Summary 55 The Nature Debate Unravelled - Nature as Heritage, Capital good and Consumer good. Veeneklaas, F.R. (Alterra, Wageningen University and Research center) InnovationNetwork Report No. 12.2.304, Utrecht, The Netherlands, October 2012. About 20 years after the publication of the Nature Policy Plan in 1990, nature policy once again finds itself at the centre of hot debate. The battle lines have become more sharply drawn since the Rutte government initiated a change of course. Key characteristics of the new policy are the restriction of National Government’s involvement to international commitments and ‘system responsibility’ with accompanying cutbacks on the national nature budget, decentralization of tasks (notably to provincial level), updating and redefinition of policy and area categories and promotion of private sector involvement (both selforganizing citizens and businesses). Now that the Rutte government has fallen, it is not clear whether this new course will be continued after the elections on 12 September 2012. Nevertheless, a review of certain strategic questions regarding the most appropriate nature policy for the Netherlands seems in order. Over the past twenty years, nature policy was burdened with a multitude of objectives, ranging from straightforward nature protection for its own sake to harnessing nature as a driver of economic transformation or revitalization, and from stressing the value of wilderness experiences to adopting all sorts of different forms of ‘working with nature’. Due to this accumulation of objectives, the nature debate is often confusing and lacks clear focus. This essay seeks to create clarity amidst the confusion. To this end, three clusters of motives for protecting nature are distinguished, namely the nature as heritage, nature as capital good and nature as Pagina 62

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