기후변화와 국가의 책임 - 최근 정부에 온실가스 감축 상향을 명한 네덜란드 판례를 중심으로 -

The year 2015 is a very important one for international climate regime. Signatories to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have agreed to finalize an agreement for the post-Kyoto climate regime at the 21st Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC in Parties at the end of this year. Most countries that are parties to the UNFCCC have announced voluntarily their mid-term greenhouse gas mitigation targets based on their own circumstances, in a bottom-up manner. Against this backdrop, there was an interesting litigation going on in the Netherlands, of which the opinion of the district court has published very recently. A civic environmental group brought a suit against the Dutch government because the government current mitigation target is too weak to address serious climate change result, therefore violating its duty to care its citizens. In June 2015, the court opined that the government of the Netherlands has a duty of care to set the mitigation target no less than a science-based international standard of 20~40% reduction based on 1990 by 2020, which is an agreed standard for Annex I countries to meet the 2℃ goal. This court decision is meaningful in various aspects. First, it is the first case in Europe to find the government’s duty of care to protect its citizen by establishing an adequate mitigation target. Second, it is also the first case to find a government’s action guilty based on the human right laws. Based on this opinion, it is now clear that the government has the obligation against its citizen in violating international laws in addition to its obligation against other countries under the international regime. Many countries are keen to follow closely this case for a very good reason.