Restoring the Rights of Future Generations · Abstract: This paper promotes the idea of Rights for Future Generations as one of the ethical principles on which politics, economics

Int. J. Green Economics, Vol. 1, Nos. 1/2, 2006 103

Restoring the Rights of Future Generations

Chit Chong 13 Queen Elizabeth’s Walk N16 5UZ, London E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: This paper promotes the idea of Rights for Future Generations as one of the ethical principles on which politics, economics and justice in the 21st century should be based. It argues that environmental damage caused by current generations has already impaired the ability of future generations to meet their basic needs. As a result of this, it argues that the concept of Sustainable Development is now flawed and should be augmented by the concept of Restorative Development. This paper highlights areas where restoration can be effected and some of the mechanisms that will be required in economics, law and politics to support this restoration.

Keywords: Rights for Future Generations; restorative development; sustainable development; green economics; intergenerational equity; climate change; renewable resources; non-renewable resources; restorative discount rates.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Chong, C. (2006) ‘Restoring the Rights of Future Generations’, Int. J. Green Economics, Vol. 1, Nos. 1/2, pp.103–120.

Biographical notes: Chit Chong has been an environmental campaigner since the late 1980s, and was the first Green Councillor to be elected in London. He has worked on Rights for Future Generations in the past five years, initially as a means of articulating the difference between green and conventional politics, but later as one of the fundamental ethical principles, which should guide all activities in society. He is, by inclination and aptitude, an engineer but has worked as an environmental professional for over ten years and now specialises in sustainable construction in public sector housing. He holds a Master’s in Design Engineering and Environmental Assessment.

1 Introduction

This paper promotes the idea of Rights for Future Generations as one of the ethical principles on which politics, economics and justice in the 21st century should be based. This is because current generations, the grandparents, parents and children alive today, are consuming renewable resources at a vastly greater rate than the planet can sustainably supply, and are drawing on the non-renewable resources of the planet without restraint. As a result we are, in effect, stealing resources, which belong to people of future generations.

Copyright © 2006 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

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One of the foundations of the modern environmental movement was a concern that excessive use of resources would become a threat to humanity. In the Limits to Growth, Meadows et al. (1972) used computer models to predict the effects that resource depletion, population growth and pollution would have on human society. It highlighted these factors as limits to human growth and that, if unchecked, these factors would result in a crash in world population.

A salutary warning of breaching the limits to growth referred to in books, such as A Green History of the World by Ponting (1991, pp.1–7), is the implosion of civilisation on Easter Island. Here, the population rose from a few settlers in the fifth-century to a peak of about 7000 by 1550 AD, by which time, the inhabitants of the isolated island had virtually cut down all their forests. As a result of the failure to husband these resources, the population crashed suddenly, taking with it a sophisticated civilisation, and leaving hundreds of massive stone statues unfinished. When the island was discovered by the Dutch in 1722 AD there were about 3000 islanders living in primitive conditions who had resorted to cannibalism to supplement the lack of protein in their diet.

The idea of rights for future generations extends concerns for environmental protection from being an issue for current generations into a question of the ethics and morals of the exploitative relationship between people of current generations and those yet to come. The parallels that can be drawn between the planet today and Easter Island, are striking. The global economy, where no two parts of the earth are more than a day’s travel apart, is exploiting the earth’s resources as comprehensively as the Easter Islanders exploited their forests, with a similar risk of implosion as a result of the exhaustion of global resources.

The moral questions that we face are: What rights do future generations have to the resources of the planet? And what rights do current generations have to put future generations at risks? Following on from this, how can future generations be given redress for the damage done to them by people of current generations?

The extent of the damage that will be done to the environment in which future generations will live is enormous. Examples cited by Brown (2001) include:

• Increasing water scarcity has limited grain yields in many countries. This scarcity is also leading to international tension where countries compete for water from the same river basin. These include the rivers Jordan, Nile, Mekong and Ganges.

• Nine of the worlds’ 17 major fisheries are in decline as a result of overfishing and the once plentiful fisheries of the Grand Banks have collapsed.

• During the 20th century, the earth’s forest has reduced from 5 billion hectares to 2.9 billion hectares with corresponding increase in flood risk.

• Soil erosion is leading to the loss of arable land and in some countries it is leading to the expansion of deserts. The loss in live stock production as a result of land degradation in dryland regions of the world in 1990 was estimated to be $US23 billion annually.

