Google has put out a call for ideas that will change the world  and has promised to award up to $10 million to implement the top five. We think legal guardianship of future generations is an idea worth considering. Here’s the application we sent Google.

Legal Guardians of Future Generations

We can create the rights of future generations to a habitable planet and protect those rights by designating legal guardians of future generations.

At present, future generations have no legal rights to air, water, a stable climate, and the company of other creatures. This proposal has two parts. First, we need to define the right of future generations to inherit a sustaining environment and enshrine this right in constitutions, legislation and international agreements. Second, we can create a new legal institution, guardians of future generations, that will protect this right. A guardian can serve at any level of government and in any branch of government from the Department of Justice in the United States, to a city council, to the United Nations.

The guardian would have the authority to

• assess government and private sector proposals for their impacts on future generations,
• review budgets and guarantee that future generations were not left a debt without a corresponding asset,
• propose alternatives to damaging activities, and
• make plans to leave a healthy legacy of nature, our common heritage, to future generations.

It is time to expand the rights in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights to include the right to a clean and healthy environment and extend that right to future generations.

We do not have any legal mechanisms for protecting the environmental rights and interests of future generations. Anchoring the right in law and creating a new institution to enforce these rights gives future generations a sporting chance. Our environmental policies are usually framed in short-term economics rather than long-term rights. This proposal creates a way to engage in long-term thinking and provides a legal method for this generation to assert its sacred right and duty to take precautionary action protect the rights of those to come.

This proposal would benefit future generations by guaranteeing that they have the necessary infrastructure to sustain and nourish life. But it also benefits present generations because actions we take now to protect the environment mean that we too will have cleaner water, fresher air, more pollinators, healthier soil, healthy oceans.

Here is how we would go about implementing this idea:

1. Propose the idea to governments through as many avenues as possible.
2. Prepare draft legislation, constitutional provisions on the rights of future generations and job descriptions for legal guardians.
3. Create a certification program for legal guardians at, say, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard Univ.
4. Hold an international conference at the U.N. on the law of future generations.
5. Recruit elder statesmen and women like Bishop Desmond Tutu to support the idea and serve as First Guardians.

How would we measure success? Within one year we would have legal guardians in multiple governmental bodies, including one appointed by the new president of the United States. The first declaration of the rights of future generations would pass the United Nations. One hundred legal guardians would be certified by a major institution and would be serving around the world, from Liberia to Ames, Iowa. But best of all, we could measure the decisions that were fundamentally different because a guardian had protected the rights of future generations.