Intergenerational Equity, Climate Change Litigation and Time in the ECtHR

Intergenerational Equity, Climate Change and Time in the European Court of Human Rights

Kathryn McNeilly - School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast

Recently, 2024 was deemed the ‘year of climate’ in international courts and tribunals (Hamilton, 2024). The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) contributed to this with three landmark rulings in April 2024. Subsequent developments have included Advisory Opinions on climate change from the International Court of Justice, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea as well as, in October 2025, an additional judgment on the topic from the ECtHR. This paper explores one concept that has been drawn upon in this rapidly developing jurisprudence: intergenerational equity. Foregrounding intergenerational equity as an inherently temporal concept, it examines how the ECtHR has engaged with this concept and the distinct approach to time that it requires. This uniquely demands consideration of past, present and future generations simultaneously in a long-term perspective and necessitates the development of new temporal analyses and tools. The paper concludes by reflecting on how intergenerational equity and the temporal framing that it involves might develop further as the ECtHR’s jurisprudence continues to expand.