• As a result of humanity’s expansion and use of resources, the space for other species has shrunk, leaving 12% of the world’s bird species, 24% of its mammal species and 30% of its fish species under threat of extinction.

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2 Climate change

However, by far the most significant damage being done to the environment of future generations is on climate change. This results from pollutants from activities in our global economy exceeding the ability of the earth to absorb them. In the case of climate change, the pollutant is carbon dioxide (CO2) which, together with water, is the main product of fossil fuel combustion from which virtually all aspects of the global economy activities are based.

Research by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climatic Change (IPCC, 2001b) shows that the atmospheric concentration of CO2, the principal gas responsible for climate change, increased from 280 ppm in 1750 to 367 ppm in 1999, and this was predominantly a result of human activity. This concentration of CO2 is not thought to have been exceeded during the past 20 million years. The IPCC believes that the high concentration of CO2 is a major contributor to the increase in global temperature of about 0.6°C and a rise in sea levels of 100 to 200 mm over the last century.

They predict that concentrations of CO2 could stabilise at 550 ppm by 2100 if population growth would slow down and society would prioritise environmental protection. If, however, the high use of fossil fuel were maintained, in a ‘business as usual’ scenario, a CO2 level of 1000 ppm would be reached. This would correspond to a temperature rise by 2100 of about 1.8°C in the first case, and 4.5°C in the second case. However, even if the concentration of CO2 were to stabilise, and the level of emissions decrease, global temperatures would continue to rise in the following century as CO2 requires up to 200 years to be reabsorbed by the earth’s ecosystem.

The EU target is to limit temperature rise by 2050 to 2°C, (Hogan, 2005). However, even stabilising at this level of 2°C higher would still trigger the slow but irreversible melting of the Greenland icecap, and an eventual sea-level rise of about seven metres. Maintaining this level would also be difficult as the rising temperatures are expected to cause vegetation to die and release even more CO2, with the Amazon predicted to suffer badly (Jenkins et al., 2005, p.9). It is also expected that more extreme temperature and rainfall levels will harm people, agriculture and infrastructure. The UNEP (2005, p.18) expects that Africa will be especially vulnerable to these changes as its agricultural and many of its health issues are strongly linked to reliable rains.

Whilst the prediction of climate change may be seen to be a preoccupation of the scientific cognoscenti, it is also becoming a personal experience of many people. Gardeners for example have experienced earlier springs, with flowers blooming two weeks earlier in Scotland now than they did 30 years ago (Sunday Times, 2005). Equally, bird spotters have been recording earlier migration by a number of species (Leech, 2002). Also noticeable, is the lack of snow over the past few winters in the South of England.

3 Climate change? What climate change?

In the UK, the prime minister has made numerous pronouncements on the threat of climate change. However, these pronouncements have not resulted in significant efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the prime minister has been forced to admit that the UK is projected to have emissions 14% lower than the 1990 levels by 2010, thus missing its 20% target. This leaves the UK with the eighth highest CO2 emissions equal to 60% of those of Africa (US Department of Energy, 2002). This is despite a head

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start in emissions reduction as a result of the shift from coal to gas to generate electricity instigated by preceding conservative governments as well as the de-industrialisation of the UK economy. Indeed, government figures for 2004 show that CO2 emissions have actually increased by 2.7% during the seven years of the labour government (ENDS, 2005c).

There has been action to reduce emissions in the UK. Its building regulations, once one of the least energy efficient in the EU, are being rapidly brought up to European standards. In addition, a major awareness-raising campaign on climate change is about to be undertaken (ENDS, 2005b).

However, this commitment does not seem to be reflected in the UK Treasury. The last budget froze vehicle fuel duty, historically one of the main drivers of energy efficiency and only offered derisory funding for environment-friendly measures, exemplified by an illusionary reduction in value added tax for micro heat and power plants combined, a technology that is still at the trial stage. The indications are, therefore, that the current Chancellor, like his predecessors, is still sceptical of the importance of climate change (ENDS, 2005a).

Unfortunately, progress in other nations is even slower than in the UK. Since 1990, CO2 emissions from the USA have grown by 15% and are now a quarter of the world’s CO2 emissions. The current US administration shows little inclination to sign the Kyoto Treaty and indeed, is often seen as undermining any domestic or international action to curb emissions. This lack of action on climate change has caused the current UK Chief Scientist, Sir David King to state that “climate change poses a bigger threat than terrorism” (King, 2004). His predecessor and current president of the Royal Society, Lord May, accused the USA of being “out on a limb on climate change” (May, 2005).

