I arrived in the Netherlands in 1988 and, upon completing a short assignment on the international trade in hazardous wastes, I was appointed by Pier Vellinga to help with national climate change policy and preparations for international negotiations. I was plunged into the preparations for the Noordwijk Conference on Climate Change and thereafter had to support the climate change department with its efforts at trying to develop both directional and instrumental leadership on the subject. Directional leadership was in terms of identifying the key principles, strategies and policies needed to help reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases and to show that it was possible and that it could generate co-benefits. Instrumental leadership was undertaken through a number of bilateral journeys to neighbouring countries, including those with economies in transition, to try and convince them to take on a stabilization target. Those were the heady days of supporting a proactive strategy in climate governance.

The speed with which the policy process moved in those days was unprecedented. Science was institutionalized and political processes were galvanized and, in a record two years, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted. I moved out of the Environment Ministry to work on my PhD on climate change, and the interviews I conducted in those early days were very revealing. There appeared to be much conflict behind the consensus!