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II. LEADING CLIMATE CHANGE JUDICIAL DECISIONS 10. Given the mandate of Displacement Solutions and the specific climate change issues that are a focus of our work, this report will focus primarily, but by all means not exclusively, on the human rights and climate change links found within existing global climate change jurisprudence. We will focus on cases that have relied on the right to life, the right to seek asylum, housing, land and property rights, and the right to durable solutions for previously displaced persons and refugees. The report is organised on a country-by-country basis. A general effort has been made to organise the cases in order of their global significance in terms of precedence, potential application to jurisdictions other than where the case was decided and scope and originality both the petition and eventual judgments in the cases concerned. In each case profile we provide a brief analysis of the facts and the key elements of the subsequent judicial decision. These are followed by selected direct quotes from the relevant judgments, the most important of which will be displayed in highlighted boxes.
THE NETHERLANDS URGENDA (2015, ET AL) 11. The Urgenda Foundation v Kingdom of the Netherlands37 case is considered a landmark case in climate litigation, as for the first time, the tort of negligence was successfully used to hold a State liable for failing to adequately put in place prevention and mitigation policies to effectively tackle the issue of climate change. The defendants were able to successfully argue the need to pass more stringent legal obligations that extends beyond duties derived from international treaties and to include independent legal obligations toward the citizens. This landmark ruling for the first time held a government responsible for its national contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions and established a duty of care under Dutch law in the context of international and constitutional obligations. 12. The Urgenda Foundation, a citizen organisation that advocates for a sustainable Netherlands, on behalf of 886 individuals plaintiffs, brought a case before the District Court of the Hague in June 2015. It filed a petition seeking a court order requiring the Dutch Government to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent below the 1990 levels by the end of 202038.
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The three decisions made to date, are in chronological order: The State of the Netherlands (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy) v Stichting Urgenda (2019) Hoge Raad [the Supreme Court of the Netherlands], 19/000135 (20 December 2019) https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:HR:2019:2007; The State of the Netherlands (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment) v Urgenda Foundation) Gerechtshof Den Haag [The Hague Court of Appeal], C/09/456689/HA ZA 13-1396 (9 October 2018) https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/ inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:GHDHA:2018:2610; and Urgenda Foundation v Netherlands (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment) Rechtbank Den Haag [Hague District Court], C/09/456689/HA ZA 13-1396 (24 June 2015) https:// uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2015:7196. Eleanor Stein and Alex Geert Castermans, ‘Case Comment – Urgenda v The State of the Netherlands: The “Reflex Effect” – Climate Change, Human Rights and the Expanding Definitions of the Duty of Care’, McGill Journal of Sustainable Development Law, 2017, 13(2), 306.
