기후위기 헌법재판소 결정이 남긴 개헌 과제 ― 균형 잡힌 기후에서 생활할 권리와 미래세대 개념의 헌법적 수용 ―

The 2024 Constitutional Court decision on the climate crisis is of great legal significance, as it concluded that the government’s failure to set greenhouse gas reduction targets for the period from 2031 to 2049 violated the right to a healthy environment on the grounds of breaching the principle of prohibition of insufficient protection. However, the decision did not specify the concrete environmental interests protected under the right to a healthy environment, and consequently, the right to live in a balanced climate was not recognized as a fundamental right. Moreover, the decision remained silent on how future generations can be accommodated within the framework of constitutional reasoning. These limitations ultimately remain as tasks to be resolved through constitutional amendment. First, the right to live in a balanced climate can sufficiently be regarded as part of the content of the right to a healthy environment under the Constitutional Court’s established jurisprudence, and furthermore, a balanced climate deserves protection at the level of a fundamental right in itself. Therefore, it would be desirable to include a separate provision guaranteeing the right to live in a balanced climate under Article 35(2) of the Constitution, in addition to the existing environmental rights clause in Article 35(1). On the other hand, the concept of “future generations” has clear limits as a normative concept, as it remains unclear which groups are encompassed by the term. The notion of future generations serves primarily to emphasize that the benefits guaranteed by a norm continue to be protected until the norm itself is repealed — a feature common to all normatively protected interests, not unique to environmental ones. Hence, rather than explicitly including the term “future generations”, it would be preferable to directly articulate the values it seeks to highlight: the temporal interconnectedness of the environment and the importance of safeguarding future interests. These could be reflected in Articles 10, 11, and 35 of the Constitution. Although the concept of future generations has its limits as a normative aspect, it carries significant rhetorical power in evoking the importance of guaranteeing the benefits that future citizens will enjoy. Therefore, it would be appropriate to include this concept in the Preamble of the Constitution, where both normative and factual dimensions coexist.