In developing and recently developed countries, emissions are growing at an even faster rate. Singapore, a low-lying island at risk from rising sea levels has extremely strong policies on recycling, air quality and ecological issues but the Singapore Green Plan 2012 (Chua, 2002) is silent on climate change. Its efforts to implement energy efficiency seem to be at an early stage, with no targets set for reducing energy consumption. CO2 emissions have grown by a massive 93% since 1990 and Singapore’s per capita emissions are now a third higher than that of the USA.

More understandable is the 73% growth in emissions in India over the same period. Here, the per capita emissions are 0.98 tonnes per year, one-tenth that of the UK (US Department of Energy, 2002). As India develops, so too will its emissions, especially as its principal energy source at the moment is coal. In addition, its population of 1.03 billion is expected to grow and overtake China’s 1.3 billion by 2050, further increasing its demand for energy. Having said this, India has made efforts to promote renewable energy and it ranks fifth in the world in terms of installed wind turbines. It is also hot on the heels of China in biogas plants (Gupta, 2005).

4 Ideological barriers to action on climate change

The reasons that governments ignore climate change are complex. These include: the overwhelming magnitude of the problem, as well as a belief that their citizens would not accept the modifications in their lifestyles that addressing climate change would require. It is true that mass consumption patterns and mass production technologies have divorced us from realising our impact on the real world today, let alone the world of tomorrow.


But perhaps more fundamental than these are the underlying ideologies and

theologies that shape our society today and our unwillingness to see the impact that we will have on future generations. These ideologies and theologies are not exclusively exploitative. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God gave the earth to his people “to be cared for and passed on to each generation” (Weiss, 1989); the socialist tradition also recognises the stewardship role of existing generations for the earth.

However, the overwhelming evidence is that in practice, stewardship has been ignored. The predominant religious sentiment from the Bible (Revised Standard, 1946) is of man having “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth”. For socialism, a view of Marx (1894) is that nature is a tool for the labourer, and as for capitalism, a view of Smith (1776) is that land, and by extension, nature itself, was a source of rent and profit for the landlord.

Whichever the ideology, future generations lose out and receive very little for their stolen share of the earth’s resources.

5 Sustainable development

The concern about damage to the environment and excessive use of resources gave birth to the modern environmental movement in the early 1970s, and to the concept of sustainable development. This addressed the long-term well-being of both people and planet and was defined by Bruntland (1987) as “development which meets the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”.

The concept, arguably, reached its zenith with the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and its implementation plan, Agenda 21 (UN, 1992). This highlighted the need to unite a wider range of participants including non-governmental organisations in addressing both poverty and environmental issues. It resulted in numerous local authorities in the UK developing local agenda 21 documents and, for a period, environmentalists gained a measure of influence in UK town halls.

Unfortunately, despite the language of sustainable development appearing in numerous UK government documents, the gap between this rhetoric and its implementation has frequently been wide. One example is that of Local Strategic Partnerships, which brought together local authorities, police, and community and health groups to promote sustainable communities by improving the ‘social, environmental and economic well-being’ of their areas. Within these partnerships, it was found that wider environmental issues, including those of climate change, were generally marginalised into a subgroup that was not seen as being a priority by other members of the partnerships (Church, 2005).

However, even if sustainable development were to be truly implemented, the rights for future generations would not be guaranteed unless these rights are made explicit.

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6 Rights for future generations and restorative development

The Bruntland (1987) definition of sustainable development set in the backdrop of increasing individualism of the late 1980s was visionary. However, by the 2000s, the definition has become flawed in many areas because current generations have already compromised the ability of future generations to meet many of their basic needs. This is especially so regarding climate change, with the predicted loss of agricultural land and worsening living environment in many areas that will result in suffering for coming generations. Therefore, to view sustainable development as the key to protecting the well-being of future generations is as dangerously self-delusionary as the idea of trickle-down economics was in the 1970s.

With trickle-down economics, the increasing wealth of rich nations was supposed to trickle down to less developed nations enabling them to develop in turn. In reality, the wealth gap between the richest and poorest nations has increased, with the idea of trickle-down being used to justify increasing exploitation. Similarly, sustainability development initiatives aimed at meeting the needs of present generations can leave future generations worse off. This is especially so when sustainable development is conflated with economic development. For example, Wixey and Lake (1998) notes that the EU’s Trans-European Network aims for ‘sustainable mobility’ but results in significantly greater CO2 emissions increasing the severity of climate change for future generations.

