“We take the long view in so many ways. We get educated. We have children. We build. We buy houses. We talk about “making a living”, a continuing, dynamic, creative process. We contribute to pension schemes. We imagine retirement. We hope for good health. We devise and take out insurance policies. We make wills. We value museums, libraries, gardens, beaches, and open and wild spaces. We fear death and want to continue living. Even our fairy stories take the long view: “and they lived happily ever after”. And laws and policies are aimed at supporting these kinds of ends, or should be, even if the means are passionately contested”.

Peter Roderick’s report for FDSD and WWF-UK outlines a range of options for UK legal and constitutional change to underpin ‘the longer view’ in the interests of sustainable development.

download report
(996kb)

download appendices
(749kb)

Hungary’s Parliament has taken an innovative step in this direction. In 2007, Parliament decided to create a new independent watchdog function; the ‘green ombudsman’, to safeguard the constitutional right of Hungarian citizens to a healthy environment. The  full title of the office that was created is the Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations.  

In May 2008, Dr Sándor Fülöp was elected to become Hungary’s first Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations for a six-year term. 

The Commissioner for Future Generations is one of four Parliamentary Ombudsmen. Others deal with civil rights, data protection and freedom of information, and the rights of “national and ethnic minorities”.

The Commissioner for Future Generations works in three main ways: by investigating complaints relating to a broad range of environmental issues; by acting as a policy advocate for sustainability issues across all relevant fields of national and local legislation and public policy; and by undertaking or promoting research projects targeting the long term sustainability of human societies.

FDSD Director Halina Ward wrote an introduction to the Ombudsman’s role and its possible relevance in the UK for the November 2009 issue of UKELA’s e-law magazine. 

Special Event with the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations

To help share insights from this innovative role in the UK, we partnered with the UK Environmental Law Association in association with the Government Legal Service Environment Law Group to convene a special evening event featuring a keynote presentation from the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations, Dr. Sándor Fülöp. 

The event took place at the Ministry of Justice in London on 25th February 2010. Participant Kaihsu Tai wrote a note of the meeting. You can also download FDSD’s Press Release about the event, and link to an article on the Business Green website in which Dr Fülöp is interviewed following his return to Hungary from the UK.

In a follow-up initiative, FDSD is convening a brainstorming session for interested individuals and organisations to consider what inspiration the UK could take from Hungary’s Green Ombudsman. The half-day brainstorming session takes place on 27th April 2010.

About the speaker

Dr. Fülöp has degrees in law and in psychology. Between 1984 and 1991 he has worked as a public prosecutor at the Metropolitan and the National Chief Prosecutor’s Office. He also served, until his election as Commissioner, as the director of Hungary’s principal non-profit environmental law firm: the Environmental Management and Law Association (EMLA). In this capacity, Dr Fülöp participated in the drafting of the 1998 UN ECE Convention on Access to Information, Access to Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the Aarhus Convention). Between 2002 and 2008 he was a member of its Compliance Committee. Dr Fülöp has also been a university lecturer in environmental law since 1997.