Criticism is mounting on the nature target analyzes of the province of Drenthe, which led to an actual building stop this spring. The Drents Parliament will talk about this next Wednesday.
A new development is that research agency Agrifacts put those nature target analyzes against the yardstick. Employee Geesje Rotgers recently presented the findings in Westerbork. Her conclusions do not lie. According to Rotgers, the provincial research results are statistically poorly substantiated and the province used opaque methods.
With this, the debate in the Drenthe Parliament promises to gain a lot of meaning. The nature study was still carried out under the responsibility of the previous provincial government. The big question is whether the new BBB deputies Jisse Otter (agriculture) and Egbert van Dijk (nature) will succeed in charting a new course for nitrogen and nature policy, as their party promised prior to the provincial elections. Agrifacts and the BBB are often on the same page in terms of content.
External netting
The nature target analyzes led to all kinds of construction initiatives coming to a standstill in many places in Drenthe. The reason is that the analyzes showed that the protected nature areas (Natura 2000) are deteriorating rather than improving, as intended. The previous Provincial Executive therefore concluded that external netting is no longer possible. This means that a company can no longer buy up the nitrogen rights of another company in order to obtain a nature permit. The VVD thought that the latter conclusion was too short-sighted and therefore placed the debate in the Drents Parliament on the agenda.
Does Agrifacts have a point?
How do other experts view Agrifacts’ findings? Professor of ecology Han Olff points out that the nature target analyzes are actually concepts that the Ecological Authority has yet to assess.
“The Minister of Nature and Nitrogen stated it Ecological Authority among other things to assess whether the provinces are properly performing their task of protecting nature areas. To this end, she also examines those nature analyses. I think it would be wise to await their verdict.”
Olff does want to say that adding species to the national list can be legitimate. “In recent decades, not all nature reserves have been monitored to see which species occurred there and how they developed. If you choose not to study those species on the basis of the national list, you run the risk of not seeing any decline in those species.”
The Agrifacts Foundation was founded in 2018 by farmer Jan Cees Vogelaar. The agency consists of researchers and science journalists. The aim is to examine the underpinnings of agricultural and nature policy. Although Agrifacts says it works completely independently, critics point out that the sponsors are companies in the agri sector. Agrifacts itself says it wants to counterbalance what it considers to be a one-sided approach in politics and the media of the agricultural sector.
Typical species
Geesje Rotgers of Agrifacts criticizes the ‘typical species’ used by the province for the research. These are plant and animal species that typically belong to a certain nature reserve. The researchers then look at whether those species have increased or decreased in number.
According to Rotgers, however, the province did not only look at the species that actually occurred in the Drenthe nature reserves. Species were also taken from a general national list, with plants and animals of which it is not certain whether they occur in the studied nature areas in Drenthe.
According to Rotgers, this makes the analyzes rather obscure. It is therefore not clear whether and to what extent these species actually occurred in Drenthe areas in the past and how they developed. Rotgers asked the province why that national list was used. She received the answer that it is the province’s authority to use species from that national list.
Corn on the mill
For example, Rotgers was more critical of the nature analyses. You would say grist to the mill of the VVD, which is critical of the consequences these studies have for economic activities in Drenthe. Member of Parliament Roelof Oosting, however, keeps a low profile. “We still have to discuss in the group what conclusions we draw from the Agrifacts findings. The main thing for us is that we have to look for solutions, so that building is possible again and the economy can develop. We need to find those solutions together.”
When Rotgers presented her findings in Westerbork, deputies Otter and Van Dijk were both in the room. Their spokesperson Elita Córdova Gaytán says that both directors are not yet ready for a response to Rotgers’ findings.