We need a new credo that grants future generations equal rights to those enjoyed by people living today and addresses our duty to make restitution for the harm that we have already caused future generations.

The two linked concepts of this credo are:

1 Rights for future generations, which means that future generations must have equal rights to the use of the earth’s resources and that each successive generation has a duty to ensure this. Each generation has a duty of stewardship over the earth and they only have rights of usufruct1 of the earth.

2 Restorative development, is a progression of the concept of sustainable development. It is development that meets the needs of the present, and restores the damage done to the ability of future generation to meet their needs.

7 What do we need to restore?

7.1 Agriculture

The Royal Society (2001) believes that changing agricultural and forestry practice could achieve up to 25% of the CO2 reduction required to avoid large increases in global temperature. For example, organic farming can improve soil fertility and formation. By contrast, intensive agriculture has eroded soil and reduced soil fertility. Hawken and Lovins (1999, p.212) report experiments in US wheat belts to reinstate a perennial polyculture, which mimicked the original prairie, increased rain retention and rebuilt topsoil with virtually none of the inputs used in intensive farming methods that lose topsoil 17 times faster than it is formed. Shephert et al. (2002, pp.143–144) showed that the quality of topsoil is higher in organic farms than in conventional farms in the UK.


7.2 Timber

Toyne et al. (2002) estimate that 20% of timber imported by the G8 countries and China is from illegal sources. It is therefore unsurprising that 14.6 million hectares of forest, an area greater than Bangladesh, is lost annually (FAO, 2000).

The Royal Society (2001) states that terrestrial vegetation and soils absorb approximately 40% of global CO2 emissions from human activities and that forests are responsible for just over half of this carbon. Trees and soil are equally important, indeed boreal forests such as those in Russia and Canada store as much as 80% of the absorbed carbon in the soil (FAO, 2001). The amount of this land adsorbed carbon depends on the type of forest, and its ecological maturity. Once the forest cover is cut down, much of the carbon stored in the soil begins to be released as carbon dioxide.

An important way of ensuring that forests improve as a store of carbon and as a resource for current and future generations is through independent certification of forests. These schemes include the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) system, Canadian Standards Association (CSA) scheme, Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) scheme, Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) schemes and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI).

All these schemes provide recognised assurance that the timber is from legal sources. To varying degrees, they all provide independent verification of the standard of silviculture with the aim to improving biodiversity, economic value, and social well-being of people dependent on them. However, the system that is widely recognised to have the most rigorous social and ecological standard is the Forest Stewardship Council’s (Ozinga, 2004).

Pepke (2002) estimates that there are 124 million hectares of forests certified. This comprises 3% of the world’s forests leaving significant scope for widespread deforestation and illegal logging elsewhere. The creation of stronger markets for certified sustainable timber will encourage timber producers to certify their forests and discourage illegal logging.

7.3 Fisheries

Overfishing has already led to the end of plentiful fishing in the Grand Banks (Canada, 2005) and to a lesser extent the North Sea, and species such as the bluefin tuna being severely overfished.

The Marine Stewardship Council aims to do for fisheries what the Forest Stewardship Council has started to do for forests. They believe that building a market for sustainably harvested fish will help to conserve and regenerate existing fisheries for future generations.

Low input aquaculture can reduce the pressure on marine fisheries. An example of this is the carp polyculture practised by the Chinese for many centuries. This uses farm waste and manure to increase the productivity of fish ponds. This source of protein has potential for other parts of the world. China, which produces over half of the world’s farmed fish (Tacon, 1995) provides more farmed fish than ‘wild’ fish to feed its own people.

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7.4 Non-renewable resources

Future generations’ equal rights to the resources of the earth may seem obvious where renewable resources are concerned. However, with non-renewable resources, there is clearly a conundrum. Dividing finite non-renewable resources between current generations and an infinite number of future ones leaves each generation with no rights to these resources.

In practice, the use of non-renewable resources is subject to change as a result of human ingenuity or scarcity. For example, undersea communications cables were originally made of copper. The first was laid in 1850, across the English Channel. By 1988, when the first optical fibre cable was laid across the Atlantic, there were 225 000 km of copper cables. Since then, the copper cables have been superseded by optical fibres because of the latter’s greater communications capacity. By 2002, there were 368 000 km of optical fibre undersea cables, enough to encircle the earth ten times, with projects underway that more than double that distance (Herbert and Coffen-Smout, 2002).

