O God our heavenly Father, you have blessed us and given us dominion over all the earth: Increase our reverence before the mystery of life; and give us new insight into your purposes for the human race, and new wisdom and determination in making provision for its future in accordance with your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

–U.S. Book of Common Prayer, “For the Future of the Human Race,” (1979), p. 828

I cannot pass up this prayer without mentioning the announcement for an ing academic conference I saw recently. The Applied Global Justice group of the Research Training Network will be holding the “Environmental Justice, Sustainable Development and Future Generations” international conference at the Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), 24-25 February 2006.

What struck me about this posting was the idea of “intergenerational justice,” and especially the topic of a paper by Prof. Dr. Peter Koller (University of Graz, Austria): “Natural resources, environmental justice, and the rights of future people.”

“The rights of future people.” Here’s a phrase that ought to have implications far beyond the concerns simply of environmental justice.

Indeed, the right to life can be seen as the basis for all other rights, as it is the necessary condition for the actualization of other rights, whether they be conceived of as liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Declaration of Independence), liberty and security of person (Article 3, Universal Declaration of Human Rights), or the right to respect for physical and mental integrity (Article 3, The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union).

The ability of future generations to realize the right to a sustainable environment is first contingent on the realization of the fundamental right to life. This must be the first and fundamental recognized right of future people.