What future for future generations?

Abstract

As the twentieth century draws to a close, concern about mankind's future is growing. The international community is confronted with several global problems: increasing disparities within and between nations, poverty, terrorism and violence, discrimination and exclusion. Society, at all levels, must be made fully aware of the right to development and to individual collective fulfilment, the right to an ecologically balanced environment, the importance of bio-ethics, etc. The challenge we all face is whether we shall be able to bequeath to future generations a world worth living in. In its Preamble, the United Nations Charter gave expression to the international community's concern for the fate of succeeding generations. The ethical mission of UNESCO, that of nurturing a spirit of peace in the minds of men, is based on similar considerations. While the rights of future generations have yet to be firmly defined, some recent initiatives are steps in this direction. The UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972) is one such step, inspired by the wish to safeguard this. heritage so as to pass it on intact to future generations. More recently, the Rio Declaration adopted in 1992 by the participants in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) proclaimed the idea of solidarity between generations, in the hope that those as yet unborn might be endowed with the right to a healthy planet. The rights of future generations were also singled out for attention in the Vienna Declaration. and Programme of Action, adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993 ), which stipulated that the right to development should be fulfilled so as to meet equitably the developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations. We need to pay close attention to the question of rights to be attributed to future generations. While learning from the mistakes of past generations,. we must endeavour to establish a new world order, based on a culture of peace. The definition of the rights of future generations implies in itself that today's generation has corresponding responsibilities. With that in mind, UNESCO and the Cousteau Society sponsored a meeting of experts in February 1994, which was organized by the Tricontinental Institute for Parliamentary Democracy and Human Rights of the University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain). The participants in that meeting drew up a "Declaration on the Rights of Future Generations" setting out the main rights of future generations to be preserved by present-day society and provides a firm basis for UNESCO's current work on elaborating a normative instrument on such rights. This publication does well to consider the philosophical, religious, political, legal, and socio-economic aspects of our responsibilities towards future generations and the search for innovative concepts. It presents a wide spectrum of thought-provoking discussions on these and other related themes, against the background of the challenges in terms of democracy, environment, bio-technologies and sciences with which the international community is faced. I hope it will promote further discussion and debate on these subjects that are so vitally important for the future of humankind.