Copper use worldwide has continued to increase, but at an almost constant rate, rather than at an exponential rate, which would have been the case if copper had continued to be used for undersea cables.

Scarcity sometimes leads to materials substitution. For example, during the 18th century, guano from bird or bat droppings became an important fertiliser for agriculture in Europe and America. Between 1840 and 1880, an average of half-a-million tonnes was extracted a year from Peru, the source of the best quality guano. The guano was effectively used as a non-renewable resource as it was extracted five times faster than the rate at which it was produced, and by 1910, Peruvian reserves were close to exhaustion. Fortunately, by 1913, the Haber-Bosch process produced industrial ammonia. The price of guano fell, allowing its extraction to reduce to a sustainable level. It is now much prized as an organic fertiliser.

However, manufactured ammonia consumes non-renewable resources. Ammonia is made from methane, and modern plants require 30 to 38 GJ of energy to produce a tonne of ammonia (Chemical Industry, 2005), or about three-quarters of a tonne of crude oil for every tonne of ammonia.

This brings us to oil, the key non-renewable resource of the 21st century. Swenson (2001) points out that global oil discovery peaked in 1962 and has declined so that by 2001, six barrels of oil were being consumed for each barrel discovered. Further, he cites predictions that oil production will peak within this decade. This effectively means that half of the accessible oil will have been consumed in less than a century.

In the case of oil, current generations have obviously taken much more than their fair share. However, defining each generation’s fair share is clearly not straightforward. A precautionary approach is required, which recognises that future generations will not automatically develop viable alternatives, and that even if they find alternatives, they will still have need for materials we consume today. It should also be remembered that the environmental impact of extracting and manufacturing materials will have environmental impacts, which in turn can impinge on the rights of future generations. The climate change impact from the energy used to manufacture ammonia is a case in point, so too is the radioactive waste that results from nuclear power.


The precautionary principle should therefore mean that people over several centuries

would be entitled to the same percentage of remaining non-renewable resources. Effectively, successive generations would have a slightly smaller share of a given resource, and that over time the quantity of finite resources available would decline asymptotically. Whilst this means that non-renewable resources are not divided equally across all generations, this process would slow depletion rates significantly, allowing successive generations to adapt.

Restoration of oil resources that have already been consumed is impossible, but it is possible to reduce consumption to a level that enables several centuries of use. This reduction is essential if the rights of future generations are to be respected, and international legal measures may be required to compel this reduction.

7.5 Population

Research by WWF (Loh and Wackernage, 2004) indicates that by 2001, humanity had already exceeded the planet’s biological carrying capacity by 20% with no space being given to other species. Inequalities leave about half the earth’s population in poverty. Each person in the USA consumed the resources of 9.5 hectares, and a person in India, 0.8 hectares. The implications are that if every one in the world consumed at the same rate as the US average, over five planets would be required. If world consumption were to be at the average of Italy (3.8 ha/person), the lowest in Western Europe, 2.1 planets would be required.

If the Italian level of consumption were to be desirable as the global average, then the world population would have to reduce consumption from its current six billion to three billion. This level of consumption would still leave no space for other species, and therefore, leave humanity vulnerable to unforeseen ecological failure if essential species became extinct.

Clearly, one aspect of restorative development would be to reduce the world’s population to a level which ensures that people have sufficient resources to lead dignified lives and also have sufficient resources for other species, including the great apes, humanity’s closest relatives, who are all under threat of extinction.

7.6 Earth’s capacity to regulate atmospheric carbon

More than anything else, current generations have used many times more than their fair share of the earth’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide. This leads to climate change on an unprecedented scale as described above (see Section 3).

The only equitable means of restoration would be to stop emitting more CO2. However, this is clearly not possible with the present day heavy dependence on fossil fuel. Non-organic agriculture alone requires massive inputs of fossil fuel in fertilisers and pesticides, and ending the use of fossil fuel will mean global starvation.

That being said, massive reductions can be made in the use of fossil fuels. Examples of these include:

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• Use of renewable energy to generate electricity. Archer and Jacobson (2005) estimate that the wind energy alone has the potential to generate 72 terawatts worldwide, five times more than the world’s total energy demand and 40 times its electricity use.

• Increasing energy-efficient transport. Current low-consumption petrol cars consume 45 mpg while electric cars like the G-Wiz (Going Green, 2005) claim to run on the equivalent of 600 mpg.

• Non-essential air and sea travel can be reduced, including the transportation of out-of-season fruit and vegetables sold in our supermarkets.

