Dennis Van Berkel is legal counsel to the Urgenda Foundation in the Netherlands, and the co-founder and co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, which supports litigation around the world that seeks to increase national climate mitigation ambitions. In his presentation he focused on the climate lawsuit that his organization won against the government of the Netherlands. Mr. Van Berkel introduced the plaintiffs’ reasoning, which was upheld by the Courts, that the government of the Netherlands had to do its fare share of the global effort to address climate change and to substantiate how it fulfils it, and that failure to do so violated its duty of care and the fundamental rights to life and family life of its citizens under the European Convention on Human Rights. In his presentation and interview, he elaborated on how the relationship between the courts and politics was framed by the necessity to protect rights, and on the positive impacts that the case concretely had on climate policy making in the Netherlands.
Dennis Van Berkel是荷兰Urgenda基金会的法律顾问，也是 Climate Litigation Network的共同创始人，该机构支持世界各地寻求提高国家气候减缓目标的诉讼。他在发言中重点介绍了他的组织如何成功赢得针对荷兰政府的气候诉讼案。Berkel先生介绍了原告的推理：即荷兰政府必须在全球应对气候变化的努力中尽到自己的责任，并证明它是如何履行这一责任的，如果不这样做，就违反其义务、违反了《欧洲人权公约》规定的公民的基本生命权和家庭生活权。荷兰法院支持了原告的推理。他在发言和访谈中还阐述了法院与政治之间的关系是如何被保护权利的必要性所框定的，以及该案对荷兰气候政策制定的具体积极影响。