Rights for Future Generations workshop at ESF high lighted the short comings of both Left and Right wing politics in ensuring that future generations are not exploited and denied the right to a decent environment by current generations. It argues that the damage we have done to the environment will cause suffering to future generations and that any ideology which considers equality to be improtant is failing unless it extends this equality in equal measure to people in future generations as well as those today.

Modern society condemned for exploiting Future Generations

The Rights for Future Generations workshop at the European Social Forum will demand the recognition of the fundamental rights of people in future generations. It argues that:

People of future generations have the same rights as people today, including a decent environment, but this is being destroyed.

Current generations must take responsibility for the exploitation of future generations from our waste of resources and the climate change we have caused.

Both Right and Left wing politics ignore future generations and share a role in their exploitation. The categories and goals they use are obsolete, and are short-sighted and do not facilitate the well-being and democratic rights of our children and their descendants.

Therefore we need an immediate shift to ecological politics to assure the survival of life on earth.

The first step to ending this exploitation and to establish ecological politics is to ensure that the rights for future generations are represented in all areas of society including the government, judiciary and business.

Such a representation shall protect the great diversity of life on earth, give a chance for everyone to live a life worthy for Man and stop wasting the heritage of our descendants.

This extension of democratic rights to descending generations must occur in tandem with the extension of such rights to the majority of today's generations who do not enjoy these rights yet.

The workshop discusses Future Generations and the Representation of Future Generations, Hungary (REFUGE; that "acts as" an ombudsman proposed by Protect the Future); and other initiatives in the world (Germany, Israel, Poland, Malta, Ontario-Canada, the 1997 Declaration of UNESCO). It also discusses possibility of similar roles in governmental, business, spiritual and campaign organisations. It explores the role that the judiciary can play in protecting future generations. The workshop intends to bring together those who wish to create a network that can press this issue forward on national, EU and international level. The forming of EU's Constitution gives a special reason for creating such a network: as Rights for Future Generations should be explicit in the constitution.

Chit Chong, Speaker for Future Generations said "Climate change has changed the rules. We know that we do now can cause suffering not just in other parts of the world but also in the future. It can be argued that there is a link between a parent driving a polluting four wheel drive on the school run and a drowning of a child in Bangladesh twenty years from now"

Peter Kajner of Protect the Future, secretary of REFUGE, Hungary said "We must end living at the cost of our children. We have to ensure for them the right to healthy air and water, a stable climate, enjoy the diversity of life on Earth, peace - the right to live a life that is worthy for Man. If we do not do this today, we are no good parents, and condemn our descendants to suffering. We have to shift to ecological politics right now that serves life and not death."

Miriam Kennet October 2004 and ESF website October 2004