• Higher efficiency in buildings to reduce both heating and cooling energy. This is especially important in the UK, which has some of the oldest and least efficient buildings in Europe. The 40% House Report (Boardman et al., 2005) on the measures required by housing in the UK to meet the CO2 reduction target of 60% show that raising the energy efficiency of the fabric of dwellings would greatly reduce carbon emissions. Raising the SAP (energy efficiency) rating of housing from its current average of 51 to 70 would reduce emissions from housing by 35%. This would still be below that of houses built to current building regulations, which would achieve SAP ratings of about 95.

• Boardman et al. (2005) also support the idea of Personal Carbon Allowances, which effectively ration the emissions allowed to each person in the country. This was seen as a possible means of raising awareness of emissions amongst all citizens.

• Similarly, national and international carbon trading schemes ration emission rights and allow nations and businesses to trade in these rights. An example is the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme commenced in 2005. However, a key factor in the success of any emission allowance is the level at which emissions are capped.

This is addressed by the concept of contraction and convergence (Meyer, 2000), which addresses equity between nations, reduction of emissions and to an extent, equity between generations. This takes into account the past emissions of developed nations in dividing emission rights between nations of a per capita basis. It sets a transition period during which time, the emissions from the individual nations converge to their allotted share and contract to a level of emission that the planet can support.

8 Economics and future generations

Conventional economics seems to be a science that is geared very strongly to using the financial concerns of the day to predict the costs and benefits of the future, rather than using the concerns of future generations to call for current-day investment. As a result, conventional economists tend to downplay the importance of climate change. Lomborg (2004) uses economic models to argue that greater benefits would be gained from investing in known problems such as AIDs today, rather than investing in the benefits that reduced climate change would bring to future generations.


The emphasis that conventional economics places on the interests of current

generations and the discounting of investment in the future devalues the well-being and rights of future generations.

It seems that if conventional economics were to be asked the question ‘what has posterity ever done for me?’, it would give the traditional self-centred answer, ‘not a lot’. The reality is, of course, that the generations immediately succeeding us already underpin the value of existing goods by giving value to long-term investments. After all, there would be no value in the futures market for pork bellies in 20 years’ time if there is no one to eat them, little use for 10- and 20-year government bonds for hedge funds if no one was there to redeem them, and no bank would give a 25-year mortgage on a house if there was no one to buy it at the end of the term. But perhaps more important is what not having children would do to the motivation of people to work, irrespective of whether the children are their own or not. Shorn of future generations there will be little to motivate people other than hedonism and greed. These would probably be insufficient to drive the economic growth that conventional economics calls for.

8.1 Discounting the rights of future generations

Conventional economics assumes that capital is of more benefit if it is spent today rather than tomorrow. This discounting of the future value of investments made today is also strong in discussions on the prevention of climate change. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report (IPCC, 2001a) states that decisions on climate change mitigation should in part use discount rates of 5% in developed countries and 11% in developing countries. This creates a massive disincentive to minimise the effects of climate change. On this basis, for example, if a developing country like China, were to look at saving its agricultural land in 50 years’ time, it would find it not worth investing $6 million today to save $1 billion in 50 years’ time, or to suffer the equivalent losses. As industrial land is currently worth more than agricultural land, it is hardly surprising that a significant amount of prime agricultural land is being lost, even though as the US Embassy (1997) in China reports, there are serious concerns about the ability of the nation to feed itself in the future.

8.2 Restorative ‘discount’ rate

The shortcomings of using high discount rates for long-term investments have been accepted by mainstream economists as seen in The Green Book (Treasury, 2003). This recommends a discount rate of 3.5% for investments up to 30 years declining to 1% for those above 300 years, and replaces a discount rate of 6% used in previous Treasury guidance. The implications of discounting on future generations have also been discussed by some economists. Farber and Hemmersbaugh (1993, Section IV,) admit that discount rates favour the present over the future and, perhaps more importantly, that discount rates would also encourage regulations, which produced short-term gain over long-term benefit. They only propose a 1% discount rate for long-term investments to create environmental benefits to future generations.

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Whilst such a rate may reduce, but not end, the exploitation of future generations, it would not address the needs of restorative development. Restorative discount rates would be negative discount rates on a sliding scale depending on their benefit to future generations. For example, wind turbines, which reduce the reliance of present generations on fossil fuel and equip future generations with renewable generating capacity, would clearly be a restorative investment. These should be assessed on negative restorative ‘discount’ rates of the order of minus 1% or 2% as opposed to the plus 3.5% rates used by the Treasury (2003).

