Kingdom of the Netherlands

In 2019, the Dutch Parliament enacted the Dutch Climate Act, which mandates a 55-percent reduction in greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels (Government of the Netherlands, n.d.). This epochal piece of legislation was drafted as the Dutch judiciary was weighing the merits of a lawsuit brought by the Zaandam-based environmental group Urgenda that contended that the Dutch government had not fulfilled its obligations to curtail GHG emissions under the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Ultimately, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands sided with Urgenda.) The kingdom’s climate policies remain in flux: in response to a lawsuit filed in 2024 by eight plaintiffs who reside in or have ties to the Caribbean island of Bonaire, the Hague District Court handed down a judgment in January 2026 compelling the Dutch state to reformulate its climate adaptation plan not just for Bonaire but for the entire kingdom.

C.S.H.