Climate Debate: The Rights of Future Generations

• The Summit Of The Future, set to convene at the United Nations in New York, aims to identify multilateral solutions to major issues threatening humanity’s common future.
• The main theme is the rights of future generations to live in a safe, secure world, free from the wrath of past and present generations.
• The debate on the legal obligation to protect future generations’ rights has sparked debates, with some arguing that the appeal to protect future generations is ambiguous and that it assumes responsibilities for an unformed future.
• Others, however, argue that the future generations discourse has emancipatory power and can reshape international law based on justice and solidarity across time and space.
• Judgments on environmental matters, such as those in Colombia, Pakistan, India, Kenya, and South Africa, have been cited to support the idea of intergenerational solidarity and the right to environment.
• The Maastricht Principles enunciate the case for linking sustainable development and climate justice discourses to the rights of future generations, emphasizing that human rights extend to all members of the human family, including present and future generations.
• The principles of the Maastricht Principles must guide actions at national and global levels, including protecting future generations’ human rights against risks posed by public and private actors and ensuring meaningful representation of future generations in decision-making.
• The ‘planetary overshoot day’, when earth’s capacity to renew its depleted natural resources each year is exhausted, has already been breached, and if this continues, future generations will be left with a bankrupt planet.