In an era in which we seem to prefer to postpone the future further and further, it helps to take a look across the border, where in fact tomorrow does determine today’s decisions.
In Denmark, it was decided last week to convert large-scale meadows and arable land into primeval forests. Within twenty years, the Danes will have planted a billion trees, for better air and cleaner water. With a ground breaking agricultural agreement, 15% of the agricultural land will be transformed into nature, a total of 390,000 hectares! In the Netherlands, 15% of the agricultural area would amount to 330,000 hectares. That is more than double the surface area of the four Ijsselmeer polders, the agricultural land that we painstakingly (and proudly!) added to the Netherlands in the last century. So what we have to do is nothing less than a new biggest change in our landscape. But in the meantime, problems continue to pile up unhindered outside The Hague and the planning community holds progress hostage by a call for integrated planning. Wrong! There is no need for integrated planning. There is a need for prioritization, a primary choice from which everything else can be derived. This is how the Delta Works were made, this is how the IJsselmeer polders came about. That’s how we do things in Holland!
Henk Hartzema, Linkedin 26 november 2024
