The Search Towards a National Legislative Framework for a Global Problem : The Development of Climate Legislation in the Netherlands

National climate legislation is emerging, but literature has not yet been much debating which dilemma’s national legislators face. Moreover, there is not yet much theory on what a proper design and content would be. This paper contributes to the comparative study of national and sub-national legislative climate change approaches. Such studies are needed in order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of different governmental choices made in practice. As a first step towards such comparative studies, this paper focuses on the development of national climate legislation in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is both a developed and a low-lying country, and is hence faced with both the challenge of mitigation and adaptation. With regard to national mitigation and adaptation the Netherlands has already adopted a range of legislative measures while additional legislative measures have been initiated. The national mitigation laws are for a large part resulting from EU law, while in the field of adaptation to a larger extent sovereign national choices can be made. In the field of mitigation the fragmentation and the lack of a comprehensive steering and accountability mechanism in order to reach the needed emission reduction goals (or even further going goals compared to EU and international law) are core concerns, while in the field of adaptation a directive (but not comprehensive) legal framework towards establishing adaptation measures is foreseen. Given this picture, one could indeed get the impression that the need to protect the country itself is much stronger felt by the Dutch politicians than the need to contribute to combating the global problem of climate change