Sustainable development requires consideration of the quality of life that future generations will be able to enjoy, and as the adjustment to sustainable lifestyles gathers momentum, the rights of future generations and our responsibility for their wellbeing is becoming a central issue. In this, the first book to address this emerging area of international law, leading experts examine the legal and theoretical frameworks for representing and safeguarding the interests of future generations in current international treaties. This unique volume will be required reading for academics and students of international environmental law and policy. Emmanuel Agius is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Theology and Coordinator of the Future Generations Programme at the Foundation for International Studies, University of Malta. Salvino Busuttil is former Director General of the Foundation for International Studies. Future Generations and International Law is the seventh volume in the International Law and Sustainable Development series, co-developed with FIELD. The series aims to address and define the major legal issues associated with sustainable development and to contribute to the progressive development of international law. Other titles in the series are: Greening International Law, Interpreting the Precautionary Principle, Property Rights in the Defence of Nature, Improving Compliance with International Environmental Law, Greening International Institutions and Quotas in International Environmental Agreements. 'A legal parallel to the Blueprint series - welcome, timely and provocative' David Pearce Originally published in 1997

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.

In this book Professor Weiss combines thorough research and careful analysis with imaginative solutions and a moral fervour, to show how rules of international law can be applied in an intertemporal dimension, and how the basic principles of the intergenerational equity can be developed to provide new standards for human behaviour. She manages to communicate to the reader not only that the situation is getting desperate but also that human intelligence can in time devise adequate remedies, without destroying completely our way of life.

The things we do today may make life worse for future generations. But why should we care what happens to people who won't be born until after all of us are gone? Some philosophers have treated this as a question about our moral responsibilities, and have argued that we have duties of beneficence to promote the well-being of our descendants. Rather than focusing exclusively on issues of moral responsibility, Samuel Scheffler considers the broader question of why and how future generations matter to us. Although we lack a developed set of ideas about the value of human continuity, we are more invested in the fate of our descendants than we may realize. Implicit in our existing values and attachments are a variety of powerful reasons for wanting the chain of human generations to persist into the indefinite future under conditions conducive to human flourishing. This has implications for the way we think about problems like climate change. And it means that some of our strongest reasons for caring about the future of humanity depend not on our moral duty to promote the good but rather on our existing evaluative attachments and on our conservative disposition to preserve and sustain the things that we value. This form of conservatism supports rather than inhibits a concern for future generations, and it is an important component of the complex stance we take toward the temporal dimension of our lives.

This volume is divided into three parts. The first explores various aspects of Collingwood’s philosophy of history, offering a follow-up to themes discussed in the author’s revised edition of History as a Science. The Philosophy of R.G. Collingwood(Springer, 2012). After a general introduction to Collingwood’s philosophy of history, his manuscript The Principles of History of 1939 is discussed. This manuscript was considered ‘lost’ for some time but has been rediscovered in 1995. Other topics dealt with are Collingwood’s philosophy of history in the year of his An Autobiography(1939), the philosophical context of his re-enactment theory, his views on the notions of process, progress, and civilization, as well as his unusual claim that history is a science. The following four essays of the second part deal with various aspects relating to the study of history and historiography. As regards the latter subject, attention is paid to the works of Herodotus and Toynbee, who correspond in having a wide scope and having been under debate. With respect to the study of history, the crucial notion of evidence is addressed, while a critical appraisal is made of the way the idea of a 'real' past is dealt with by Ankersmit. The third part of the volume discusses issues related to Western civilization and culture, and topics that are of global relevance. Both are dealt with from a historical and philosophical perspective. The first two essays focus on the rupture that occurred in Europe since the end of the eighteenth century as regards the relationship between past, present, and future, resulting in a loss of historical consciousness, and feelings of disorientation and crisis. The last three essays address the global issues of the responsibility for future generations and universal human rights, as well as the more general theme of the relationship between the West and the non-Western world.