Clearly, the setting of a restorative ‘discount’ rate would be as open to debate as the setting of a conventional discount rate. Factors in setting the latter, include the social opportunity cost of the productivity of capital, which assumes that investment today automatically generates more resources for future consumption and the idea of social time preference, which assumes that people prefer ‘jam’ today rather than tomorrow. In contrast, factors involved in setting a restorative rate would include the potential environmental impact of investment today (a reversal of the assumption in conventional economics) and the preference of people tomorrow for investment today.

These restorative ‘discount’ rates could work in tandem with existing discount rates in assessing the value of investments today, just as social discount rates operate in parallel with private sector discount rates. The difference would be that for investments where there is a potential to restore the damage done to future generations, such as those described above, the restorative ‘discount’ rate would bias appraisal in favour of investment today, rather than leaving the problem to future generations, which all too often happens using conventional discount rates.

8.3 Conventional indicators

The emphasis on current financial concerns is compounded by indicators such as GDP and GNP. These measure economic activity in terms of flows of money, rather than the benefits they create. Their shortcomings are widely recognised. Robert McNamara, then President of the World Bank, said in 1973, “Progress measured by a single measuring rod, the GNP, has contributed significantly to exacerbate the inequalities of income distribution” (FoE, 2005). Unfortunately, these indicators remain the mainstay of conventional economics.

For green economics, a major challenge is to change how the wealth of the earth is measured so that it is measured not just in terms of money, but by indicators that reflect its true value in providing a home for humans and other species. Hawken and Lovings (1999, p.147) cites the Biosphere 2 experiment of 1991 to show how important this is. The $200 million experiment failed to produce a truly sustainable sealed ecosystem fit for human life. It was only able to keep eight people alive for two years, at the end of which, oxygen levels dropped to those found at an altitude of over 5 km, and cockroaches were one of the few surviving species.

8.4 Alternative indicators

Alternative indicators have already been developed, which look at social as well as financial issues. Interestingly, many indicators show that human well-being has already peaked in many countries irrespective of whether social, economic or environmental criteria are used. Sharpe (1999, pp.16–21) describes several such indicators including:


1 The Index of Economic Well-Being (IEWB) for Canada, which looks at per capita

consumption flows, accumulation of stocks of productive resources in society, poverty and inequality, and economic security of people. In Canada, this indicator peaked in 1989 and has been falling since then.

2 The Index of Social Health (ISH) attempts to monitor the social well-being in the USA by examining the progress over time of a number of social problems across all age groups. These include murders, access to affordable housing, the gap between the rich and poor, child abuse, child poverty, teenage drug abuse and unemployment. For the USA, the ISH peaked in 1973, then declined rapidly to 1982 and then levelled off.

Perhaps more relevant to climate change is the Living Planet Index (LPI) developed by the Loh and Wackernage (2004) as an indicator of the world’s biodiversity. It shows a 40% decline in the populations of terrestrial, freshwater and marine species since 1970. LPI indicates the ecological health of the planet on which the human species depend. The decline increases the risk of key species becoming extinct, making the world’s ecology less resilient to changes and/or less efficient at converting and retaining the sun’s energy.2

Another important measure of the well-being or suffering of the earth is the number of refugees, resulting from wars, famines, drought, natural disasters and oppressive regimes. They are a proxy indicator of the rising social, economic and environmental problems of the planet.

Myers (2004) estimates 25 million environmental refugees in 2002, 50 million by 2010, and 162 million by 2050 at risk from rising sea levels with a further 50 million from other climate dislocations.

Whichever indicator is used by green economists, it should:

• indicate what investments are needed today to meet the needs of future generations

• ensure that the costs of environmental impacts and risks are not transferred to future generations

• take the well-being of future generations as equal with the people of today

• help to highlight damage done to the ability of future generations to meet their needs

• require restorative development.

9 Looking beyond economics

Economics is clearly not the only area where restorative development must apply. Law, politics and indeed, the consumerist society must also take it up if the rights of future generations are to be protected.

9.1 Law

Like economics, law is geared mainly to protect the interests of the living and to some extent the dead, but not future generations. Whilst this lack has been debated, with notable lawyers such as Weiss (1989) taking a lead, there is little protection, so far, of their rights. There are however, several initiatives including:

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• The UNESCO Declaration on the Responsibilities of the Present Generations Towards Future Generations (1997) Article 1 makes explicit that “present generations have the responsibility of ensuring that the needs and interests of present and future generations are fully safeguarded”.

