Christianne van der Wal will not want to go down in history as the Minister of Pappen and Nathoudt. The 48-year-old VVD member is of ‘tackling’ and ‘going on’, she says in interviews. People who have experienced the Minister for Nitrogen and Nature as a Gelders deputy endorse this self-diagnosis. The provincial party leader of the PvdA, Fokko Spoelstra, said in the magazine: Farm business that she tries to get people to agree with her policy, but does not necessarily want to please everyone. ‘She won’t please everyone with nitrogen either. I think that’s powerful, that you still dare to say ‘no’.’
The fact that she does not shy away from confrontation will come in handy for Van der Wal during this cabinet term. Because a politician who is in charge of the nitrogen dossier knows one thing for sure in advance: overcoming political resistance becomes almost a day job. The former party chairman of the VVD faces the biggest challenge of her only twelve-year political career: finding a solution to the nitrogen crisis.
On Friday, Van der Wal will submit her first major test to the House of Representatives. Together with agriculture minister Henk Staghouwer, she presents the National Program for Rural Areas. In it, it indicates for each province which nitrogen targets the provincial government must achieve, and which financial and legal resources it makes available for this. The twelve provinces must then submit a credible nitrogen reduction plan to it within a year – the deadline is July 1, 2023. In this they must indicate how they will reduce nitrogen emissions per area in such a way that nature is sufficiently protected.
If necessary, coercive measures
Van der Wal expressly threatens with coercive measures if the provinces do not deliver what they ask. Then she will take over the management of the reluctant province, as she has announced by way of ‘big stick’.
The national reduction target is set out in the coalition agreement: in 2025 (i.e. in three years’ time), nitrogen precipitation on 40 percent of Dutch nature reserves must be below the critical limit value and five years later, in 2030, this must apply to 74 percent of protected nature. . At the moment, only 24 percent of nitrogen-sensitive nature meets this standard. According to experts, to reach the 74 percent target, nitrogen emissions from agriculture must be halved. Livestock farming is, after all, responsible for no less than 70 percent of the nitrogen deposition in Dutch nature that can be influenced (caused in the Netherlands).
Combating the nitrogen problem requires serious interventions in intensive livestock farming, Van der Wal is not blunt about that. On Tuesday she said in the House of Representatives: ‘I know that this has an enormous impact on farmers who have been living in uncertainty for a long time. That’s horrible. At the same time, we don’t have any choice. Nature cannot wait. We are dealing with a legal decision that is clear-cut. We must first emit less nitrogen. We must first restore nature. Only then can we grant permits again. So the only way to unlock this country is this approach.”
So said, but not done yet. The agricultural sector is not used to such firm language. Since the 1960s, the agricultural lobby has been able to bend government policy to its will, first through the formerly all-powerful CDA and later also through the VVD business party. At least one of the two parties is always in the government, which guarantees that farmers are protected until the Council of Ministers.
The SGP and the ChristenUnie are happy to help their larger right-wing brothers to keep intensive agriculture out of the wind. Since a few years, the farmers’ camp on the Binnenhof has been expanded further with the populists of BBB, JA21, BVNL, FvD and PVV, parties that deny that nitrogen is a problem at all. The Ministry of Agriculture has maintained close ties with farmers’ interest groups such as LTO for many years. That added together explains how a sector that represents 2 percent of national employment and contributes 1.4 percent to gross domestic product has been disproportionately influential on political direction for decades.
Organized resistance is ready
The nitrogen minister has barely got off the ground when the organized resistance against her policy intentions is already underway. A week ago leaked via NRC Van der Wal would demand from the provinces that nitrogen emissions in some areas (Gelderse Vallei, De Peel) be reduced by as much as 70 to 80 percent. Those percentages were apparently visible on Tuesday 31 May on a small map of the country in a PowerPoint presentation for provincial administrators.
Whether Van der Wal really demands such draconian reduction percentages will only become clear on Friday. That didn’t stop LTO from throwing oil on the fire. The advocacy group immediately put an angry press release on its website. ‘LTO has been concerned for some time about the direction taken by the government. Should the letter from the cabinet make the absurd reduction proposals as in the NRC described, then the limit has been reached for LTO. Under no circumstances will we accept our members being treated this way.”
The farmers will wait a little longer with campaigning until they have read Van der Wal’s letter to parliament, but they are ready to throw in the towel. Mark van den Oever, leader of the radical action group Farmers Defense Force, said this week: ‘We, the FDF Legion, will stand together as one to fully utilize and defend our fundamental democratic rights’. An information meeting for farmers in the Frisian town of Elsloo resulted in a Polish country day. Two hundred farmers walked out of the hall angrily, because they did not appreciate the story of the provincial administrators.
It is unfortunate for the ‘decisive’ nitrogen minister that elections for the provincial councils are in the pipeline in March 2023. Deputies and States members of VVD and CDA are afraid that they will lose seats to the BBB of the former farmer’s lobbyist Caroline van der Plas and to Forum for Democracy. They do not want to offend the farmers’ supporters who traditionally vote for their parties with strong nitrogen reduction plans.
Van der Wal will face a revolt in her own party at the VVD party congress on Saturday. More than six hundred VVD members have signed a motion against its nitrogen policy that will be submitted during the congress. Incidentally, those six hundred members do not constitute more than 2 percent of the VVD membership base, so it is not certain that a majority of the VVD members support it.
Steel backbone needed
The nitrogen minister, who also describes herself as a ‘genuine optimist’, will have to prove that she has a steel backbone. She does not seem to have to expect too much help from her colleague Minister of Agriculture, Henk Staghouwer. The ChristenUnie politician, formerly a deputy in Groningen, prefers the velvet gloves approach. He recently said in the House of Representatives that politicians have shown too little ‘respect’ for farmers in recent years and that they should talk more with the farmers. A remarkable position, given that the agricultural lobby has certainly not been shortchanged when it comes to political influence in recent decades.
The division of roles between Staghouwer and Van der Wal at the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality seems to be one of them good cop, bad cop† While Van der Wal imposes hard targets on the provinces, Staghouwer will present a positive letter to parliament on Friday in which future prospects are offered to livestock farming.
Van der Wal would also like to consult with the farmers, she constantly emphasizes. It wants to include livestock farmers in its policy and let them determine as much as possible for themselves how the nitrogen targets are achieved. But with the turkey on the Christmas menu, it is difficult to negotiate. He will not react enthusiastically if the butcher says by way of compromise: ‘I will not slaughter you, but only cut off your left wing’.
“I don’t have a choice to resist the (political) pressure,” Van der Wal said in the House of Representatives on Tuesday. ‘We have to. We, as a government, have created this problem. We all hit a wall hard. We have not kept the agreements. We have not reduced nitrogen emissions and have not restored nature, even though we have promised to do so. That may not be a nice message, but it is the clear message.’