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İklim krizi,gerek bireysel gerekse toplumsal varlığımız üzerindeki tehdit riskini her geçen gün daha da artırmaktadır. Ancak bu tehdit gereken ilgi ve çözümden uzaktır. Bu sebeple insanlığın hem bugünü hem de geleceğini korumakla yükümlü devletler (hükümetler) bu görevinin gereğini yerine getirmekten imtina etmekte ya da çaba sarfediyorum rolüne bürünmektedirler. Bu rolü geçmişten günümüze gelinen noktada gerek emisyonların gerekse küresel ortalama sıcaklıkların artışı iklim kriziyle mücadelenin yalnızca kâğıt üzerinde veya sözde olduğunu genel olarak göstermektedir. Bu çalışma halkın uluslararası sistemin ve hükümetlerin sebep olduğu iklim krizi çözümsüzlüğüne karşı çıkış yolu olarak gördükleri hukuksal (yargısal) çözüm yolunu incelemektedir. Sonuç olarak, vatandaşların daha fazla hak araması ve yargının iklim krizi lehine verdiği kararlar artıkça iklim kriziyle mücadelede hükümetler daha fazla çözüm yolu için çaba göstereceklerdir. Bu durum ise iklim krizi açısından tek başına büyük bir umut vaat etmese de bir ilerleme ve bilinçlenme sağlanmasına yararlı olacaktır., The climate crisis increases the risk of threats to both our individual and social existence day by day. However, this threat is far from the attention and solution it deserves. For this reason, states (governments) that are responsible for protecting both the present and the future of humanity refrain from fulfilling this duty or taking on the role of making an effort. The increase in both emissions and global average temperatures from past to present shows that the fight against the climate crisis is only on paper or in rhetoric. This study examines the legal (judicial) solution that the public sees as a way out of the helplessness created by the climate crisis caused by the international system and governments. As a result, as citizens seek more rights and the judiciary decides in favor of the climate crisis, governments will strive for more solutions in tackling the climate crisis. Although this does not hold great promise in terms of the climate crisis, it will be beneficial for progress and awareness.

The ground breaking Urgenda case showed that in the Netherlands there is ample room for climate litigation by individuals against the Dutch state. This contribution discusses in detail how much room the Court created and discusses other future litigation pathways, such as cases against major contributors to climate change. It also discusses the impact the adoption of the 2015 Paris Agreement and the 2019 Dutch Climate Act will have on the position of the individual who wants to challenge Dutch climate policies.

This article defends the proposition that after the Urgenda-ruling of the Netherlands Supreme Court of 20 December 2019, it is no longer possible to protect the rule of law without regard to the endangering climatic conditions that currently affect human and non-human life on this planet. It is argued that the groundbreaking Urgenda-ruling has taken us back to Montesquieu - as one of the first climate-oriented legal scholars - , rather than removing us from his thought, as some critics of the Urgenda-ruling claim.

The decision of the Dutch Supreme Court in The State of the Netherlands v Urgenda Foundation represents a breakthrough and a step forward in addressing the human rights aspects of climate change. The significance of the case has been recognised by commentators and the UN Human Rights Commissioner, who asked for a repeat of Urgenda’s journey in other jurisdictions. Despite the implication that other states have similar obligations to those construed by the Dutch Supreme Court, the influence of the case in other jurisdictions is yet to be seen. This article recognises the significance of the Urgenda case to the definition of state obligations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as part of their commitments under the European Convention on Human Rights. In particular, the article discusses the progress made in interpreting Articles 2 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in clarifying state obligations to take decisive measures to tackle climate change in line with their climate action commitments.

