By Carolyn Raffensperger

In the early 1990s I was appointed to a three-person commission to decide on the suitability of a low-level radioactive waste facility in the Midwest. The facility was going to take wastes from nuclear power plants, as well as medical and scientific institutions. The commission was in operation for a couple of years and we debated the law and science up until the moment that the three of us voted unanimously to reject the site.

I agonized over my decision, as I know my fellow commissioners did. What was the right thing to do given the pressing problems created by our nuclear technologies? How could we act ethically? As I struggled with my decision, I read an essay by Joanna Macy who called for a kind of priesthood of guardians for radioactive materials, or in her words, "the poison fire." She described the responsibility of this generation to opening our hearts, not just to the suffering of present creatures but also to the suffering we inflict on the "beings of the future."

I had forgotten about Macy's call until recently. At SEHN we've come to believe that the precautionary principle compels us to a heightened ethic of responsibility to future generations, not just to guard against the hazards of our errant technologies, but to restore and heal the tattered world, to watch for danger and prevent it.

In the 1980s a German philosopher named Hans Jonas proposed an ethical algorithm: "Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life". Jonas was perhaps the most articulate philosopher on the ethical mandate of this generation to take responsibility for future generations.

Jonas' ethic is expressed in the ancient decision rule of the Native American Iroquois Confederacy to evaluate the consequences of every decision on the seventh future generation. In fact, when our colleagues at the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) reflected on the precautionary principle, they said that it was identical to the Iroquois rule of the seventh generation.

Most current policy frameworks set decisions within two different ethics, a rights-based ethic and a utilitarian or cost-benefit analysis. Both utilitarianism and the rights of the individual tend to exclude our responsibility to future generations.

At SEHN we believe that the benefits of actions we take today to restore and protect the commons and public health will be repaid many times over. We also believe that identifying and designating guardians for specific places, species, languages, or communities may provide a new model for taking seriously our responsibility to current and future generations.

The idea of designating guardians emerged in conversations between SEHN and IEN last year. The result of that conversation is the Bemidji Statement and some practical ideas about guardianship. The Bemidji Statement was drafted by IEN and SEHN near IEN's Minnesota headquarters last spring and formally released at IEN's annual conference in July. It draws on the experiences, aspirations, and language of Native Americans and Alaska Natives, but it is an open invitation to all. The concept of the Seventh Generation, for example, belongs in a special way to these communities, but all of us are called to become guardians of future generations.

For more about how this idea came to be, see "Future Guardianship: An Intimate History" in A Story Book for Guardians of Future Generations."