THE HAGUE (Reuters) -Residents of the Dutch-Caribbean told a court on Tuesday that climate change had made life on their island of Bonaire unbearably hot and dry and asked judges to order the Dutch state to cut greenhouse gases more quickly.

Onnie Emerenciana, a farmer in his 60s, told the court that the heat affected the health of the elderly and the poor, droughts affected crops and rising sea levels risked wiping out historically significant slave huts on the island’s beaches.

“We are succumbing under the effects of greenhouse gas emissions that we have barely contributed to,” Emerenciana told the district court in The Hague.

Bonaire in the southern Caribbean is a former Dutch colony and became a special Dutch municipality in 2010. It has around 20,000 inhabitants who are Dutch citiz

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