Climate litigation has become a trend in recent years. In one form such litigation organized citizens seek to require governments to set more ambitious CO2-abatement goals. In the Dutch Urgenda case, which is held to be a landmark case, the plaintiffs prevailed, forcing the Dutch government to change its climate policies. Using Urgenda as illustration, this article provides reasons for being skeptical of such climate litigation. One central reason for skepticism is the courts’ lack of democratic legitimacy, but this article focuses on another reason, namely that court litigation cannot be trusted as a mechanism for making good climate decisions. This functional reason for skepticism is well illustrated in the Urgenda case, where the courts framed the policy question in a manner that made it conducive to court adjudication, but where this framing was untenable. The Supreme Court referred to a scientific and political consensus about the need for more ambitious abatement and inferred that the Dutch State’s greater obligations then followed from human rights principles and the precautionary principle. However, this framing was invalid, as there is no clear scientific or political consensus about the required degree of abatement and as neither human rights nor precautionary principles provide a coherent framework for weighing costs and benefits of alternative climate policies. In the absence of this framing, the Court would have had to consider the theories that seek to weigh costs and benefits of more abatement, and such consideration of alternative theories cannot reliably be conducted through the mechanisms of legal adjudication. For one thing, courts are in civil trials restricted to considering the evidence that litigants bring forth. Notably, in Urgenda, the Dutch government could not be expected to dispute facts or theories to which it was politically committed. Moreover, the theories weighing costs and benefits are inherently complex, and judges cannot be expected to be able to choose between them. For instance, choosing between different theoretical prescriptions requires an understanding of the very intricate question of the proper rate of discounting over time.

This article provides a short overview of Dutch law. The constitutional law, civil and commercial law and court system of the Netherlands are explained and placed in a broader cultural and comparative context. Attention is paid to e.g. the Dutch Constitution, judicial review, tolerance, the use of Dutch and Frisian in the courts, civil law characteristics, the history of codification, export of Dutch law abroad, the role of the Hoge Raad and the highest administrative courts, judicial discretion and activism, anticipatory interpretation, the post-colonial relationship with Curaçao and the other Caribbean islands, legal education and the role of legal doctrine. The contribution also contains references to literature on Dutch law in English.

This article provides a short overview of Dutch law. The constitutional law, civil and commercial law and court system of the Netherlands are explained and placed in a broader cultural and comparative context. Attention is paid to e.g. the Dutch Constitution, judicial review, tolerance, the use of Dutch and Frisian in the courts, civil law characteristics, the history of codification, export of Dutch law abroad, the role of the Hoge Raad and the highest administrative courts, judicial discretion and activism, anticipatory interpretation, the post-colonial relationship with Curaçao and the other Caribbean islands, legal education and the role of legal doctrine. The contribution also contains references to literature on Dutch law in English.

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.

Op 26 mei 2021 heeft de rechtbank Den Haag een interessant en belangwekkend vonnis gewezen in een klimaatzaak. Anders dan in de Urgenda-zaak (ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2015:7196, ECLI:NL:GHDHA:2018:2610, ECLI:NL:HR:2019:2007.) draait het in de uitspraak niet om het handelen of nalaten van de overheid, maar om dat van een multinational; Royal Dutch Shell (RDS).

Le Tribunal de la Haye a récemment enjoint à la société mère de Shell de réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre de son groupe de près de moitié en moins de 10 ans. Si l’effet utile et la validité de l’injonction seront certainement fortement contestées par Shell en appel, ce jugement constitue un premier pas important en termes de concrétisation de la responsabilité des entreprises multinationales dans le domaine climatique. Le juge néerlandais influencera certainement la jurisprudence ultérieure dans de nombreux autres pays à l’image de l’affaire Urgenda, à commencer par la France où un contentieux similaire est en cours contre Total. The Hague District Court recently ordered Shell's parent company to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by almost half in less than 10 years. While the effectiveness and validity of the injunction will undoubtedly be strongly contested by Shell on appeal, this judgement is an important first step in terms of concretising the responsibility of multinational companies in climate matters. The Dutch judge will certainly influence subsequent jurisprudence in many other countries like the Urgenda case, starting with France where a similar case is pending against Total.

The ground breaking Urgenda case showed that in the Netherlands there is ample room for climate litigation by individuals against the Dutch state. This contribution discusses in detail how much room the Court created and discusses other future litigation pathways, such as cases against major contributors to climate change. It also discusses the impact the adoption of the 2015 Paris Agreement andthe 2019 Dutch Climate Act will have on the position of the individual who wants to challenge Dutch climate policies.

The ground breaking Urgenda case showed that in the Netherlands there is ample room for climate litigation by individuals against the Dutch state. This contribution discusses in detail how much room the Court created and discusses other future litigation pathways, such as cases against major contributors to climate change. It also discusses the impact the adoption of the 2015 Paris Agreement and the 2019 Dutch Climate Act will have on the position of the individual who wants to challenge Dutch climate policies.

