State liability and climate change are now, more than ever, intertwined with each other. With climate change being one of the biggest challenges of our time and states collectively trying to figure out how to take on climate change in a way that is fast but also reasonable, there are bound to be problems within the democratic dimensions of a state. A newly appointed government may for example not feel the same way about battling climate change as the government before it. This can lead to governments not following up on responsibilities which derived from international climate change arrangements. This lecture falls within the spectrum of this point of friction and this interesting topic is further explained by looking at the Urgenda-case.

The speakers will be:

Elbert de Jong is a professor at University Utrecht and is specialized in liability and accountability. He furthermore has researched state liability with a connection to climate change. He will tell us what state liability entails and how it works with regards to climate change.

Marijn Kingma is a lawyer at the Höcker Advocaten law firm. She worked on the Dutch Urgenda case against the Dutch government. In the Urgenda case, the District Court of The Hague ruled that the Dutch government must cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% by the end of 2020 compared to the 1990 levels. She will tell us about the ins and outs of the case.