Rights to a Green Future

Rights to a Green Future Uncertainty, Intergenerational Human Rights and Pathways to Realization (ENRI-Future)

An ESF Research Networking Programme

Standing Committee for the Social Sciences

Climate change, limited energy resources and population growth raise questions about moral and political obligations towards future generations. For several reasons, the current discussions in ethics, political philosophy, law, risk assessment and economics address these normative dimensions insufficiently.

First, the uncertainty of the future forms a severe obstacle for a moral assessment of political options while an ethics of risk and precaution is still missing.

Second, the plea for a sustainable politics has its foundation in obligations we have with regard to future generations. These obligations, however, easily conflict with the established human rights-framework (cf. the conflict between the aims of 'sustainability' and 'poverty eradication').

Third, all political strategies towards a sustainable politics have normative and contested implications. Without clarification of these normative dimensions the discourses about sustainability become rather meaningless. Collaborative research to identify the interrelationships between all dimensions and the development of a research agenda for a future-centred ethics of the environment is urgently needed.

The network aims to identify and analyze the questions that need to be addressed in order to determine what responsibilities we have to future generations and what the political consequences are of carrying these out.

Duration: Four years, from May 2011 to May 2015.

The kick-off meeting of ENRI-Future was held in Strasbourg on 24-25 May 2011.