The governance of nature

It deals with the relations between man and nature. Many people and many organizations show their worries about the decline of natural areas, the lost of biodiversity, and the effects of climate changes. Many of them are taking actions to limit or mitigate negative effects on the environment and to protect natural areas and flora and fauna. Governmental organisations play an important role when it comes to nature conservations. On the one hand they take actions to protect the environment, but on the other many decisions they take have negative effects on this environment.  Nature conservations has to compete with many other objectives in a continuous battle over space, money and other resources, and attention/awareness. Recent examples of such “battles” are the decision making processes about Maasvlakte II, the A6-A9 highway near the Naardermeer or the Waddensea.

One of the objectives of this study is to gain insights in these battles. Why do people want to protect nature, what do they want to protect, how do nature conservation objective compete with other objectives, how do people achieve nature conservation objectives, and which roles do governmental organizations and their policies play?

The governance of nature is not only about nature, but also about the processes of decision making, legislation, management, institutional frameworks etc. Nevertheless substantial questions and procedural aspects are seldom studied in relation. Ecologist often deal with the first while domains like policy, law, management, or administration, deal with the last. Spatial planners can bring these different disciplines together and thus provide new, relevant, and useful insights in the governance of nature.

Period: by mutual agreement

Contact person: Raoul Beunen, raoul.beunen@wur.nl