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Climate and Sustainability

The areas of CO₂ emissions, climate change and associated scenarios are the subject many studies and reports, both in the Netherlands and abroad. It is clear that there is a need and urgency to take climate action.

This is confirmed not only by documents such as the 2023 Policy Document on Climate Change and the review thereof by the Advisory Division of the Council of State, the Climate and Energy Report (KEV) and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) climate scenarios, but also by the 2023 international UNEP Emissions Gap Report and the various IPCC reports. Emission reductions are needed to reach the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, in line with the Paris Agreement.

Greenhouse gas reduction, CO₂ neutrality and ultimately achieving negative emissions are major social challenges that call for sustainability. This means making our energy system, industry, built environment, mobility, land use and many more sectors more sustainable. However, sustainability initiatives are often accompanied by new and complex legal issues.

Examples include new laws and regulations, primarily the introduction of the Environment and Planning Act (Omgevingswet). This specifically identifies sustainability as one of its objectives. Second, to curb the consequences of climate change, climate adaptation is increasingly given centre stage in the spatial planning policies of countries like the Netherlands, which are characterised by intensive use of space and urban densification. A third example are the climate-related proceedings in which governments and companies are held liable for their ecological footprint and its impact on human rights.

Our team

In order to contribute to these and many more challenging social issues and to help our clients get on the right track as efficiently as possible, we have a team of experienced environmental and planning law specialists ready to deal with a wide range of topics dealing with climate and sustainability. The team members include lawyers who not only provide legal advice and litigate in high-profile cases such as Porthos, State v. Urgenda, the Delta Works and Chemie-Pack, but also regularly act as speakers or panel members at climate seminars, are affiliated as university professors or have already been involved in projects aimed at rolling out and making heat-distribution grids more sustainable and in the preliminary phase of large-scale infrastructure, dyke reinforcement or urban development projects in order to make these ‘Council of State-proof’.

As a result, we are ideally positioned to assist regional and other authorities both strategically and legally in their sustainability efforts. In doing so, we always keep the (complex) political-administrative and social contexts in mind.