An increasing number of climate lawsuits worldwide address responsibilities of climate change mitigation or adaptation. Yet, we know little about wider socio-political consequences of climate change litigation. This study focusses on the successful case of Urgenda vs. the Netherlands, which has created precedence for similar lawsuits against governments in other countries. Following theories of intra-media and political agenda setting, we analyze interactions between media attention (newspaper articles) and political attention (parliamentary questions) for the Urgenda case and higher-level issues, namely climate policy and climate change in general. Employing Vector Autoregression models we find that media attention for the lawsuit led to greater parliamentary attention. Moreover, we find bottom-up agenda-setting effects with media attention for the case influencing greater media and political attention for climate policies. This study reveals that climate litigation can have indirect consequences beyond the court ruling with media attention for a lawsuit as a crucial vantage point.

The existential threat of climate change consequences has never been as present as today. Extreme weather events are now daily occurrences, and although international climate change agreements which are meant to tackle this challenge, such as the Paris Agreement, do exist Parties are slow, unwilling, or unable to make commitments which would be sufficient to “keep 1.5 alive”. This has resulted in a wave of domestic climate litigation where civil society members such as NGOs, children and indigenous groups are brining direct judicial action against the relevant authorities due to the lack of sufficient measures or ambitions to the climate crisis. This thesis discovers the different interpretative interactions between domestic law and the Paris Agreement used by the judges in the recent Urgenda, Royal Dutch Shell and the Neubauer (German Constitutional Court) decisions. Consequently, this is used to make the determination that the Paris Agreement plays a significant role in domestic climate litigation both as a complementary source next to national law as well as a more legally justiciable set of legal standards and principles.

Mijn stelling in deze blog over de rechtsstaat is dat het behoud van de rechtsstaat op de langere termijn slechts mogelijk is als zijn verdedigers bereid zijn verder te kijken dan de actualiteit. Zij moeten zich ook openstellen voor de wijze waarop de rechtsstaat betekenis geeft aan de wijze waarop wij omgaan met de erfenis van het verleden én met de wissels die wij trekken op de toekomst. In dat kader vraag ik aandacht voor twee 21ste-eeuwse rechtsstaat-klassiekers: de Rawagedeh-uitspraak van de rechtbank Den Haag van 14 september 2011 en de Urgenda-uitspraak van de Hoge Raad van 20 december 2019.

Is het huidige Nederlandse juridische instrumentarium afdoende om de ambitieuze klimaatdoelstellingen voor 2030 te verwezenlijken? Of bestaat er behoefte aan een andere interpretatie en toepassing van bestaande instrumenten, aan de doorontwikkeling van het bestaande recht of aan geheel nieuwe juridische instrumenten? Deze bundel bestaat uit vier delen. In 21 bijdragen wordt u meegenomen langs diverse juridische vragen. Het eerste deel bevat een algemene analyse van de aard en omvang van de taakstelling waarvoor Nederland staat. Het centrale thema van het tweede deel is aansprakelijkheid in verband met klimaatverandering. In het derde deel wordt ingegaan op de energietransitie en in het vierde deel op klimaatadaptatie. Dit boek is geschikt voor een ieder die geïnteresseerd is in de juridische aspecten van de mitigatie van klimaatverandering, energietransitie en adaptatie in Nederland.

Is het huidige Nederlandse juridische instrumentarium afdoende om de ambitieuze klimaatdoelstellingen voor 2030 te verwezenlijken? Of bestaat er behoefte aan een andere interpretatie en toepassing van bestaande instrumenten, aan de doorontwikkeling van het bestaande recht of aan geheel nieuwe juridische instrumenten? Deze bundel bestaat uit vier delen. In 21 bijdragen wordt u meegenomen langs diverse juridische vragen. Het eerste deel bevat een algemene analyse van de aard en omvang van de taakstelling waarvoor Nederland staat. Het centrale thema van het tweede deel is aansprakelijkheid in verband met klimaatverandering. In het derde deel wordt ingegaan op de energietransitie en in het vierde deel op klimaatadaptatie. Dit boek is geschikt voor een ieder die geïnteresseerd is in de juridische aspecten van de mitigatie van klimaatverandering, energietransitie en adaptatie in Nederland.

