¹ See, eg, N Bostrom, “The Vulnerable World Hypothesis” (2019) 10 Global Policy 455–76.

² On the overwhelming evidence that human lifestyles have impacted the Earth’s planetary boundaries, with profound impacts for generations to come, and their causes, see, eg, S Whitmee, A Haines, C Beyrer et al, “Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health” (2015) 386 Lancet 1973–2028.

³ The term “Anthropocene” was coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer in the late twentieth century. Crutzen, a Dutch atmospheric chemist, first proposed the term in a paper published in 2000, and it has since been widely adopted by scientists and scholars to describe the current geological age, characterised by humanity’s impact on the Earth’s ecosystems. See, eg, PJ Crutzen, “The ‘Anthropocene’” in E Ehlers and T Krafft (eds), Earth System Science in the Anthropocene (Berlin, Springer 2006) pp 13–18.

⁴ P Conceicao, “Urgency of inequality and climate change raised by COVID-19” in Development Co-operation Report 2020: Learning from Crises, Building Resilience (Paris, OECD Publishing 2020) ch. 2; H Clark, AM Coll-Seck, A Banerjee et al, “A future for the world’s children? A WHO–UNICEF–Lancet Commission” (2020) 395 Lancet 605–58; M Romanello, A McGushin, F MacGuire et al, “Monitoring climate change and child health: the case for putting children in all policies” (2021) 57 Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 1736–40.

⁵ See, eg, N Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2014).

⁶ CI Jones, “Life and Growth” (2016) 124(2) Journal of Political Economy 539–78. See also L Aschenbrenner, “Existential risk and growth”, Columbia University, GPI Working Paper No. 6-2020.

⁷ See, eg, S Rahman, Democracy against Domination (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2017); AJ Hillman, GD Keim and D Schuler, “Corporate Political Activity: A Review and Research Agenda” (2004) 30(6) Journal of Management 837–57.

⁸ For the purposes of this article and the overall Special Issue, we define long-term risks as including both low-probability, high-impact events (such as volcanic eruptions with a global impact) and high-probability risks that are unlikely to materialize in the near term (such as climate change).

⁹ P Dasgupta, The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review (London, HM Treasury 2021).

¹⁰ John Rawls was the first to develop a systematic account of obligations to future people as a central element of a theory of justice. See J Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, Oxford University Press 1971; 2nd revised edition, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1999), especially section 44; J Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York, Columbia University Press 1993) p 274; J Rawls, Justice as Fairness (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press 2001), especially sections 49.2 and 49.3.

¹¹ On timing as a dimension of policy choice, see, eg, AM Jacobs, “Policy Making for the Long Term in Advanced Democracies” (2016) 19(1) Annual Review of Political Science 433–54.

¹² The causes of this presentism bias are many and varied. They can be found in cognitive biases and heuristics, such as the availability bias, at the personal level (see, eg, E Yudkowsky, “Cognitive biases potentially affecting our judgment of global risks” in M Cirkovic and N Bostrom (eds), Global Catastrophic Risk (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2008)); institutional frames, such as the four- to five-year parliamentary cycle (see, eg, A Healy and N Malhotra, “Myopic Voters and Natural Disaster Policy” (2009) 103(3) American Political Science Review 387–406) combined with an unbalanced policy process in which special interests are typically overrepresented (see, eg, T Stratmann, “Some Talk: Money in Politics. A (Partial) Review of the Literature” (2005) 124(1/2) Public Choice 135–56), as well as in insufficient, non-resilient mechanisms for cooperation at the global level (see, eg, M Boyd and N Wilson, “Existential Risks to Humanity Should Concern International Policymakers and More Could Be Done in Considering Them at the International Governance Level” (2020) 40(11) Risk Analysis 2303–12).

¹³ A Karnein, “What’s wrong with the presentist bias? On the threat of intergenerational domination” (2023) 26(5) Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 725–46.

¹⁴ Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: “Our common future”(New York, UN, 4 August 1987).

¹⁵ See, eg, A Alemanno, Stakeholder Engagement in Regulatory Policy, Regulatory Policy Outlook (Paris, OECD Publishing 2015).

¹⁶ See, eg, E Padilla, “Intergenerational equity and sustainability” (2002) 41(1) Ecological Economics 69–83.

¹⁷ See, eg, A Jacobs, “Policy Making for the Long Term in Advanced Democracies” (2016) 19(1) Annual Review of Political Science 433–54; A Jacobs, Governing for the Long Term (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2011).

