The Constitution's Green Promise: Environmental Constitutionalism and Intergenerational Justice

Abstract

As the global climate crisis intensifies, traditional legislative and policy frameworks often struggle to provide long-term ecological protection. Environmental constitutionalism has emerged in response as a legal paradigm that embeds fundamental environmental rights and duties directly in national constitutions. This paper examines how constitutionalising environmental protection serves as a mechanism for enforcing intergenerational justice, the ethical and legal obligation to safeguard planetary health for future generations. Through comparative constitutional design and landmark judicial precedent, the study explores how courts and framers transform abstract concepts, among them the public trust doctrine, the right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature, into enforceable legal duties. It evaluates the structural tensions inherent in that movement, particularly the difficulty of balancing immediate socio-economic development against long-term ecological stewardship, and the procedural obstacles to standing on behalf of unborn generations. The paper argues that environmental constitutionalism raises ecological protection from a matter of political discretion to a rights-based imperative, and that anchoring intergenerational equity in supreme law creates enduring guardrails against short-term political incentives. It concludes with recommendations for framers and jurists seeking to design resilient constitutional frameworks capable of fulfilling the Constitution’s green promise.