In 2021, a case brought by six NGOs led by Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) against Shell made legal history: the District Court of The Hague ordered the oil giant to cut its global carbon footprint by 45% by 2030.
This November, that decision was annulled on appeal from Shell.
The Dutch Court of Appeal found there was no consensus on how the collective task of achieving net zero should be allocated to individual companies, meaning that imposing a specific emission reduction order on Shell would therefore be inappropriate in its view. The Court also doubted whether an order against one company would be effective in the absence of compliance by the wider industry.
However, the Court nonetheless confirmed that Shell had a legal duty to mitigate dangerous climate change and hinted that the development of new oil and gas fields may be at odds with that duty.
Those findings ring rather hollow, however, in the absence of any concrete remedy for the claimants.
What are the key takeaways from the case for corporate climate litigation? And is there scope for an appeal to the Supreme Court?
We discuss the decision with Eline Zeilmaker, Senior Legal Counsel at Milieudefensie, in this lunchtime digital session.