¹⁸ See, eg, T Ord, The Precipice (New York, Hachette Books 2020); R Krznaric, The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World (New York, Random House 2020); W MacAskill, What We Owe the Future (New York, Basic Books 2022). For a succinct yet sharp reconstruction of this movement, see also <https://www.bigissue.com/news/un-takes-future-generations-movement-global/>.

¹⁹ This means that if you want to make the world better in an impartial way (ie without regard to people’s race, class or where or when they were born), then what most matters morally is that the future goes as well as it can for all generations to come.

²⁰ See, eg, C Kolstad, K Urama, J Broome et al, “Social, Economic and Ethical Concepts and Methods” in O Edenhofer, R Pichs-Madruga, Y Sokona et al (eds), AR5 Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (New York, Cambridge University Press 2014) pp 207–82.

²¹ Discounting contains a built-in bias against future generations insofar as it devalues and practically removes from the analysis the impacts that occur in the distant future. Thus, projects with distant costs and immediate benefits are strongly favoured, whereas distant benefits are strongly devalued. Ultimately, the choice of a discount rate carries strong implications regarding the distribution of well-being between generations. For an early critique, see, eg, D Pearce and K Turner, Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment (New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf 1990).

²² See, eg, G Arrhenius, “An Impossibility Theorem for Welfarist Axiologies” (2000) 16 Economics and Philosophy 247–66; MD Adler, “Future Generations: A Prioritarian View” (2009) 77 George Washington Law Review 1478–520; G Arrhenius, “Population paradoxes without transitivity” in G Arrhenius, K Bykvist, T Campbell and E Finneron-Burns (eds), Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2020).

²³ On the rise of future generations’ rights through a process of constitutionalisation and institutionalisation, see R Araújo and L Koessler, “The Rise of the Constitutional Protection of Future Generations” (30 September 2021). LPP Working Paper No. 7-2021.

²⁴ High-profile climate litigation cases include Urgenda v. The Netherlands in 2019 and Juliana v. United States in 2015, as well as the 2021 Germany Constitutional Court decision that the government’s climate protection measures are insufficient to protect future generations and that the government had until the end of 2022 to improve its Climate Protection Act. See, eg, C Beauregard; D Carlson, S-A Robinson, C Cobb and M Patton, “Climate justice and rights-based litigation in a post-Paris world” (2021) 21(5) Climate Policy 652–65.

²⁵ On the meaningfulness and usefulness of ascribing rights to future generations, see, eg, A Gosseries, “On Future Generations’ Future Rights” (2008) 16 Journal of Political Philosophy 446–74.

²⁶ K Hubacek and M Volker, “Future generations: economic, legal and institutional aspects” (2008) 40(5) Futures 413–23; S Caney, “Justice and Future Generations” (2018) 21 Annual Review of Political Science 475–93; I González-Ricoy and A Gosseries (eds), Institutions for Future Generations (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2017).

²⁷ The Network defines itself as “a roundtable for sharing knowledge, experience and best practices of institutions from around the world. A platform for innovative ideas on the institutional protection of future generations and their environment” <https://futureroundtable.org/web/network-of-institutions-for-future-generations>.

²⁸ Commissioner for Wales, Well-Being of Future Generations (2015) Act, available from <https://www.futuregenerations.wales/about-us/future-generations-act/>.

²⁹ Te Tai Ǒhanga. The Treasury. Current and Past Budgets (NZ Treasury, 2021), available from <https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/budgets/current-and-past-budgets>.

³⁰ All five countries are members of the Wellbeing Economy Governments Partnership (WEGo) Wellbeing Economy Alliance. See Wellbeing Economy Governments (2021), available from <https://weall.org/wego>.

³¹ Sociologists and psychologists strive to gauge the degree of support within public opinion for future-orientated policies and ensuing institutional arrangements. See, eg, M Fairbrother, G Arrhenius, K Bykvist and T Campbell, “Governing for Future Generations: How Political Trust Shapes Attitudes towards Climate and Debt Policies” (2021) 3 Frontiers in Political Science 10.3389/fpos.2021.656053.

³² On the nature of future generations’ consideration, see, eg, Gosseries, supra, note 25.

³³ For an account of the “turbulent story of intergenerational equity from a comparative international perspective”, see D Bertram, “‘For You Will (Still) Be Here Tomorrow’: The Many Lives of Intergenerational Equity” (2022) 12(1) Transnational Environmental Law 121–49.

³⁴ The research for this paper focused on European, US and international sources and thus falls short of an exhaustive globally relevant comparative analysis.

