High noon in the low countries: Recent nature policy dynamics in the Netherlands and in flanders

Abstract

This chapter analyses nature policy in the Netherlands and Flanders based on the policy arrangement approach. The institutionalisation of the nature policy area occupies centre stage, and the chapter also looks at the most important adjacent policy areas of spatial planning and agriculture. The analysis deals in the main with national policy as far as the Netherlands is concerned, but as nature policy in federal Belgium has been more or less fully devolved to regional level since the nineteen-eighties, the discussion focuses on the administrative level of Flanders. The start point of the analysis is 1970 and the end point is 2005 for both countries. Although both countries did have a nature policy before 1970, 1970 is generally accepted to be the beginning of a new period of government intervention with environmental issues and nature in northwestern Europe (Bogaert and Leroy, 2004). In particular, the first European Year of Nature Conservation, 1970, acted as a boost to nature conservation policy in several countries in Europe. 1989 is the second key date. This year was a kind of 'High Noon' in the institutionalisation of nature policy in both countries, as it was the year in which the first nature policy plans appeared in both the Netherlands and Flanders. The publication of these policy plans coincided with a significant new element in the discourses: more and more advocates at international level for a system of nature reserves based on island theory (Gersie, 1987). It was argued that large nature reserves, possibly subject to different protection regimes, linked together by landscape elements that could function as migration corridors, would considerably increase the viability of wildlife. The creation of such networks would mean the replacement of the defensive strategy of nature protection by an offensive strategy of 'nature development'. At European level this resulted in the concept of Natura 2000, in the Netherlands it was developed into the National Ecological Network (EHS), and in Flanders it was developed into the Green Main Structure (GHS) and later the Flemish Ecological Network (VEN). The main question addressed in this chapter is how the new discourses about ecological networks affected the institutionalisation of nature policy in the two countries and how, for all their similarities, the differences between the Netherlands and Flanders can be explained. It examines where these new discourses did or did not lead to the involvement of new actors, and to new resources and rules of the game. What stands out is that there really were both parallel and divergent processes of institutionalisation going on. In Flanders, for example, quite a lot of attention had been given to the issue of societal support and legitimacy since as long ago as 1989 (at least in discourses) (Bogaert, 2004). In the Netherlands, attention to winning public support for nature conservation policy started only around 2000. In conformity with the policy arrangement approach, explanations for these and other forms of convergence and divergence are sought in the interaction between the distinguished dimensions (discourses, power, actors and rules of the game), in structural developments, and in developments in and reciprocity between the two. One important structural development is the fact that in the period under consideration, Belgium evolved from a unitary to a federal state, as a result of which nature policy was pretty well fully devolved to regional level. The diverse phases of this reform of the state were accompanied by high levels of vitality in institutions, in sharp contrast with the relative institutional quietude in the Netherlands during this period. In developing its relatively new nature policy, Flanders imported policy concepts from abroad, especially from the Netherlands. The GHS and later the VEN can be seen as an example of policy transplantation (De Jong et al., 2002) and of the difficulties that are associated with copying policies in a different institutional context. This chapter describes the institutionalisation of Dutch nature conservation policy followed by Flemish policy. These developments are then compared proceeding from the dimensions distinguished in the policy arrangement approach: discourses, power, actors and rules of the game. Finally, explanations are offered for the differences and similarities between the nature policies of the two countries. © 2006 Springer.