Food systems’ transition and intergenerational equity: what about future generations’ access to food?

This paper examines the intersection between food systems transformation and intergenerational equity, focusing on the challenges and opportunities for ensuring the right to food for future generations. It begins by critically assessing the persistent failure to achieve SDG 2 on zero hunger and the limits of current food security policies grounded in a productivist paradigm. The analysis highlights the role of international human rights law - particularly the right to food - as both a legal and policy tool to address food insecurity, while also acknowledging its limitations in adequately integrating long-term ecological sustainability. Against the backdrop of planetary boundaries and growing environmental degradation, the paper explores how principles of intergenerational justice - especially as articulated in the Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations and the UN Pact for the Future - can enrich and reshape the legal understanding of the right to food. It argues for embedding intergenerational thinking into food policies through two key priorities: moving beyond food productivism to ensure access within planetary limits and reducing the food system’s dependence on fossil fuels and non-renewable inputs. The paper concludes by proposing that a rights-based framework, reoriented through intergenerational equity, can help guide the necessary transition toward sustainable and just food systems that safeguard the entitlements of both present and future populations.