Climate Change Litigation: German Family Farmers and Urgenda – Similar Cases, Differing Judgments

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-332
Author(s):  
Thomas Schomerus
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
State Institution ◽  
Dutch Government ◽  
Family Farmers ◽  
German Family ◽  
National Programmes ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Global Threat

In the Dutch Urgenda and the German Family Farmers’ cases, the claimants sued the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, according to their national programmes. On the Dutch side, the claimants won in three instances up to the Supreme Court, while they lost at the German Administration Court of Berlin. A main factual difference between the two situations is that in the Netherlands, the Dutch government had, to a certain extent, withdrawn from its initial positions on climate policy. The judgments show that climate change litigation is necessary to gain progress towards a greater understanding of state institution roles in addressing the global threat of climate change, culminating in a better fulfilment of climate change goals.

scholarly journals Urgenda: the Final Judgment of the Dutch Supreme Court

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-321
Author(s):  
C.W. (Chris) Backes ◽  
G.A. (Gerrit) van der Veen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Public Interest Litigation ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Final Verdict ◽  
Court Of Appeal ◽  
Dutch Supreme

The final verdict to the Urgenda case provided by the Dutch Supreme Court has been called a victory in the fight to limit climate change and a milestone in public interest litigation, at least in the Netherlands. As a consequence, the Dutch state will have to reduce ghg-emissions by 25% compared with 1990 at the end of 2020. The judgment has attracted widespread acclaim for being ‘courageous’ and exploring unknown legal territory. However, a closer look at the reasoning of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court still leaves many questions, which are address in this manuscript.

scholarly journals State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-735
Author(s):  
Maiko Meguro
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Emissions Reduction ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
The Supreme Court

The judgment in State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation marks one of the first successful challenges to climate change policy based on a human rights treaty. In this case, the Dutch Supreme Court upheld the lower court's opinion that the Netherlands has a positive obligation under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to take reasonable and suitable measures for the prevention of climate change. Although the Supreme Court recognized that climate change is a consequence of collective human activities that cannot be solved by one state on its own, it held that the Netherlands is individually responsible for failing to do its part to counter the danger of climate change, which, as the Court affirmed, inhibits enjoyment of ECHR rights. In reaching that conclusion, the Supreme Court determined the exact level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction that the Netherlands is required to meet to comply with its ECHR obligation, specifically, a 25 percent reduction compared to its 1990 level by the end of 2020.

The State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda (Neth. Sup. Ct.)

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 811-848
Author(s):  
André Nollkaemper ◽  
Laura Burgers
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
International Law ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
The State ◽  
European Convention ◽  
The Supreme Court

On December 20, 2019, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands published its judgment in The State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda. The judgment is largely a discussion of questions of Dutch law, but contains several conclusions that are relevant from an international law perspective. In particular, the Court held that on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the Netherlands has a positive obligation to take measures for the prevention of climate change and that it was required to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 25 percent by the end of 2020, compared with 1990 levels.

scholarly journals The role of the judiciary in environmental securitisation. Urgenda Foundation v. The State of the Netherlands

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Tkaczyk
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
The State ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Legal Obligation ◽  
Dutch Government ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
Dangerous Climate Change

Since climate change is broadly recognised as a threat multiplier, the environmental problems are considered in the sense of security. Academic articles are focused on analysing states, international non-governmental organisations, as well as regional entities such as the European Union as securitising actors. Limited attention has been given to the judiciary. This article fills the existing gap. The aim of the research is to analyse how do the Dutch Courts securitise the climate in adjudicating the case Urgenda Foundation v. The State of the Netherlands’, through the lens of the securitisation theory. The implementation of discourse analysis as a research methodology has proved that the Dutch courts have contributed to environmental securitisation by ruling on the legal obligation of the Dutch government to prevent dangerous climate change in order to protect its citizens

Management of the Dutch Waddensea

1984 ◽  
Vol 16 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 485-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Vreugdenhil
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Nature Reserve ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hydrological Processes ◽  
Dutch Government ◽  
Shallow Sea ◽  
Management Objectives ◽  
Late Middle Ages

It was not until the late Middle Ages that the sea penetrated far into the interior of The Netherlands, thus flooding three quarters of a million hectares of land. Since then half a million hectares have been reclaimed from the sea. The Dutch Government chose to preserve the remaining quarter of a million hectares of shallow sea with mudflats of the Waddensea as a nature reserve. The management objectives are at one hand to preserve all characteristic habitats and species with a minimal interference by human activities in geomorphological and hydrological processes, and at the other hand to guarantee the safety against the sea of the inhabitants of the adjacent mainland and islands and to facilitate certain economic and recreational uses of the Waddensea without jeopardizing the natural qualities. These objectives are being elaborated in managementplans.

The Controllability Precautionary Principle: Justification of a Climate Policy Goal Under Uncertainty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugen Pissarskoi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Goal ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Climate Change Policies

How can we reasonably justify a climate policy goal if we accept that only possible consequences from climate change are known? Precautionary principles seem to offer promising guidelines for reasoning in such epistemic situations. This chapter presents two versions of the precautionary principle (PP) and defends one of them as morally justifiable. However, it argues that current versions of the PP do not allow discrimination between relevant climate change policies. Therefore, the chapter develops a further version of the PP, the Controllability Precautionary Principle (CPP), and defends its moral plausibility. The CPP incorporates the following idea: in a situation when the possible outcomes of the available actions cannot be ranked with regard to their value, the choice between available options for action should rest on the comparison of how well decision makers can control the processes of the implementation of the available strategies.

Kaiserdämmerung

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Schabas
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Dutch Government ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
The Hague

As the war ends, Kaiser Wilhelm leaves Berlin for German military headquarters in Spa, Belgium, where his generals tell him that the troops will not follow him and that his life may even be threatened. He flees to the Netherlands in his private train, possibly after receiving an ‘all clear’ from Queen Wilhelmina. The Dutch Government persuades a local aristocrat, Count Bentinck, to take him in for a few days to his castle in Amerongen, but the visit ends up lasting nearly eighteen months. Britain’s Ambassador to The Hague sends his wife to spy on the Kaiser’s arrival, but attempts without success to conceal her identity from the Foreign Office.

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