Marjan Minnesma

The Climate Entrepreneur

Meet Marjan Minnesma, a 56 year old climate entrepreneur from the Netherlands who was behind the world’s first climate liability lawsuit in which she sued her government for failing to protect its people from climate change - and won.

Marjan was born and raised in a small town outside Amsterdam with a strong sense of her individual power to change the world. After studying business administration, philosophy, and law, she forged a career across a range of fields from international law to academia as well as stints at Shell and Greenpeace.

Despite her passion for environmentalism, Marjan never considered herself an activist - she wanted to find new ways of tackling the issue as a climate entrepreneur. Propelled by her personal motto of don’t talk, just act, Marjan co-founded Urgenda in 2005, an organisation committed to speeding up climate-change solutions. Under her leadership, Urgenda organised the first collective buying initiative for solar panels in the Netherlands and introduced the first electric car.

In 2010, things seemed to be looking up when EU member states adopted targets for cutting emissions. But as time passed without any action from the Dutch government, Marjan argued it was failing to uphold its legal obligation to protect people from climate change. In November 2013 she filed a lawsuit, demanding a 25% reduction in greenhouse gases from 1990 levels.

To strengthen her case, Marjan pioneered a hybrid of crowdfunding and citizen science called crowd-pleading in which people researched similar court cases and submitted their own arguments. In June 2015, Marjan and her 886 co-plaintiffs achieved a landmark victory when the Hague’s district court ruled the Dutch government had breached its duty of care.

Over the next four years, Marjan ramped up her mission as the government escalated their appeals to the Supreme Court. She collaborated with 800 NGOs and businesses to create 54 concrete measures that the government could adopt and in December 2019, the Supreme Court issued an extraordinary ruling, ordering the Dutch state to limit emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by 2020.

The success of Marjan’s case has sparked a growing wave of lawsuits around the world, with 60 currently in progress. After three decades of working on sustainable solutions, Marjan believes real power is not about fighting against things, but in creating the change you want.

Even if everybody says it’s impossible, don’t listen to all the negative people. Go for your own thing and keep hope.