Intergenerational equity

Intergenerational equity refers to the need for a just distribution of rewards and burdens between generations, and fair and impartial treat­ment of future generations. 'Time of birth, in other words, has no more to do with how a person should be valued than do place of birth, tribe, nationality, religion, or gender' (Nolt 2005).

However, unless substantial change occurs, and rapidly, the present generation is unlikely to pass on a healthy and diverse environment to future generations because of three main factors:

Firstly, the rates of loss of animal and plant species, arable land, water quality, tropical forests and cultural heritage are especially serious. Secondly, and perhaps more widely recognised, is the fact that we will not pass on to future generations the ozone layer or global climate system that the current generation inherited. A third factor that contributes overwhelmingly to the anxieties about the first two is the prospective impact of continuing population growth and the environmental consequences if rising standards of material income around the world produce the same sorts of consumption patterns that are characteristic of the currently industrialised coun­tries. (ESD Working Group Chairs 1992: 10)

Achieving intergenerational equity thus requires significant changes. But why care about the future? As cynics have said, 'What has posterity ever done for me?' After all, the people of the far-off future are strangers, potential people who do not yet exist and may not exist. They will be in no position to reward us for what we do for them, to punish us for our lack of care or responsibility, or to demand compensation. We don't know what their needs, desires or values will be. How can people not yet born demand rights? And if they cannot claim rights do they have any?

Although future generations do not yet exist we can be reasonably sure they will exist.

Future people may not be able to claim their rights today, but others can on their behalf, and various national and international laws protect the rights of future generations. Where future generations do not have formal legal representation, people are able to make claims on their behalf using reasoning based on moral principles, such as those outlined below.

Justice

According to philosopher John Rawls (quoted in Visser 't Hooft 1999: 5), justice is about 'the way in which the major social institutions distribute fun­damental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation'. According to Hendrik Visser 't Hooft, 'a consensus is clearly emerging in contemporary society that it would be contrary to justice to ignore' the presumed environmental needs of future generations:

Our moral convictions tell us that we must share the resources of the planet, which have shown themselves to be finite, with our descen­dents.. Each generation is thus both a beneficiary with a right to use the planet and a trustee with the obligation to care for it. (Visser 't Hooft 1999: 3-5)

This idea of environmental resources being a 'common heritage of mankind' was incorporated in the 1982 UN Treaty on the Law of the Sea. A similar doctrine is that of public trust, which is incorporated into US environmental law and has been reinforced by the courts. It affirms 'a duty of the state to protect the people's common heritage of streams, lakes etc., surrendering the right of protection only in rare cases when the abandonment of that right is consistent with the purposes of the trust'.

Responsibility

Responsibility arises from the power and the ability to impact and affect others, and the knowledge that what we do may affect others. A person has moral responsibility for their actions if that person:

a. has, or is capable of having, knowledge of those actions;

b. has the capacity to bring about these consequences;

c. has the choice to do otherwise; and

d. that these consequences have value significance [explained below]. (Partridge 2001: 377)

Increasingly, the activities of modern industrialised nations have impacts that are felt not only globally now, but will be felt well into the future. If we know that our actions may harm future generations, and we have a choice about whether to take those actions, then we are morally respon­sible for those actions. This is particularly pertinent to the environment, for many environmental impacts, such as radioactive waste disposal, global warming and the spread of chemical toxins, have long-term impli­cations. The fact is that current generations have 'unprecedented power to enhance or diminish the life prospects of our posterity' and this gives us a measure of responsibility for the welfare of future generations (Partridge 1981; 1990).

Criteria for judging the value significance of our actions into the future include 'whether activities have a significant impact, either spa­tially or over time, whether the effects are irreversible or reversible only with unacceptable costs, and whether the effects will be viewed as signif­icant by a substantial number of people' (Weiss 1990). Inaction can also have consequences. Inaction can be just as irresponsible as any action, particularly if it entails allowing existing trends to continue in the know­ledge that these will be harmful.

