This chapter examines the position of the UN Security Council within the institutional framework on environmental peacebuilding. It starts with an analysis of the UN's peacebuilding architecture,... Show moreThis chapter examines the position of the UN Security Council within the institutional framework on environmental peacebuilding. It starts with an analysis of the UN's peacebuilding architecture, which assigns complementary roles to the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council, based on each organ's respective function within the UN system. The chapter then turns to the practice of the Security Council with respect to 'conflict resources' on the one hand and environmental degradation more broadly on the other. This analysis demonstrates major differences in the substantive contributions by the Security Council with respect to 'conflict resources' on the one hand and to climate change and other ecological threats on the other. It argues that the institutional division of responsibilities between the three main UN organs provides a powerful rationale for explaining these differences. Show less
This chapter provides an overview of the kind of questions one has to answer to take position on the question of who owes what to future generations in the context of climate change and discusses... Show moreThis chapter provides an overview of the kind of questions one has to answer to take position on the question of who owes what to future generations in the context of climate change and discusses several possible answers as well as their upsides and downsides. It first asks whether we have duties of justice to future at all, raising several challenges to the idea of including future generations under the scope of justice. Second, it asks how much we owe to future people: equality, sufficiency, or just basic human rights. Even if there are theoretical reasons to embrace a more demanding account, there may be political or feasibility reasons to endorse a less demanding view. The third question is what we owe to future people: what kind of world, with what kind of goods and opportunities, do we owe to future people? Before concluding, the chapter discusses the distribution of duties to future people among contemporaries, the idea that we might have to limit the amount of future people, and possible institutional responses to challenges of intergenerational justice. Show less
