Greenpeace The Netherlands v Netherlands (Bonaire case)

In this second episode of Between Heat and Hope, Phillip Paiement, Professor of Law & Governance in the Anthropocene at Tilburg Law School, discusses the Bonaire case of 28 January 2026 with Christina Eckes, professor of European Law at the University of Amsterdam. The conversations covers the adaptation and mitigation aspects of the judgment.

In relation to adaptation, it draws out the particular situation of the residents of Bonaire as compared to the resident of the State of the Netherlands, reflects on the missed opportunity to engage more with the colonial history of the claims in this case, and concludes that the case may serve as basis for future litigation by plaintiffs from the Caribbean Netherlands, including not only the special municipalities like Bonaire but potentially also the autonomous constituent countries. More broadly, it offers a basis for equality claims grounded in geographical vulnerability.

Concerning mitigation, the discussion covers the judgment’s grounding in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)’s KlimaSeniorinnen judgment (2024), the relative absence of the Advisory Opinion (AO) of International Court of Justice on States’ Obligations in Respect to Climate Change (2025), and the District Court’s engagement with fair share. It comes to the conclusion that the Bonaire case applies the budget logic of KlimaSeniorinnen and the ICJ’s AO but could have more clearly developed its express requirement that the State of the Netherlands quantifies its emission allowances as part of the global emission budget that keeps global warming below 1.5°C.

References

Bonaire Case (Dutch with links to the English translation)

KlimaSeniorinnen

ICJ AO on climate change

Urgenda

TransLitigate, Phillip Paiement PI (ERC Starting Grant 2021)

Suggestions

Katherina Pistor, The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It (Yale University Press, 2025).

John Vaillant, Fire Weather (Alfred A. Knopf Publishing, 2023).

Editing: Clara Kammeringer

Music: “Delayed Flight” by Michael Ramir C. via mixkit

Recorded at the University of Amsterdam, January 2026

The LitDem Project

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 101087994).