The introduction, in the scientific world, of the term “Anthropocene”, and its corresponding perspective on the detrimental influence that human activity has had on the environment so far, was aimed at emphasizing “the central role of mankind in geology and ecology” by proposing a new name for the novel geological epoch that we currently find ourselves in, following the Holocene, in the course of the history of the Earth. “<<Climate change is a worldwide problem that requires a global solution.>> – these words have become a mantra for our age.”[1]. Thus, one can talk of an Anthropocene paradigm regarding climate change, which also reflects in the attempts to achieve climate justice. This short paper aims at integrating the Urgenda case in the Anthropocene understanding of the changes that our world faces, while pointing out the key aspects of this Dutch case.
Law and regulation play a vital role in fighting against climate change and global warming, and they need to resist the “multi-headed hydra of scale, urgency, uncertainty and ambition”[2]. Litigation is a very important tool in the sphere of climate justice, because it secures climate action via final and binding decisions. In this sense, a study from 2023, of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, has shown that, while climate policies remain far behind, people are turning more and more towards the courts to hold private corporations, public bodies, and governments accountable in their fight against the climate crisis, and that climate litigation has more than doubled since 2017.[3]
The Urgenda Foundation v. State of The Netherlands [2019] case is considered a historic triumph for climate justice, since the Dutch Supreme Court ordered the Dutch State to reduce, by the end of 2020, the emission of greenhouse gases originating from Dutch soil by at least 25% compared to 1990, ruling in favour of the Urgenda Foundation.
There are arguments both for including this landmark judgement in the Anthropocene paradigm, as well as against this. From my perspective, the Urgenda case just asymptotically approaches the Anthropocene, still providing a different mode of thinking about and fighting climate change and global warming.
The main argument why the Urgenda decision approximates the Anthropocene paradigm is the fact that it identifies the need for states to involve in combating climate change by fulfilling their international and, particularly for The Netherlands, European legal obligations to abide by the goals set for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, because if the states do not take this fight for climate justice seriously, they are actively jeopardising their citizens’ human rights. In The Netherlands’ situation, the human rights that were violated were the right to life and the right to respect for private and family life, protected by Article 2, respectively Article 8 of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR).
Conversely, one principal discrepancy in understanding climate change resides in the fact that the Anthropocene perspective suggests that the focus should not only be on states and the international community, but primarily on individuals, human and non-human actors of Earth life. In the Urgenda case, the only veritably considered entities are states, while human beings are also, secondarily, considered. Most of the judgement revolves around the global nature of climate change, which implies that “each country is […] responsible for its own share; […] a country cannot escape its own share of the responsibility to take measures […] to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”[4], and it seems that only the interests, as well as the duties, of the states are developed in the context of environmental protection and of international law.
In a similar vein, it is relevant to also emphasize the fact that the Urgenda case exclusively takes into consideration rights to nature (i.e., entitlements that human beings have to nature, especially to a clean and healthy environment), whereas the Anthropocene philosophy makes us analyse, point out, and respect not only rights to nature, but also rights of nature (i.e., whose active subjects are non-human elements of our ecosystems). In this sense, an important example of how, in the context of the Anthropocene, rights of nature can be taken into consideration also outside of ancestral communities (in, for example, Latin America or New Zeeland) that traditionally live in close connection with nature and Mother Earth[5], is the Spanish Mar Menor lagoon case, the first in Europe in which an ecosystem has been granted legal status and, consequently, rights. The need to recognise rights of nature, along with human rights, is considered, in the “ecocentric” paradigm, the only way forward in truly combating climate change and ecological destruction and it is based on “criticism of anthropocentrism, of property rights and of unlimited economic growth”[6], aspects which, however, still emerge from the Urgenda judgement, even though its forward-looking character is undoubtable.
Furthermore, another dissimilarity worth mentioning is that of how the Court understands the history and temporal dimension of the impact that human behaviour has had on the face of the Earth, reflected in climate change, and the way in which the Anthropocene refers to this matter. This new epoch in which humanity negatively dominates the environment has, in the context of the on-going debate about its starting point[7], more conceptualizations besides Anthropocene, one of which is Plantationocene[8], which points out the effects that colonization, the occurrence of organised agriculture, of plantations (“slavery of plants”[9]), and of feedlots have had on the dynamics of the environment that encompasses not only humans, but also the flora, fauna and other elements of the Earth’s strata. The Court puts forward the idea that climate change has begun during the Industrial Revolution (“Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, mankind has consumed energy on a large scale.”[10]), and that it is enough for us if we strive to achieve the temperatures from the pre-industrial era (just as also the Paris Agreement prescribes, namely, to limit warming below 1,5°C[11]), which is not in line with the viewpoint of the Anthropocene, but which is still a very important goal to achieve, even though it should not be the final destination in the journey towards protecting and restoring the Earth’s well-being.
Overall, it is salient to underline the idea that, although the Urgenda case and the Anthropocene paradigm do not solely overlap, they still are meaningful aspects of the wicked problem of the climate change, the case being crucial in establishing state responsibility in the context of this fight and the Anthropocene providing a cutting-edge perspective on impact that humans had and continue to have on the environment.
[1] Veerle Heyvaert, ‘What’s in a Name? The Covenant of Mayors as Transnational Environmental Regulation’ [2013] 22(1) Review of European, Comparative, and International Environmental Law 78.
[2] Heyvaert (n 1) 79.
[3] UNEP, Global Climate Litigation Report: 2023 Status Review and https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/climate-litigation-more-doubles-five-years-now-key-tool-delivering
[4] The State of The Netherlands vs. Stichting Urgenda, Supreme Court of The Netherlands – Civil Division no. 19/00135 [2019] 4.
[5] Marie-Christine Fuchs, ‘Rights of Nature in Europe’ (Verfassungsblog, 24 February 2023).
[6] Blanca Soro Mateo and Santiago Álvarez, ‘The Mar Menor Lagoon Enjoys Legal Standing: And Now What?’ (Verfassungsblog, 14 October 2022).
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/11/nuclear-bomb-fallout-site-chosen-to-define-start-of-anthropocene .
[8] Donna Haraway, Noboru Ishikawa, Scott F. Gilbert, Kenneth Olwig, Anna L. Tsing & Nils Bubandt [2016] ‘Anthropologists Are Talking – About the Anthropocene’ Ethnos 81:3 556.
[9] ibid 556.
[10] The State of The Netherlands vs. Stichting Urgenda (n 4) 7.
[11] The State of The Netherlands vs. Stichting Urgenda (n 4) 4.
