What is Future Generation Guardianship?
People who live today have the sacred right and obligation to protect the commonwealth of the Earth and the common health of people and all our relations for many generations to come.
Future Generation Guardianship is one way to do that. It is a new twist on an ancient idea. It's the Seventh Generation Principle of the Iroquois linked to the active role of guardianship.
Read the Bemidji Statement on Seventh Generation Guardianship to see how this idea was expressed in 2006, based on a collaboration with Indigenous people.
Guardians of future generations take specific responsibility for our common future. Future Generation Guardianship can become law and personal practice. Communities, religious groups, and organizations can take specific responsibilities for the wellbeing of future generations. We can all become guardians in our own backyards.
Verdicts from the Fifth International Rights of Nature Tribunal
The verdict of the International Rights of Nature Tribunal is made in the context of the current climate emergency and increasing global ecological breakdown, the seriousness of which cannot be underestimated. In terms of the human species, based on a growing body of scientific evidence relating to current global warming trends, we are facing a trajectory and impacts that will obliterate the possibility of human civilization (defined as the ability to feed ourselves through agriculture) by 2100. This fact is not widely discussed in the media, so we repeat it here, as it is of the utmost importance to have this in our minds as we seek real solutions to climate change.
The Women's Congress for Future Generations project
For ongoing local events in the Midwest held and co-sponsored by the Women's Congress for Future Generations project, visit our local chapter, Future First.
A Women’s Congress for Future Generations gathered in Moab, Utah September 27th-30th, 2012, to celebrate and express our gratitude for the Earth’s wondrous bounty, and to fulfill the special responsibility that women hold as the first environment for future generations.
At the Moab Congress, we mapped possibilities and pathways toward achieving whole health and justice in this generation and for all generations to come. Inspired by our environmental foremothers, our hope was to craft a dynamic articulation of the pressing rights Future Generations have to a livable world and the responsibilities of present generations to uphold those rights. Our labors yielded a living affirmation of these rights and responsibilities in word, art, music, and story.
A Second Women’s Congress was held on November 7–9, 2014 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We held an essential conversation among women about environmental, economic and social equity/justice that leads to a growing movement for shifting a world view toward the interconnectedness of all things, and taking action on behalf of all people and our planet. We sought to mobilize a movement of women going forward, fueling actions to shift cultural and political conversations toward a worldview that recognizes the interdependence of all things. Many materials fed into and flowed out of that gathering including:
The Law of Future Generations
A Set of Legal Principles for Mining, Fracking, and Pipelines for defending our communities and future generations.
Carolyn Raffensperger's "cutting edge law and justice" article in the Kosmos journal: "We will stand together as guardians of the future. We will tend and nurture the tree of life for generations to come."
Rights of Future Generations BibliographyThe Resources for the Legal Rights of Future Generations to Inherit a Livable Earth is a comprehensive overview of Future Generation policies that can be adopted at any level of government. They are intended as tools for communities to use in their efforts to protect the environment for Future Generations.
Law for Future Generations—SEHN/Harvard Project
Two reports by SEHN and the International Human Rights Clinic of Harvard Law School show how we can use old and new law to protect future generations. The product of two-and-a-half years of research, these reports address three questions:
1. How do we formally assert that future generations have a right to a habitable planet?
2. What legal and social relationships can embody our duty to preserve our children's only home, the Earth?
3. What institutions can we create to make those relationships real and effective?
Models for Protecting the Environment for Future Generations October 2008 describes how ombudsmen, guardians, and other legal instruments could help guarantee a habitable planet for future humans.
Model State Constitutional Provision and Model Statute November 2008 provides actual blueprint laws that states and tribes can use to implement these instruments and fulfill the ethical mandate to guarantee a livable world for future generations.
Read Tim Montague’s review and summary of Models for Protecting the Environment for Future Generations report, How to Protect the Future.
Other important supplemental reading for the Law of Future Generations
Carolyn Raffensperger speaking at TEDx Maui, on future generations, the precautionary principle, hope and grace. Youtube video
The Principles of Perpetual Care: The Giant Mine, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Carolyn Raffensperger, Principal author How can you make wise choices about toxic sites?
Carolyn Raffensperger, Principal author Rebecca Gasior Altman, Senior advisor Nancy Myers, Editor Rhiannon Chants Hanson, Sounding board Joan Kuyek, Researcher and author of companion paper on case studies Charlotte Babicki, Plain Language Executive Summary Kevin O’Reilly, Reviewer Prepared for Alternatives North for submission to the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board, December 2011
What is the Problem? How can you make wise choices about toxic sites? Here, we are talking about the long-term care of an abandoned gold mine (Giant Mine) near Yellowknife, NWT, Canada.
Giant Mine opened in 1948 and closed in 2004. It produced over 23,000 kg of gold. It also gave us a vast wasteland of arsenic trioxide. The mine contains 237,000 tonnes of arsenic dust that can melt in water. It has already poisoned lakes and creeks in the area.
How Long Does It Last? Contamination lasts a long, long time. It could be toxic for 250,000 years or even more. How can you even imagine such a long time? The pyramids in Egypt were built only 5,000 years ago.
How Can We Plan for Such a Long Time? We don’t know how to plan for 250,000 years. Instead, the aim of care at places like Giant Mine should be to protect people, other living things, soil, and water for as long as we can. We must try to protect the Earth from any more harm.
How Does This Report Help? The five rules in this report can help people who have to make decisions about long-term care. They should help us do our best to stop the creation of more sites that need care forever.
The Theory and Practice of Perpetual Care of Contaminated Sites July 2011 - Joan Kuyek, D.S.W.
In fall 2010, Alternatives North hired Dr. Joan Kuyek to do a study. Giant Mine in Yellowknife, Canada, has 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide to take care of. There is a plan to freeze this arsenic, so it can’t leak out and hurt the people and the land. For the Environmental Assessment of this plan, Alternatives North asked for a study of how contaminants are managed in other places.
Legal Guardians of Future Generations: A Roadmap March/April 2009 This issue of the SEHN Networker describes the role of legal guardians and how cities can use this office. It includes a description of the Harvard/SEHN reports.
Legal Guardians of Future Generations April 21, 2008 - This presentation by Carolyn Raffensperger to the University of Iowa Law School outlines the basis for a new role in government bodies from city councils to the US Attorney General's office: the legal guardian of future generations. Power Point.
Recalibrating the Law of Humans with the Law of Nature: Climate Change, Human Rights, and International Justice Vermont Journal of Environmental Law 2008
A paper by University of Vermont/University of Iowa legal scholar Burns Weston.
Guardian Job Description October 4, 2007 - How a government body can structure a legal guardianship for future generations. Word document.
Model State NEPA for the 21st Century October 4, 2007 - States can begin now to rewrite their comprehensive environmental protection acts in ways that will protect future generations. This issue of the SEHN Networker tells how.