Do we owe a Duty to Future Generations to Preserve the Global Environment?

Abstract

A common assumption underlying nearly every book or essay on the global environment is that the present generation owes a duty to generations yet unborn to preserve the diversity and quality of our planet’s life-sustaining environmental resources. This duty is sometimes said to be an emerging norm of customary international law, including the more recently treaty-generated custom of the “common heritage of mankind.” Professor Edith Brown Weiss lists three different approaches one might take in response to an asserted environmental obligation to future generations: the “opulent” model, which denies any such obligation and permits present extravagance and waste; the “preservationist” model at the other extreme, which requires the present generation to make substantial sacrifices of denial so as to enhance the environmental legacy; and the “equality” model—favored by Professor Weiss—which says we owe to future generations a global environment in no worse condition than the one we enjoy.