A dangerous situation (Image: Siebe Swart/Hollandse Hoogte/eyevine)

If governments won’t do it on their own, can courts force their hand? That’s the hope of a Dutch environmental group called Urgenda, which this week presented a class action suit over climate change.

Urgenda is suing the Dutch government on behalf of some 900 citizens, including children. The suit claims that the government’s action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is insufficient, and is therefore “knowingly exposing its own citizens to dangerous situations”.

The group is asking that the courts “declare that global warming of more than 2 °C will lead to a violation of fundamental human rights worldwide”. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, governments must cut emissions to between 25 and 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 to have a 50 per cent chance of avoiding 2 °C. Yet European Union states have signed up for 40 per cent cuts by 2030.


“It would be groundbreaking for Urgenda to win,” says James Arrandale of the London-based environmental law firm Client Earth. He says it would lead to similar suits in other countries. A Belgian group is already on the case.

A key point, says Arrandale, is to show that governments already have legal obligations to cut emissions, regardless of the outcome of the UN climate talks. To that end, a group of international legal experts published the Oslo Principles on 30 March, which set out existing legal obligations on governments to safeguard the climate.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Climate change on trial”