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Our Responsibility to Future Generations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2017

Lothar Gündling
Lothar Gündling*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg
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Extract

In recent years, lawyers have begun to join ecologists in debating whether there are—or should be—obligations to protect the interests of future generations. This legal debate was preceded by a philosophical one, dating back to the early 1970s, on the emergence of a new or “ecological” ethic redefining the relationship between man and nature in such a way as to ensure the survival of the human species on earth. The background to the various ethical approaches has been the indisputable fact that humanity has accumulated a monstrous potential to destroy life on earth, and that it is using natural resources and the environment in a way that threatens the survival of future generations—at least, at a standard that we today consider worthy of human beings.

Type
Agora: What Obligation Does our Generation owe to the Next? An Approach to Global Environmental Responsibility
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , January 1990 , pp. 207 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1990

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References

1 For the German-speaking context, see P. Saladin & C. A. Zenger, Rechte Künftiger Generationen (1988).

2 Jonas, H., Das Prinzip Verantwortung (1979): Ökologie und Ethik (D. Birnbacher ed. 1980); Responsibilities to Future Generations: Environmental Ethics (E. Partridge ed. 1980)Google Scholar.

3 See part III infra.

4 See Weiss, The Planetary Trust: Conservation and Intergenerational Equity, 11 Ecology L.Q. 495, 540 ff. (1984).

5 World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (1987) [hereinafter Our Common Future].

6 Id. at 43.

7 Id. at 348 (Ann. I); see also Experts Group on Environmental Law of the World Commission on Environment and Development, Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development (1987).

8 Our Common Future, supra note 5, at 332.

9 Id. at 333.

10 See part I infra.

11 See part II infra.

12 Weiss, supra note 4.

13 Id. at 499 ff.

14 P. Saladin & C. A. Zenger, supra note 1.

15 See Gündling, The Status in International Law of the Principle of Precautionary Action, Int’l J. Estuarine & Coastal L. (forthcoming).

16 Weiss, supra note 4, at 540 ff.