Conflicts between intragenerational and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystems and their services may arise in the design and implementation of sustainability policy. We present a model that depicts the relationship between intragenerational and intergenerational justice (`justice‐relationship') against the backdrop of given ecological, economic and societal circumstances. These
system determinants include the quality and quantity of ecosystem services, population development, substitutability of ecosystem services, technological progress, institutions, and political restrictions on edistribution. With this model, we numerically simulate how different assignments of resource utilization rights to potential ecosystem users impact on the justice‐relationship depending on system determinants.