No Future for Future Generations

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Emily Jones, University of Newcastle will be joining the Goldsmiths Law Department for a Law and Society Research Seminar where she will present a paper entitled ‘No Future for Future Generations: Who is International Environmental Law for?’.The idea that the environment must be protected for future generations has been gaining traction in recent years. This paper argues that the concept of future generations, as deployed in international environmental law is, however, deeply exclusionary, with only some humans being envisaged as future generations, these exclusions being marked by gender, race, class and ableism. It is furthermore argued that the concept is anthropocentric in that it focuses only on human future generations. The paper discusses whether the concept can be recast considering these critiques, deploying queer and decolonial approaches to do so. In particular, Indigenous understandings of future generations are highlighted as offering an alternative framing. The paper concludes by arguing that legal concepts must be carefully designed to ensure the construction of a future whereby climate change and environmental degradation are addressed in an equitable and just way, providing three pathways that can be used to begin to reframe the concept of future generations accordingly.

Host or Publisher Law, Goldsmiths, University of London