Press | Council for the Environment and Infrastructure

Press releases

51 press releases

State-owned enterprises are vital to the energy transition and greater strategic autonomy

Rli 9 October 2025 - State-owned enterprises are an overlooked government instrument and the government is missing out on opportunities by not fully exploiting their potential. State-owned enterprises are essential to the robust and future-proof development of the living environment. An open and fresh approach to state-owned enterprises as a government instrument is urgently needed. This is the conclusion reached by…

Rli recommends building homes for the future: fast, affordable and sustainable

Rli 19 June 2025 - Successive governments have aimed to build 100,000 homes a year. The emphasis is on speed and affordability. In its advisory report 'Building for the future', the Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (Rli) notes that the focus on the sustainability of housing is taking a back seat in this process. This is surprising given the Netherlands’ ambition to become climate neutral by…

Caribbean Netherlands often forgotten in government policy on the physical environment

13 June 2025 - Although Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba are an integral part of the Netherlands, these islands are often not included in national policy on the physical environment. Moreover, there is insufficient structural funding for the islands' regular tasks. A different approach is needed to ensure the same level of quality of the physical environment for all the Dutch regions. This according to the…

Cabinet needs to tackle living environment problems more effectively

Rli 15 May 2025 - The Netherlands is facing some thorny issues within the living environment that remain unresolved. These include the housing shortage, high emissions of carbon dioxide, and the harmful effects of agriculture on the environment. The way government, the business sector, and communities interact is no longer suited to the nature of the problems in today's living environment and society. A different…

Fourth term of the Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (Rli) started officially on 1 August 2024

Rli 1 August 2024 - Meet the council members and junior council members

The government needs to promote more than economic growth

Rli 9 July 2024 - The public measure their wellbeing by more than their material well-being. For them, wellbeing is also about factors such as health, safety, the quality of their living environment and the quality of education. We refer to this set of factors as wellbeing. The promotion of wellbeing by the government will lead to better policies for the public. However, this can only succeed if the pros and cons…

Cabinet and parliament fall short in safeguarding the rule of law

Rli 26 June 2024 - Is it the legislature, the administration, or the courts that determine policy on the environment? Various court cases on environmental issues – such as Urgenda's climate case, cases on nitrogen, pesticides or Schiphol Airport – show that the task of safeguarding the rule of law is becoming too one-sidedly vested in the courts, whereas the Government and Parliament also have an important role to…

Anticipate climate change in spatial choices

Rli 12 June 2024 - Climate change has major spatial consequences. Measures to keep the Netherlands water safe, protect it against flooding and ensure the availability of sufficient freshwater require additional space. How we use space for living, working, agriculture, energy and nature will also change. At present, this is something that authorities, citizens and businesses do not take sufficiently into account. In…

Advisory board: help homeowners and tenants with foundation damage

Rli 3 June 2024 - Many buildings in the Netherlands are built on unstable soil, and more than 400,000 of the country’s properties are therefore expected to face foundation damage. This means major problems for many: they feel unsafe in their home or have money worries. If the government does not help resolve the problem, the costs to Dutch society will eventually rise to over €50 billion and social…

Advisory council calls on Dutch government to pay greater attention to implementation of policy for the living environment

Rli 23 February 2024 - Implementation of policy for the living environment is lagging behind, meaning that urgent problems are not being solved. The Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (Rli) therefore calls on the Dutch government to strike a much better balance between policy development and policy implementation in actual practice. The Rli does so in its advisory report on “Bridging the Implementation Gap…