Intergenerational Equity: a Legal Framework for Global Environmental Change

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Intergenerational equity: a legal framework for global environmental change Edith Brown Weiss Chapter 12 in Environmental change and international law: New challenges and dimensions, Edited by Edith Brown Weiss. Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1992. Sustainable development rests on a commitment to equity with future generations. In 1972 the United Nations Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment recognized that we had a responsibility to "protect and improve" the environment for both present and future generations. In 1992, we are faced with defining and implementing this commitment to future generations in the context of environmentally sustainable development. Global environmental change affects our capacity to achieve sustainable development; it may help or hinder this process, although the focus is more on the latter. In turn, economic development causes global environmental changes. The implications of global environmental change are inherently long-term and require that we address equity issues that span two or more generations. We have developed economic instruments to try to satisfy the needs of the present generation efficiently, but these are not adequate for addressing equity issues with future generations. While the incorporation of externalities is intended to ensure that the benefits from a proposed action exceed the costs and that those who bear these costs be adequately compensated, in practice it operates from the perspective of the present generation. Environmental externalities are focused primarily on the costs that the present generation bears in polluted air, water, and soils from industrial development, in deforestation, and in other aspects of economic development. The discount rate is used to consider future costs and benefits, again from the perspective of the present generation. Reliance on the discount rate to consider
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