy and Sweden make sense of environmental actions across the life course through temporal lenses. Older adults occupy a distinctive position from which to reflect on past social and environmental transformations, interpret present practices, and consider individual and collective futures. Drawing on 31 semi-structured interviews conducted in Turin and Gothenburg, we use a constructivist grounded theory approach to examine how past experiences, present positions, and future orientations shape environmental (in)action in later life. We discuss these actions and temporal framings in relation to the novel concept of environmental legacies. The findings show that participants engaged in diverse private and public environmental actions whose meanings were negotiated through temporal orientations and changing social norms. National and local contexts, including histories of environmental policymaking and civic engagement, shaped practices and perceptions. Frugal practices rooted in economic necessity and family life were reinterpreted as environmentally beneficial in the present. Future orientations were ambivalent: some participants framed environmental action in terms of responsibility for collective futures, whereas others discounted longer-term perspectives. Family relationships, local communities, and attachment to place fostered legacy-oriented thinking and intergenerational solidarity. These findings demonstrate that environmental actions and legacies are negotiated within temporal, social, familial, and political contexts. By situating environmental action within life-course temporalities, the study highlights the importance of incorporating older adults' situated knowledge, experience, and agency into environmental and climate policymaking.