A senior Dutch minister has warned fellow politicians in Europe of waning public support for the region’s climate policies as showcased by a continuing stand-off between farmers and the government over greenhouse gas limits in the Netherlands.

Deputy prime minister Sigrid Kaag, who also serves as minister of finance, told the Financial Times of the increasingly difficult task her government faces rallying some parts of the electorate behind policies with intergenerational ramifications, including the need to reduce nitrogen-based emissions, which has led to significant disruption, clashes with police and a political upset in elections for the Dutch senate.

“We need to create that level of support and entice people, and inspire them,” said Kaag, who heads the liberal D66 party, which is one of the four parties in government. “That is not always easy because the Netherlands, ironically, is more conservative than you would think.”

The Netherlands, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, is seeking to drive down nitrogen-based emissions, by persuading farmers to reduce livestock herds or leave the industry. The country has the EU’s highest density of livestock, including more than 11mn pigs.

Nitrous oxide as result of agriculture and land use, produced during the breakdown of soil and animal waste, was estimated by the UN IPCC scientific body to account for 81 per cent of all NO2 emissions globally from human activities in the ten years to 2016. There are also significant indirect emissions from nitrogen-based fertiliser leaching and runoff.

The winner of the Dutch regional elections was the upstart populist Farmer-Citizen movement, or BBB, which capitalised on anger over the government’s push to halve nitrogen-based emissions by 2030.

The issue has become so toxic that another ruling party, the conservative Christian Democratic Appeal, now wants to renegotiate the part of the coalition agreement that relates to nitrogen-based emission targets.

Speaking in her capacity as leader of D66, Kaag said it was an “impossible question” when asked if she believed the coalition would survive the current crisis. When the renegotiations begin, she was interested in hearing an offer that led to a “credible reduction” in the level of nitrogen-based emissions while allowing for a vibrant economy and permitting farmers to have a sustainable livelihood, she said.

“We have come to a state where the Netherlands has to deal with decades of our collective inability to address the issue [of nitrogen], either because it was sensitive or it was underestimated as an issue,” she said. “It has now come home to roost.”

Kaag, whose party prominently backs the nitrogen-reduction agenda, denied her party was out of touch with the electorate.

“I would say far from it,” she said in an interview in The Hague. “I can understand fear, and I can understand the total sense of insecurity, but what we see, which is not unique to the Netherlands, is [something] a lot of liberal democracies face.”

The turbulence in The Hague comes as other parts of Europe’s green agenda have been watered down amid political tensions in other capitals. A long-planned ban on the sale of combustion engine cars in the EU from 2035 was agreed last month only after Germany and its allies won an exemption for cars using so-called carbon-neutral e-fuels.

Kaag noted a generalised difficulty in connecting to parts of the electorate that have opted out or feel isolated and believe politics no longer serves its needs.

Established parties, she argued, “face a level of resentment, resistance, to actions that are proposed which we believe are in the interests of the country and are intergenerational, but are either poorly communicated [or] poorly understood, and come at a time of great insecurity and uncertainty”.

Part of the response involved supporting households that could not afford policies required for the green energy transition, including better insulation for homes or the installation of solar panels, she added. The government, she said, had a “duty of care” to those who were struggling to afford the policies involved in the transition.

But she insisted tackling nitrogen-based emissions was not a matter of party politics but scientifically necessary. “It is a crisis in the Netherlands, and pretending it’s not there doesn’t bring solutions any closer.” 

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