Intergenerational Justice

The impact of climate change is felt in every corner of the world today. Yet, rather than take responsibility for accelerating rates of natural resource destruction and subject them to more stringent forms of regulatory control, the tendency to date has been towards continuing with practices that knowingly jeopardize future life and development. Obligations to ‘bequeath to future generations an Earth which will not one day be irreversibly damaged by human activity’ are openly compromised (UNESCO Declaration on the responsibilities of the present generations towards future generations, Article 4, (1997). http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13178 & URL_DO=DO_TOPIC & URL_SECTION=201.html#:~:text=Article%204%20%2D%20Preservation%20of%20life%20on%20Earth & text=Each%20generation%20inheriting%20the%20Earth,not%20harm%20life%20on%20Earth. Accessed 29 June 2021). How are we to make sense of the ‘chronological injustice’ of this arrangement? Can ‘interaction problems’ between distant generations continue to be hailed as sufficient justification for not honouring constitutionally grounded commitments to equal protection? The discussion below considers some of the main arguments raised in relation to these concerns.