Biodiversity policy of the Netherlands 1994-2007

The Netherlands ratified the Convention on Biodiversity in 1994 and has implemented it through various policy programmes and legislation. Its national policy has been fleshed out in a series of nature policy documents, national environmental policy plans and the development cooperation policy, and described in such documents as ‘Strategic Action Plan for Biodiversity' (in Dutch: ‘Strategisch plan van aanpak biologische diversiteit' 1995), 'Nature for People, People for Nature (policy document for nature, forest and landscape in the 21st century; 2000)', ‘Sources of existence' (2002), the ‘International Policy Programme on Biodiversity' 2002-2006 (BBI, 2002), the ‘Multi-Year Programme on Defragmentation' (2004, in Dutch), the ‘Policy Letter on Agrobiodiversity' (2004, in Dutch), the Policy Note on Invasive Alien Species (2007) and the policy strategy document 'The habitats approach: a new policy strategy for species' (2007).

In 1996 the first national report to the Convention on Biological Diversity was prepared.

In 2002, all the biodiversity-related policy proposals with an international aspect were grouped under the BBI. The BBI was subject to an independent evaluation in 2006 on behalf of the relevant ministries. The Ecology and Development Working Group initiated a similar evaluation. The two evaluations commended the way in which the BBI analyzed the problems and its integrating and binding effect. They added, however, that the BBI also lacked any real coordination, cooperation, cohesion and focus and that the program was consequently less effective than it might have been. Both evaluations underlined the importance of implementation and political commitment on a number of priority themes.

The Dutch policy by the end of this period also was in line with the European efforts: ‘Halting the loss of Biodiversity in 2010 - and beyond. Sustaining ecosystem services for human well-being'.

‘Biodiversity Works’ Guide (2005-2009)

The guide 'Biodiversiteit Werkt' (‘Biodiversity Works’) was meant to inspire people and to show how much fun and useful it is to work with biodiversity in the direct neighborhood and delivers nice results. The guide was aiming at people wanting to get involved in biodiversity-related activities (citizens, businesses, civil organizations and governments) and was developed in by the  Dutch ministry VROM (now IenW) and was hosted on the website of that ministry. The launch took place on the conference 'Biodiversiteit werkt' on the 28th of September 2005. In 2009 the guide was moved to the Dutch CHM portal Biodiversiteit.nl (under the title 'Get going with Biodiversity!'). During the update of the portal in 2021 the content of the guide was archived in a pdf document (in Dutch).

The ministries of that time LNV, OS and VROM in 2005 drew up an assessment framework (in Dutch), allowing businesses, societal organizations, certification institutes and governments to determine their biodiversity impacts and the steps to take to include sustainable use of biodiversity in their activities.  

Biodiversity platform

From 2006 onwards for a short period of time the so called ‘Biodiversity platform’ (‘Biodiversiteitsplatform’ in Dutch) was active. This was a network for knowledge exchange which on 26 October 2006 held a working conference on the theme of supply and demand of research in international biodiversity. See here for the report (in Dutch).

News archive

During the period 2002-2007 a number of news items were published on the Dutch CHM site (in Dutch). These are archived here.