³⁵ O Lyons (1980), cited in R Rydén, “Archivists and Time: Conceptions of Time and Long-Term Information Preservation among Archivists” (2019) 6 Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 6.

³⁶ Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Project (Hung vs Slovk), 1997 ICJ 7, 107, 25 September (emphases added).

³⁷ Araújo and Koessler, supra, note 23.

³⁸ The UN Charter already recognised in 1945 its raison d’être to be the need “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. Similarly, in 1946, the origin of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling can be found the recognition of “the interest of the nations of the world in safeguarding for future generations the great natural resources represented by the whale stocks”. Since then, over thirty international treaties and declarations covering a broad range of issues have been adopted.

³⁹ M Göpel, “Intergenerational environmental justice: tackling a democratic deficit with ombudspersons for future generations” (2011) 14 Effectius Newsletter.

⁴⁰ UNESCO and UN, “Declaration on the responsibilities of the present generations towards future generations” (1997).

⁴¹ <https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2006future.pdf>.

⁴² The concept of sustainable development, by exemplifying the imperative of considering future generations’ needs, acted as a catalyst in the recognition of a specific legal duty towards future generations. This was spearheaded by the Report of the World Commission on Environment (known as the Brundtland Report), which offered the reference definition of the concept of sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

⁴³ This figure represents 81 out of 196 constitutions. See Araújo and Koessler, supra, note 23.

⁴⁴ See ibid (referring to this phenomenon as “an increasingly prevalent novelty in constitutional texts even after the number of constitutions started to plateau”).

⁴⁵ ibid, at 14–15.

⁴⁶ In her seminal monograph devoted to the idea of equity governing the relations between generations, Edith Brown Weiss concludes that the translation of the expressed concern for future generations into normative obligations is unfinished business. See EB Weiss, In Fairness to Future Generations: International Law, Common Patrimony, and Intergenerational Equity (Tokyo, United Nations University 1988).

⁴⁷ In Urgenda, the Dutch government rejected the non-Dutch claimants, whereas the German Constitutional Court clearly acknowledged the existence of the German government’s duty to take into account the extraterritorial impacts of its policies, as requested by the Nepali and Bangladeshi claimants.

⁴⁸ A Alemanno, “Is There a Role for Cost–Benefit Analysis Beyond the Nation-State?: Lessons from International Regulatory Co-operation” in MA Livermore and RL Revesz (eds), The Globalization of Cost–Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2013).

⁴⁹ See, eg, A Dobson, “Environmental Sustainabilities: An Analysis and a Typology” (1996) 5 Environmental Politics 401–28.

⁵⁰ See, eg, R Elliott, “The rights of future people” (1989) 6(2) Journal of Applied Philosophy 159–69.

⁵¹ ibid.

⁵² J Boerema, “How to Prepare for the Unknown? On the Significance of Future Generations and Future Studies in Environmental Policy” (2001) 10(1) Environmental Values 35–58.

⁵³ See, eg, D Bromley, “Reconsidering Environmental Policy: Prescriptive Consequentialism and Volitional Pragmatism” (2004) 28(1) Environmental and Resource Economics 73–99; Padilla, supra, note 16.

⁵⁴ See, eg, K Hara, R Yoshioka, M Kuroda et al, “Reconciling intergenerational conflicts with imaginary future generations: evidence from a participatory deliberation practice in a municipality in Japan” (2019) 14 Sustainability Science 1605–19.

⁵⁵ S Anand and A Sen, “Human Development and Economic Sustainability” (2000) 28 World Development 2029–49. See also, eg, Gosseries, supra, note 25.

⁵⁶ “Intergenerational conflict” refers to the collective tension, strain and antagonism between older and younger generations over what constitutes the fair distribution of public resources across age groups as well as the tension between present and future people.

⁵⁷ Approximately thirty-two constitutions out of the eighty-one referencing future generations do impose a duty. See Araújo and Koessler, supra, note 23.

⁵⁸ ibid.

⁵⁹ For an overview, see, eg, A Gosseries, “Theories of intergenerational justice: a synopsis” (2008) 1(1) S.A.P.I.EN.S. [Online] <http://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/165>.

⁶⁰ Norwegian Constitution, Art L 110b, al 1, as amended in 1992.

⁶¹ Art 24 of the South Africa Constitution, 1997 (emphasis added).

⁶² On this point, see, eg, Gosseries, supra, note 25.

⁶³ For a reconstruction of the most recent intergenerational litigation before both international and domestic courts, see Bertram, supra, note 33.

⁶⁴ Neubauer, et al v Germany [2021] Federal Constitutional Court BvR 2656/18/1.