This article defends the proposition that after the Urgenda-ruling of the Netherlands Supreme Court of 20 December 2019, it is no longer possible to protect the rule of law without regard to the endangering climatic conditions that currently affect human and non-human life on this planet. It is argued that the groundbreaking Urgenda-ruling has taken us back to Montesquieu - as one of the first climate-oriented legal scholars - , rather than removing us from his thought, as some critics of the Urgenda-ruling claim.

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.

International audience; Dans un arrêt du 20 décembre 2019, le Hoge Raad des Pays-Bas (ci-après HR) confirme la position de la cour d’appel de La Haye en matière d’efforts à fournir en vue de lutter contre le changement climatique en faisant application directe des articles 2 et 8 de la Convention. Nous mettons ici en exergue l’interprétation innovante du HR pour une matière qui commence à alimenter les contentieux.La condamnation de l’État néerlandais par le HR retiendra l’attention non seulement des spécialistes du droit du changement climatique, mais également celle des juristes intéressés par les droits fondamentaux car l’arrêt en question dégage de nouvelles perspectives quant à la portée des articles 2 et 8 CEDH.Mots-clés : Convention européenne des droits de l'homme - droit à la vie - respect de la vie privée et familiale et du domicile - obligations positives - politique climatique - objectif de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre - intérêt à agir - générations actuelles et futures - principes du droit de l'environnement - principe de prévention - principe de précaution - inaction de l'État- lien causal - atteinte aux droits découlant de la Convention - séparation des pouvoirs

In cassatie is Urgenda opnieuw in het gelijk gesteld; de Hoge Raad heeft de Staat bevolen om de Nederlandse broeikasgassen eind 2020 met ten minste 25% te reduceren ten opzichte van 1990. Daardoor moet de Staat veel aanvullende klimaatmaatregelen treffen in een relatief korte tijd. Nederland staat bekend als een rijk en vernuftig land dat al eeuwen de overhand heeft in de strijd tegen het water. Dus waarom maken de rechters van het Urgenda-proces zich zo zorgen over de opwarming van de aarde? Waarop is het bevolen reductiedoel gebaseerd? Wat maken die paar procenten emissiereductie nou eigenlijk uit? En vanwaar die haast? In deze bijdrage wordt de onderbouwing van het klimaatbevel uit het Urgenda-proces nader bestudeerd. In dat kader wordt ook stilgestaan bij de oorzaken en gevolgen van klimaatverandering, en de implicaties van een opgewarmde aarde voor Nederlandse inwoners. Ook zal in deze bijdrage een aantal kritiekpunten op de Urgenda-uitspraak uit de juridische en maatschappelijke discussie worden geadresseerd. Dit alles gebeurt onder verwijzing naar de relevante klimaatafspraken, klimaatwetenschappelijke rapporten en EHRM-jurisprudentie. Geconcludeerd wordt dat het Urgenda-arrest in juridisch opzicht weliswaar baanbrekend is, maar dat het klimaatbevel – gelet op de feiten die niet tussen partijen in geschil zijn – eigenlijk zeer conservatief te noemen is.

De uitspraak van het Gerechtshof Den Haag in de Urgendazaak bevestigt de ontwikkelingen in de nationale rechtspraak met betrekking tot de toepassing en interpretatie van het internationale recht. De Nederlandse rechter speelt hierin een actieve dubbelrol, namelijk als handhaver van de verplichtingen van de Staat en als internationale rechter: hij brengt de rechtsopvattingen in het nationale recht op één lijn met de verplichtingen van de Staat en ontwikkelingen in het internationale recht. Naar aanleiding van de Urgenda-zaak wordt niet alleen de dialoog gevoerd over de verhouding tussen de Nederlandse staatsmachten – al dan niet bezien vanuit het internationale recht –, maar ook over de betekenis van het internationale klimaatrecht en de mogelijkheden voor algemeen-belangacties op andere gebieden. De concrete invulling van het EVRM aan de hand van internationale rechtspraak leidt de Staat naar zijn verplichting van de positieve bescherming van mensenrechten en de belangen van burgers. Een rechtstreeks werkende internationale norm heeft de rechter hierbij nog niet geformuleerd. De mogelijkheden die deze ontwikkeling biedt voor algemeenbelangacties op andere gebieden moet door toekomstige (inter)nationale rechtspraak worden uitgewezen.