The fact that the consequences of our actions or inactions will occur some time in the future does not diminish our responsibility:

And, if a person is duty-bound not to cause deliberate harm during his lifetime, is he any less duty-bound to prevent such injuries that may occur after his death due to neglect during his lifetime? If one is both aware of the harm he might cause and capable of preventing it, does it matter if the calamity takes place five years after his death? Five hundred years? Five hundred thousand years? (Partridge 1990)

Because a healthy environment is a shared interest that benefits whole communities, and is often threatened by the 'cumulative effects of human enterprise', there is a collective responsibility to protect it. Individual actions can only offer limited solutions and there is a need for government action, and international cooperation (Visser 't Hooft 1999: 42-3).

Avoiding harm

Some philosophers argue that the more distant future generations are from us the less our obligation is to them, because we cannot know what their needs and wants will be nor what is good for them (Golding 1999: 69). Others argue that even if we do not know what will be good for future generations we do know what will be bad for them:

Of course, we don't know what the precise tastes of our remote descendents will be, but they are unlikely to include a desire for skin cancer, soil erosion, or the inundation of all low-lying areas as a result of the melting of the ice-caps. (Barry 1999: 84)

According to Partridge (1990):

While we may share few of the aesthetic tastes, or even the cultural mores, of our remote successors, we can still surmise much regarding their fundamental needs. They will require just institutions, basic energy and material resources, a functioning atmosphere and flour­ishing ecosystem, and an unpolluted and unpoisoned environment.

Therefore, while we may not have positive obligations to provide for the future, we do have negative obligations to avoid actions that will harm the future.

make certain (a) that there will be future generations - which is a way of reaffirming the value we attribute to our own life; and (b) that the possibility of those generations planning for themselves is not irrevocably destroyed by our failure now to refrain from those acts that could have evil consequences for them; we have no right to preempt their choices. (Callahan 1999: 75)

We cannot just assume that future generations will have better techno­logical and scientific means to solve the problems we leave them. For this reason we should endeavour to pass on the planet to future generations in no worse shape than previous generations passed it on to us.

International agreements

Intergenerational equity has been recognised in various international agreements, including the:

• Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural

Heritage, 1972

• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992

• Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992

• Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, 1992

• Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, 1993.

These agreements led up to the UNESCO Declaration on the Responsibilities of the Present Generations towards Future Generations (1997). The text of the declaration was adapted from a Bill of Rights for Future Generations presented to the United Nations in 1993 by the Cousteau Society (2005), together with over 9 million signatures of support from people in 106 countries. It had five articles which empha­sised rights, responsibility and common heritage, including:

Article 1. Future generations have a right to an uncontaminated and undamaged Earth and to its enjoyment as the ground of human history, of culture, and of the social bonds that make each generation and individual a member of one human family.

Article 2. Each generation, sharing in the estate and heritage of the Earth, has a duty as trustee for future generations to prevent irre­versible and irreparable harm to life on Earth and to human freedom and dignity.

Article 3. It is, therefore, the paramount responsibility of each gener­ation to maintain a constantly vigilant and prudential assessment of technological disturbances and modifications adversely affecting life on Earth, the balance of nature, and the evolution of mankind in order to protect the rights of future generations.

Today the principle of intergenerational equity is a principle of international law. 'It finds explicit support in many international instruments, and it articulates the wider temporal horizon implicit in many forms of international cooperation on the environmental front' (Visser 't Hooft 1999: 26).

A number of national laws and agreements also include intergen- erational equity, such as Australia's 1992 Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment (IGAE) and the US's 1969 National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). Such sentiments go back as far as 1916, to the National Park Act in the USA, which charges the National Park Service with the duty of protecting the land 'unim­paired for the enjoyment of future generations' (quoted in Partridge 1990). In general the ideals behind national parks in all countries have the same intergenerational goals.