• The World Jurists Association Conference (2001) adopted a resolution affirming the rights of future generations.

Existing legal principles, such as the polluter-pays principle, may be extended to benefit future generations. These are embedded in EU and UK laws and are guiding principles for international environmental law (OECD, 1972). In the English law on nuisance case (Rylands vs. Fletcher, 1868), a person is responsible for the damage done by pollution escaping from his or her land. Cambridge Water vs. Eastern Counties Leather (1994) establishes liability if the harm from the pollution is foreseeable.

For these principles to be effective when seeking redress on behalf of future generations, a present day advocate acting on their behalf would be required. The Hungarian NGO Védegylet (2001) has proposed such an advocate in Hungarian law through a Bill for an Ombudsman for Future Generations in 2000, to speak for future generations on matters that affect them, and identify and act on issues that have a damaging impact their interests. The Bill passed several stages in the Hungarian parliament, but failed to become an Act.

9.2 Politics

Consideration of future generations is also scant in politics and, as mentioned above, in socialism and capitalism. In addition, frequent elections in most democracies promote short-term thinking.

An exception to this is the Green Party of England and Wales manifesto’s explicit commitment to Rights for Future Generations, and their appointment of a Speaker for Future Generations (Green Party, 2005).

9.3 Society

Unless society itself embraces the credo of restorative development, it will continue to exploit and destroy the resources of future generations. This is especially so in developed countries where per capita consumption is higher. As individuals and communities, we must challenge our consumerist age and ostentatious waste, such as the use of Jeeps and Land Rovers in urban areas.

If society is to become much more altruistic and willing to embrace some austerity in order to protect future generations, education at all levels is needed to embed a sense of intergenerational duty as a primary social ethos. First, is the need to understand and take responsibility for the damage that has been done to the future well-being of the planet. This is in contrast to today’s acceptance of, for example, the environmental impact of millions of unnecessary air miles of transported food. Second, is the adoption of a community ethos that is willing to address past damage to future generations and to prevent it from being repeated. At this stage, Mombiot’s (2005) lament that in today’s society “no one ever went on strike for austerity” will be a thing of the past and we will individually and collective make restitution for our environmental crime.


This will be a long process, a social catharsis spanning generations. A possible

parallel is post-1945 West Germany’s extensive education about the damage inflicted in their Nazi past (Dierkes, 2002), which may have been an important factor in neo-Nazis having less influence in Western Germany than in Eastern Germany where such education did not exist before the reunification (Kim, 1998).

10 Conclusions

Unless the scientific community and our personal experiences are totally in error, climate change is here and will increase with a magnitude and pace that will be impossible to ignore. In the developed world, initially this is likely to be mainly financial and insurance losses, and decline in property values in flood-prone areas. Less-developed countries will, inevitably, be much worse off. Their populations are likely to suffer repeated weather disasters, and loss of homes, livelihoods and lives.

To counter climate change, the profligate use of resources and the associated exploitation, and injustices, our society must adopt two concepts:

1 rights for future generations, which enshrines in law, policy and economics their equality with people living today and places a duty on each successive generation to defend the rights of their future generations

2 restorative development, which recognises responsibility for the damage to and exploitation of future generations and accepts the duty of restitution for the damage.

The concepts calls for the following actions:

• to account for the losses that future generations will suffer

• to move beyond sustainable development towards restorative development

• to use restorative ‘discount’ rates in financial assessment of projects that benefit future generations

• to initiate proxy mechanisms like ombudsman and representation today for future generations

• to legislate for ‘usufruct’ in property rights so that renewable resources are used without damage, and non-renewable resources are shared fairly between generations over several centuries, ideally up to a thousand years

• to legislate requirements to redress the damage already done to future generations

• to educate and raise awareness about the rights of future generations and our duty of stewardship.

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Notes

1 Usufruct – the right of enjoying the use and advantages of another’s property short of destruction or waste of its substance (Oxford English Dictionary).

2 LPI, based on non-human species, underscores the fact that Rights for Future Generations as an anthropocentric analysis. Wider analysis of the role and indeed rights of other species could move perhaps towards the ideal of ‘reverential ecology’ of Satish Kumar which holds the interconnectedness and existence of all species as sacred.

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Restoring the Rights of Future Generations · Abstract: This paper promotes the idea of Rights for Future Generations as one of the ethical principles on which politics, economics