The Netherlands

AuthorLeRoy C. Paddock and Jessica Wentz
Pages631-664
CHAPTER 32
The Netherlands
LEROY C. PADDOCK AND JESSICA WENTZ
I. Introduction
The Netherlands is a small and densely populated country, with 16,730,632
citizens inhabiting 33,893 sq. km of land.1 Approximately 24 percent of the
land is below sea level, protected by a system of dikes, canals, and pumping
stations. Despite its geographic constraints, the Netherlands has the 17th
largest economy in the world,2 and is a leading exporter of natural gas, petro-
leum products, chemicals, machines, manufactured goods, and food.
A. Government Structure
The Dutch government consists of three administrative layers: the national
government, 12 provinces, and hundreds of local municipalities. Although
most environmental policy decisions are made at the national level, the
provinces and municipalities play an important role in the implementation
and enforcement of environmental laws. The provincial governments are
also responsible for drawing up regional environmental plans and policies
that accord with national objectives. Local authorities—including municipal-
ities and water boards—conduct most permitting, inspection, and enforce-
ment activities.3
1. Legislative Activities
The national government operates as both a constitutional monarchy and a
parliamentary democracy. Legislative authority is shared between the States
General, which is the Netherlands’ bicameral parliament, and the executive
branch, which consists of the Monarch and the Council of Ministers. Bills
may be presented by the monarch or the House of Representatives, but not
the Senate. The monarch, the ministers, and the House of Representatives
may also propose amendments to bills. The Senate, however, may only pass
or reject laws in full. Bills become valid once they are approved by both
branches of the Parliament and affirmed by the monarch. In addition to this
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formal legislative process, there are alternative avenues for the promulgation
of national regulations. For example, general administrative orders may be
made by royal decree and then submitted to the Council of Ministers and
the Council of State (an executive advisory body) for approval. Ministries
may also promulgate administrative rules as may be necessary to fulfill their
statutory duties.
2. Executive Branch
Within the executive branch, there are 11 ministries. The Ministry of Infra-
structure and the Environment (I&M) is primarily responsible for the imple-
mentation and enforcement of national environmental policies. Other
agencies that support the I&M include the Inspectorate for Transport, Public
Works and Water Management (IVW), the Inspectorate for Housing, Spatial
Planning and the Environment (VI), the Royal Netherlands Meteorological
Institute (KNMI), the Netherlands Emissions Authority (NEA), the Nether-
lands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), and Rijkswaterstaat (RWS),
which is responsible for executing public works and water management
projects.
3. Judiciary
The Netherlands is a civil law jurisdiction—thus all core legal principles are
codified, and customary law is only applied for the purposes of interpreta-
tion. Moreover, the judiciary is not authorized to review the constitutionality
of laws. Thus, the courts have very limited involvement in law and policy
making, and are primarily responsible for settling specific disputes.
B. Environmental Policy: The Macro View
The Dutch government has developed an extensive environmental policy
agenda, which emphasizes spatial efficiency, sustainable development, and
integrated resource management. As explained in the country’s Second Sus-
tainability Outlook:
The Netherlands has to fit all of its housing, employment and transport
onto a relatively small land surface area, while maintaining the quality
of the living environment and the landscape. The way to use the avail-
able space as effectively as possible is to view these functions and fea-
tures as an integral whole, including the additional demands made on
water management, caused by the effects of climate change.4
The government’s commitment to environmental protection has arisen
as a matter of necessity. In the 1960s, the Netherlands was one of the most
polluted countries in the world, and faced what was publicly recognized as
an “environmental crisis.” This crisis was triggered by a number of factors,
including pollution from the country’s large manufacturing, chemical, and
632 INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
agricultural sectors; the country’s location downwind and downstream
from other highly industrialized countries; and the country’s significant
spatial constraints. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Dutch government
responded to this crisis by implementing a series of traditional command
and control regulations that were designed to address discrete environmen-
tal issues.
During the late 1980s, the national government substantially modified its
approach to environmental management. The new approach emphasized inte-
grated management of all environmental resources, as well as the participa-
tion of all involved stakeholders in policy-making. To facilitate this new
approach, the Dutch government published a series of National Environmen-
tal Policy Plans (NEPPs), which provided a broad framework for environmen-
tal management. The NEPPs identified the country’s primary environmental
concerns, established environmental quality objectives, and articulated strate-
gies for achieving these objectives.
The first NEPP was published in 1989, and subsequent NEPPs were pub-
lished every four years thereafter up until the publication of NEPP-4 in 2001.
Since then, Dutch environmental policy has become encapsulated by Euro-
pean Union (EU) regulations, and no additional NEPPs have been published.
However, the overarching framework for environmental management articu-
lated in the NEPPs is still largely intact. Some of the key features of the
Netherlands’ current policy are described next.
1. Integrated Environmental Management
Since NEPP-1, the Dutch government has pursued an integrated approach to
pollution control and environmental management, which recognizes that
concerns such as air and water quality are not discrete issues, but rather are
interconnected phenomena that should be addressed through holistic policy.
The integrated management approach also seeks to reconcile economic
development objectives and environmental objectives by decoupling eco-
nomic growth from negative environmental impacts.
In accordance with this policy, the Dutch government consolidated most
of the country’s environmental laws into a single statute—the 1993 Environ-
mental Management Act (EMA)—which established a unified regulatory
scheme encompassing all levels of government. The EMA contains basic
requirements for permitting and reporting on environmental impacts, as
well as a framework for future regulation of environmental issues. Specific
provisions of the EMA are discussed in subsequent sections of this chapter,
as they relate to different environmental media.
Other important laws include the Activities Decree (2007), which imposes
rules on businesses to regulate their conduct with respect to the environ-
ment, and the General Act for Environmental Permitting (WABO) (2010),
which creates a unified permitting regime for activities that impact the envi-
ronment. The Activities Decree and WABO are discussed in more detail in
section X, below.
Chapter 32: The Netherlands 633

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