Future Justice
Our duty and responsibility to ensure the survival of both present and future generations
Decisions taken by politicians today will have a major influence on the world of tomorrow. But our offspring and the generations yet to be born cannot stand up for their rights. This is why the WFC has set up the Expert Commission on “Future Justice” with the goal of analyzing and exposing the long-term effects of our decisions today and connecting current problem-solving with a long term perspective.
It is our conviction that we can only create a world that is more equitable, sustainable and peaceful over a long period of time if our solutions address the root causes of our current crises. Otherwise, as we can witness in the global system today, we risk dumping the costs of geographically limited or temporary solutions onto the shoulders of others - be they in other parts of the world or yet to be born.
If humanity wants to stop stumbling from one catastrophe or conflict to another, we have to approach our global challenges from a holistic and century-long perspective. Justice now should not sacrifice future justice, intragenerational solidarity should not jeopardize intergenerational solidarity, and all human solutions need to respect our planetary realities.
The Future Justice Commission therefore sees itself not only as an ambassador of future generations – trying to represent their concerns as accurately as possible -, but as a trustee that acts on their behalf, using its own judgment as to what will best serve their interests.
For this task the Commission builds on the many existing international accords on humanity's duties and responsibilities towards future generations, our planet and towards each other and seeks to foster their implementation with a double-wing strategy:
On the one hand it defines the worst violations of these duties as Crimes against Future Generations and provides worst policy criteria to identify which regulations we need to abolish to prevent them.
On the other hand it promotes best policy criteria to identify which regulations foster just and sustainable societies and will celebrate outstanding examples with an annual Policy Award.
Read Councillor David Krieger on Future Justice and Nuclear Weapons online.
Download the legal research paper on our Best Policy Criteria - including their application to the Feed-in Tariffs we promote in our Energy Campaign (AnnexI).
