Dutch government discriminated against Bonaire over climate adaptation, court rules
A court in The Hague ruled on Wednesday that the Dutch government discriminated against people on the Caribbean island of Bonaire by failing to help them adapt to climate change, and ordered the state to produce a formal adaptation plan and set tougher greenhouse gas targets. The judgment chastised the Netherlands for treating people on Bonaire differently from inhabitants of the European part of the country and found breaches of articles 8 and 14 of the European convention on human rights, which protect the right to respect for private and family life and prohibit discrimination.
The court rejected the complaints brought by individuals but admitted Greenpeace Nederland’s claim as an organisation. The court said Bonaire is particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, extreme heat and other climate impacts, and that local authorities lack enough people, resources and specialist knowledge to tackle them.
It ruled those risks had been clear for decades and that the Netherlands was not doing its fair share to cut national greenhouse gas emissions. The state was ordered to put in place a concrete adaptation plan and given six months to set a national carbon budget reflecting a fair share of the remaining global carbon budget in line with a 1.5C threshold, to do so transparently and to set legally binding interim targets.
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