Judges at The Hague district court ruled on Wednesday that the Netherlands has not done enough to protect Bonaire, a former Dutch colony in the Caribbean, from climate change.
The state “is pursuing a climate policy that does not comply, in a binding and transparent manner, with the measures that must be taken worldwide to limit global warming,” said judge Jerzy Luiten. The government has 18 months to set binding emission targets covering the whole Dutch economy, not only the European side of the kingdom.
Eight plaintiffs and Greenpeace
Eight people from Bonaire teamed up with the environmental group Greenpeace to bring the case. They accused the government of failing to shield them from climate change.
“For us, this means so much,” Jackie Bernabela, one of the plaintiffs, told reporters after the hearing.
Bonaire remains part of the Netherlands and holds the status of an independent local authority area. In 2024 the government said Bonaire and the two other special local authority areas, Saba and Sint Eustatius, would receive their own climate plan this year. Greenpeace and the islanders say “urgent action” is needed and call the steps taken so far “far from adequate”.
Discrimination finding
The court faulted the government for never producing a climate plan for Bonaire, “even though it has been known for three decades that Bonaire is particularly vulnerable to the negative consequences of climate change.” It also found the government had acted in a discriminatory way by leaving the island’s climate exposure unaddressed. In the words of the ruling, “residents of Bonaire were wrongly treated differently from residents of the European Netherlands.”
Earlier research by VU university in Amsterdam concluded that part of the island will disappear as sea levels rise. The coral reef that guards Bonaire against flooding may be destroyed as well.
The decision comes more than 10 years after the start of the Urgenda climate case, which ended in a 2019 Supreme Court ruling requiring the Dutch state to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
