OBLIGATIONS TO FUTURE GENERATIONS

Obligations to Future Generations



Introduction

In 1972, the landmark Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment laid out an ambitious set of principles to effect preservation and protection of the environment. One of the primary ethical principles espoused in the declaration was an obligation to protect and preserve the planet for the enjoyment of future generations. More recently, the Bemidji statement on Seventh Generation Guardianship has proposed that we look well into the future in considering the consequences of our present actions. As the environmental movement has come of age since the 1970s, this idea of our ethical obligation to future generations has occupied a central place in the moral foundation for environmental protection. This paper explores key philosophical disagreements that have arisen over thinking about obligations to future generations. It then examines some difficulties in accounting for future generations' interests in decision making. The main objective of this paper is to examine that “Does consideration of future generations will continue to occupy a central place in our thinking despite the several challenges it presents?”

Discussion

To the casual observer, the ethical imperative of preserving the Earth for future generations might not appear to present any major problems, but there is a great deal of philosophical controversy surrounding the idea. Much of the discussion concerns the challenge of thinking about the rights of “potential persons” in the indeterminate future versus actual persons here and now. (Light & Andrew, 2003)

The first type of philosophical problem surrounds the rights of future generations as “potential persons.” Some say that we cannot speak of rights of persons who do not yet exist. The argument is that because they have no ability to exercise (or relinquish) their rights claims on the present generation, they do not have rights. Opponents of this view point out that there is a distinction between moral and legal rights, the former existing independently of any legal structure. If the only rights that existed were those currently enforceable under the law, then there would be no social change. Oppressive practices such as slavery and segregation were at one time perfectly legal and enforced by the law, but clearly the rights of those subjected to slavery were violated under that system. In the same way, supporters of the rights of future generations argue that our legal system can (and should) evolve to protect the rights of posterity, particularly with respect to protecting the natural environment.

The second class of problems stems from the temporal distance of future generations. Some argue that we need to consider only our obligations to others living at the same time. One version of this argument is espoused by the cornucopians, who claim that technological innovation will create new resources and solutions to environmental problems, which is effectively saying that the future will take care of itself. This is probably the most extreme case, but there are others who take more intermediate positions on this issue precisely because of the temporal distance between present and future generations. (Partridge & Ernest, 1981)

Another conundrum arising from the temporal distance problem is that preservation of resources for future generations creates an ad infinitum set of obligations: if we preserve resources ...