By Stephanie van den Berg
THE HAGUE (Reuters) -Residents of the Dutch-Caribbean told a court on Tuesday that climate change had made life on their island of Bonaire unbearably hot and dry and asked judges to order the Dutch state to cut greenhouse gases more quickly.
Onnie Emerenciana, a farmer in his 60s, told the court that the heat affected the health of the elderly and the poor, droughts affected crops and rising sea levels risked wiping out historically significant slave huts on the island’s beaches.
“We are succumbing under the effects of greenhouse gas emissions that we have barely contributed to,” Emerenciana told the district court in The Hague.
PLAINTIFFS WANT DUTCH TO TARGET NET ZERO BY 2040
Bonaire in the southern Caribbean is a former Dutch colony and became a special Dutch municipality in 2010. It has around 20,000 inhabitants who are Dutch citizens.
The eight named plaintiffs in the case, who are joined by environmentalist action group Greenpeace, want the Netherlands to cut its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2040, 10 years ahead of its current plans, and say the Dutch government has not done enough to protect the island against rising sea levels.
Legal experts on climate change cases say the Dutch case is one of the first to test the obligations set in a landmark 2024 European climate ruling and this year’s World Court opinion on a national level.
“If successful, the Netherlands will need to increase its climate ambitions beyond the current European Union targets – setting a new bar for climate action in Europe,” Lucy Maxwell of the Climate Litigation Network told Reuters.
“Effective climate policy is not a political choice but a duty and a right,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Michael Bacon told judges.
Lawyers for the Dutch state argued that it was not up to courts to make government policy.
“The state is meeting its obligations towards Bonaire by complying with its own climate policy and joint European Union climate targets,” state attorney Edward Brans said.
The hearings will continue into Wednesday and there is no date for a ruling yet.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg. Additional reporting by Ali Withers in Copenhagen. Editing by Alison Williams and Mark Potter)
