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Nature and the environment have been issues of public concern since the 1970s. The Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth report boosted environmental consciousness with its prediction that oil and gas reserves would dry up. It has strongly influenced how we now think about our energy needs and the balance between human activity and the environment.
Protecting nature
In a country as densely populated as the Netherlands, we have to protect areas of special natural value. For this reason, the state buys and manages such areas and funds non-profit conservation bodies to do the same. More and more farmers are concluding special nature conservation agreements, undertaking to manage their land or land belonging to a nature conservation organisation in a certain way.
The 1990 Nature Policy Plan (published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality) set out the government’s strategies for restoring nature to its rightful place. One of them is the National Ecological Network, linking protected areas and designed to guarantee plants and animals a basis for survival.
The government aims to extend the network to 700,000 hectares by 2018 (the total surface area of the Netherlands is 41,528 km2).
The Netherlands also has 19 National Parks, from the waters of the Biesbosch to the sand drifts of the Loonse and Drunense Duinen. The two oldest are the Hoge Veluwe and the Veluwezoom, and the island of Schiermonnikoog deserves a special mention.
Caring for the environment
Owing to high population density, heavy industrialisation, widespread car ownership and intensive farming methods, the environment is under relatively more pressure in the Netherlands than elsewhere in Europe. It has therefore taken more radical measures than most other EU member states.
Thanks to environmental policy, air, water and soil pollution have decreased, and noise nuisance and emissions of greenhouse gases have stabilised. But environmental pollution is not just a home-grown problem. Water-borne pollution enters the country through major European rivers. It even has a worldwide impact in the form of damage to the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect. European policy therefore plays an increasingly important role in tackling large-scale environmental problems.
International environmental policy
Two events in the past 30 years have fuelled public debate on the environment in the Netherlands. The first was the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, and the second was the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, which was published in 1987. They were milestones, and their impact can still be felt.
Since the 1980s, subjects like wastewater treatment, waste disposal, flue gas cleaning systems, soil clean-up and reduction of noise nuisance have been high on the policy agenda. Issues like acidification and groundwater depletion were added to the agenda in the late 1980s, and climate change and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions became hot topics in the mid-1990s.
Since the disaster in Enschede in May 2000, when a depot used for storing fireworks exploded, destroying an entire residential district, policy has also focused on external safety.
Alternative energy sources
Although priorities have adapted to circumstances over the past 30 years, attention has shifted from measures after the event to prevention and control.
The fourth National Environmental Policy Plan, published in 2001, aims, like its predecessor, to combine sustainable improvement of the environment with economic growth, taking processes of social change as the main point of departure. Consumers, manufacturers and the authorities need to seek sustainable solutions, like cars powered by electricity or other alternative fuels.
A large oil company and a car manufacturer have already developed a vehicle that runs on hydrogen. In Amsterdam, the first hydrogen-powered buses are in service. Hydrogen is seen as the fuel of the future. It is clean – its only emission is condensed water – very efficient and in abundant supply.
Market instruments
Current policy uses various instruments, including regulations, permits, covenants and financial incentives. The specific issue, target group and situation determine which of them should be given priority, though a combination is usually the best option. Solving major environmental problems will call for more than an intensification of existing instruments. Strategies will need to be market-driven, and will include duties, taxes and tradability. It is important to put a price tag on harmful environmental impacts that are currently being passed on to future generations and the developing world.
These new instruments are in line with the changing role of the government, whose arm no longer reaches to the core of society. Instead, it creates frameworks and conditions and makes full use of society’s capacity to solve its own problems.
Dutch engagement
Most Dutch people take the environment seriously and are willing to do what they can to help, for instance by using less energy. Dutch per-capita carbon dioxide emissions are among the lowest in Europe.
It is striking how easily the Dutch have adapted to the policy of separating household waste. They dispose of glass, paper, batteries and paint at special collection points and put organic and non-organic waste into separate bins for collection. Dutch agriculture has also become more ecologically aware, as the next chapter explains.
For more information on the topics discussed in this chapter, contact the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment: www.minvrom.nl and the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality: www.minlnv.nl.
More information on related topics is also available on www.sharedspaces.nl,
the English-language online quarterly published by the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment.
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