⁶⁵ BVerfG, Order of the First Senate of 24 March 2021 – 1 BvR 2656/18 – paras 1–270<http://www.bverfg.de/e/rs20210324_1bvr265618en.html>.

⁶⁶ Supreme Court of the Netherlands, 20 December 2019, ecli:NL:HR:2019:2006, English translation ecli:NL:HR:2019:2007.

⁶⁷ A Jakab, “Sustainability in European Constitutional Law” (1 July 2016). Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law (MPIL) Research Paper No. 2016-16, available at <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2803304>.

⁶⁸ See, eg, I González-Ricoy and A Gosseries (eds), Institutions for Future Generations (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2016); J Linehan and P Lawrence (eds), Giving Future Generations a Voice: Normative Frameworks, Institutions and Practice (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing 2021).

⁶⁹ For a thorough analysis but limited to institutional proposals for future generations, see González-Ricoy and Gosseries, supra, note 68.

⁷⁰ For an initial review, see, eg, E Dirth and N Kormann da Silva, Building Our Common Future: The Role of the Network of Institutions for Future Generations in Safeguarding the Future (Cologne, ZOE Institute for Future-fit Economies 2022); A Martinez-Zemplén, “Acting Today for a Better Tomorrow”, Network of Institutions for Future Generations 2018 Report.

⁷¹ Under this scheme, as a part of each new programme for government, the government runs a participatory national future-visioning design process, bringing together citizens in a way that is representative of the demographic distribution and diversity of society.

⁷² Framework for Intergenerational Fairness created by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and School of International Futures, which can be found at <www.soif.org.uk/igf> and <https://gulbenkian.pt/de-hoje-para-amanha/>.

⁷³ On the conceptual side effects of suffrage to children, see, eg, J Wall, Give Children the Vote: On Democratizing Democracy (London, Bloomsbury Publishing 2021).

⁷⁴ OECD, Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave (Paris, OECD Publishing 2020).

⁷⁵ For an analysis of the representation of future generations in the political process, see, eg, DF Thomson, “Representing Future Generations: Political Presentism and Democratic Trusteeship” (2010) 13(1) Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 17–37.

⁷⁶ See, eg, G Chroust, “The empty chair: uncertain futures and systemic dichotomies” (2004) 21 Systems Research 227–36.

⁷⁷ Generational accounting is a method of measuring the fiscal burdens facing current and future generations. Generational accounting considers how much each adult generation, on a per-person basis, is likely to pay in future taxes net of transfer payments over the rest of their lives. See, eg, AJ Auerbach, G Jagadeesh and LJ Kotlikoff, “Generational accounting: a meaningful way to evaluate fiscal policy” (1994) 8(1) Journal of Economic Perspectives 73–94; AJ Auerbach, LJ Kotlikoff and W Leibfritz (eds), Generational Accounting Around the World (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press 2007).

⁷⁸ The ecological footprint is an accounting method that focuses on land appropriation. It provides a means for measuring and communicating human-induced environmental impacts on the planet Earth. See, eg, M Wackernagel and W Rees, Our Ecological Footprint (Gabriola, New Society Press 1996).

⁷⁹ E Neumayer, “The World Bank’s Genuine Savings Accounting” in Weak versus Strong Sustainability (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing 2010).

⁸⁰ See, eg, P Singer, The Expanding Circle (Oxford, Clarendon Press 1981).

⁸¹ C Sneddon, RB Howarth and RB Norgaard, “Sustainable development in a post-Brundtland world” (2005) 57 Ecological Economics 253, at 254.

⁸² See, eg, Ord, supra, note 18.

⁸³ For a reading of the principle of intergenerational equality as entailing substantive obligations, see Weiss, supra, note 48; EB Weiss, “Implementing intergenerational equity” in M Fitzmaurice, DM Ong and P Merkouris (eds), Research Handbook on International Environmental Law (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing 2010).

⁸⁴ KM Kiang and C Behne. “Delivering environmental sustainability in healthcare for future generations: time to clean up our own cubby house” (2021) 57(11) Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 1767–74.

⁸⁵ See, eg, ME Rogge, “Children, poverty and environmental degradation: Protecting current and future generations” (2000) 22(2/3) Social Development Issues 46–53; J Best, “Redefining Poverty as Risk and Vulnerability: Shifting Strategies of Liberal Economic Governance” (2013) 34(1) Third World Quarterly 109–29.

⁸⁶ WG Bowen, RG Davis and DH Kopf, “The public debt: a burden on future generations?” (1960) 50(4) The American Economic Review 701–06.