In 2020 the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Conservation and Food Quality and the regional administrations asked the Board of Government Advisers – of which Benno Strootman was a member until 1 January 2021 – to issue a recommendation on the strategy for the forests. This strategy is an enormous opportunity to provide a qualitative impulse to the Netherlands landscape, the Board concluded.
Location
Nederland
Principal
Ministerie van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit
Partners
Noël van Dooren
Vista landschapsarchitectuur en stedenbouw
Adriaan Bicker
Hester Koelman
Rik de Visser
Design Year
2020
The Strategy for the Forests follows on from the Climate Agreement. The national and regional authorities would like to bring about more cohesion between the policies on forests, nature and climate. The aim of the national and regional authorities is a 10% increase in forests before 2030, which amounts to an additional 37,000 hectares. The question is: How can you do that in a country in which land is scarce and the pressure on agricultural land is strong?
The Strategy for the Forests is an enormous opportunity to provide a qualitative impulse to the Netherlands landscape, the Board concluded in its recommendation on this strategy forests for the Ministry. The quality of the landscape has been in decline for decades. In this recommendation the Board of Government Advisers shows how new forests and more trees can strengthen the quality of the landscape. The planting of more trees and forests is not just a question of numbers. Those trees and forests must also be located in the right place.
In a country as full as the Netherlands, with many claims on every square metre, there are no simple solutions. The Board of Government Advisers argues that it will be impossible without intelligent combinations of functions. An energetic town and country planning, cooperation with other policy programmes and a keen eye for the potential of each landscape type are also essential.