Thoughtleader Thursday | Donald Pols on climate change: “The government must ensure that the recovery packages lead to broad social prosperity instead of improving the position of large companies.”

Thoughtleader Thursday | Donald Pols on climate change: “The government must ensure that the recovery packages lead to broad social prosperity instead of improving the position of large companies.”

In the interview series 'Thoughtleader Thursday' we speak to an expert in the field of a specific issue every Thursday. Donald Pols, director of Milieudefensie, tells us more about climate justice, green jobs and Milieudefensie's lawsuit against Shell's activities in Nigeria that is taking place today.

What were the expectations regarding your issue before the corona crisis started? 

“Before the crisis, we were on the verge of a breakthrough on the theme of 'climate justice'. By climate justice we mean jointly tackling the economic and climate crisis. We want to do this in a fair way, so that everyone benefits. We call this fair switching or climate justice. We noticed that scheduling was actually going very well. Before the crisis, we were in third place in the polls of important topics among voters. 

In addition, we would have more than 100,000 members and donors this year, which would make us one of the ten largest NGOs in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, we have had to postpone this breakthrough until next year. We offer people the opportunity to influence government policy, for example by drawing up petitions, and we are also an organization that likes to take to the streets to recruit members. We go door to door with our volunteers, speak to people personally and organize demonstrations. Due to corona, this was virtually no longer possible.

Our main focus until before corona was the cost distribution of the transition to a sustainable future. We believe that these costs were placed too much on households. The spearhead of our work was to develop proposals that would often shift costs and burdens to major polluters, industry. We were just in the process of working in a solution-oriented way when the crisis came. This has somewhat put our plans on hold.”

What happened to the issue during the crisis? 

“You noticed that at the beginning of the crisis the government wanted to brush aside the climate issue by indicating that it had other things on its mind. “Just like many Dutch people,” it was said. Climate would no longer be important and the minister could thus focus on the typical VVD agenda, namely economic growth. We immediately responded to this by means of a survey. This showed that support for climate policy remained strong. The majority of people even indicated that there should be a joint solution for corona and the climate. Immediately after this research, we started one of our most successful petitions to date: Sustainable Recovery. We advocated linking climate policy to economic recovery packages and collected 80,000 signatures.

The choice we made to broaden the climate issue to a social theme has been almost completely confirmed by corona. The idea was shared almost throughout society that everyone should improve as a result of the new economic investments. The government must ensure that the recovery packages lead to broad social prosperity instead of improving the position of large companies.”   

What is the current status of the issue? 

“Instead of just looking very narrowly at international climate changes, from now on we will also focus more on mapping and creating green jobs. These are jobs in which one contributes directly or indirectly to the development and rollout of solutions for climate change. We are currently mainly focusing on more direct forms, for example a company that installs wind turbines in the North Sea. For more indirect green jobs, you can think of someone who works at Philips in the production of LED lamps.

A study we conducted shows that there are 70,000 too few employees to make a transition in this area. We want to increase the number of suitable employees through training and retraining. We want to encourage more young people to choose a technical field of study and also identify sectors that will play a less important role in society in the future, so that these employees can be retrained.” 

What are you going to do with the issue in the near future? 

“Today we are conducting a climate case against Shell's activities in Nigeria. A small activity for Milieudefensie, but still our longest-running campaign ever. This issue affects me personally the most of all our cases. This comes closest to the negative consequences of our fossil economy. In Nigeria, these people experience the consequences in their daily lives – entire regions smell like you are walking around in a garage. Entire farms and fishing grounds have been poisoned. Entire villages forced to beggars as a result of oil pollution by Shell. We call Shell to order and demand that the devastation be cleaned up, compensation be paid and a promise that this will never happen again. An important aspect of this lawsuit is that multinationals can also be held responsible in the Netherlands for behavior in developing countries.

A second lawsuit that we have filed against Shell will take place in December. The key point here is that multinationals are responsible for their global CO2 emissions and must bring them in line with international climate goals as agreed in Paris. A court ruling that is favorable to us could provide momentum in the case against all multinationals. They are currently outside the Paris climate agreement, but if the judge indicates that Shell must act in accordance with the Climate Agreement, other companies will also have to do this.

Finally, the election campaigns are high on our agenda. The aim is to ensure that climate becomes a defining theme. It is also important to us that climate justice becomes a spearhead within this theme: a fair distribution in which not all the burdens fall on the shoulders of citizens, but companies also pay in proportion to the extent to which they burden the environment. We would also like to see this climate justice become part of the coalition agreement. With all kinds of (media) activities, we will ensure that no one can ignore the climate during the election period.”