Regional vision for the Wadden Coast

The coastal mud flats of Groningen, which form part of the Wadden Sea, are a tranquil, impressive and unique area. Large-scale changes will happen or can be made here, creating scope for smaller developments in tandem. The crucial question is which investments can make a significant and permanent contribution to strengthening the socio-economic position of the residents of this area and taking advantage of the place of the Wadden Sea on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The province of Groningen has invited Strootman landschapsarchitecten to develop a regional vision for the Wadden Coast within its borders. The following major tasks have been formulated in this project:

Security with integral dike reinforcement;

Ecology: for the Wadden Coast, particularly the Eems-Dollard and the Lauwersmeer;

Economy: to develop the industrial region (Eemshaven and Delfzijl) as a top region for (sustainable) energy, the chemical industry and data centres;

To make the Wadden Coast more attractive and accessible for recreation;

To find an appropriate answer for local growth and regional shrinkage;

To reinforce the characteristics of the various types of landscape and to develop them in interaction with the other tasks.

The direction for the Groningen stretch of the Wadden Coast consists of the following elements, refined per sector:

Linking of tasks and the search for integral solutions;

The combination of tasks and the search for synergy can create added value and bring new possibilities into the picture. A good example is the Marconi Project in Delfzijl, in which tasks in the field of nature conservation, water security and interaction with the environment are combined in an overarching plan concept;

The reduction of hard borders and transitions;

The coastline manifests itself as a hard dividing line between the worlds on either side of the dike. The ambition is to link these two worlds in terms of ecology and recreation and to approach the coast not as a line but as a zone;

The reinforcement of characteristic strong landscape contrasts and of the quality of large landscape units;

The strong contrasts between the industrial clusters of Delfzijl and the Eemshaven, on the one hand, and the panoramic agrarian landscape with its small-scale rows of villages on the creek ridges, on the other, are characteristics of the Wadden Coast and strongly determine the attractiveness of the region.