SEEDS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
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A law in the Netherlands states, that for every tree that is cut down, a new one has to be planted. This law does not count when an area of forest is cut down and replaced with other types of nature. However this new type of nature does not clean out CO2 compared to the trees that were standing there before. At this point there is a plan of a removal of 1231 hectares of trees as opposed to 304 hectares of new trees.
Lots of people from different provinces have no insight on how much hectares of forest is still going to be removed. Some states such as overijssel are busy with plans to add forest area, but they are not sure where to do this yet.
Mae van Tilburg, A. (2019). Trend van ontbossing zet door in Nederland. [online] Demonitor.kro-ncrv.nl.
Available at: https://demonitor.kro-ncrv.nl/artikelen/trend-van-ontbossing-zet-door-in-nederland [Accessed 20 May 2019].
Click the image to view the article
According to records the netherlands only had 1-2% of forest, deforestation started around the 9th century for the building of houses, sheds and firewood. After the middle ages the deforestation got worse as the population grew in the Netherlands. At some point the Dutch would even go to Scandinavia to get their firewood. A turning point came when people found out how to grow trees in drift sand, this would allow them to regenerate new forests on a large scale. With the use of fertilizer we could make trees grow where we wanted. Since the 1850’s we have gone from 1-2% to 11% of forest area.
Wijngaarden, M. (2019). Een eeuw geleden bestond slechts 1 procent van ons land uit bos. [online] EenVandaag. Available at: https://eenvandaag.avrotros.nl/item/een-eeuw-geleden-bestond-slechts-1-procent-van-ons-land-uit-bos/ [Accessed 20 May 2019].
Scepticism in the Netherlands has grown, that people are the cause of climate change.
van vliet, L. (2019). Dat de aarde opwarmt door de mens geloven steeds minder mensen.
[online] EenVandaag. Available at: https://eenvandaag.avrotros.nl/panels/opiniepanel/alle-uitslagen/item/dat-de-aarde-opwarmt-door-de-mens-geloven-steeds-minder-mensen/ [Accessed 20 May 2019].
There are two opposing events in the Netherlands, there is the (centraal bosbeheer) that says we should be gaining 1000, hectares of forest, whereas in the reality there are about 1500-3500 hectares getting cut down.
Nos.nl. (2019). Leve de natuur, weg met het bos?. [online] Available at: https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2275074-leve-de-natuur-weg-met-het-bos.html [Accessed 20 May 2019].
A conversation about the deforestation in natura 2000 (multiple nature protection areas from the UN), where in deforestation is taking place in order to “restore the original nature from 100 years ago” some oppose this saying that 300 years ago it was forest before they were grasslands, so how do you connect value to one of these two different landscapes? According to some almost 90% of this type of land has disappeared and is therefore a threat to the animals living on that land. Despite the current situation of global warming, is it smart to be removing such large areas of forest? This doesn't seem to have been taking into consideration in the plan of restoring the “original” land. There is also criticism about how you can currently compensate an airplane flight from amsterdam to a far away country, by planting one tree for your trip. Even though we feel guiltless due to the one tree we planted for our flight across the world, we are far away from compensating for its co2 footprint. Because in the meantime we are cutting down thousands of trees, without planting any new ones or even thinking about how many trees we would need to compensate the co2 we are producing. No where in the plans
van Nimwegen, N. (2019). ‘Onze omgeving wordt kaal gekapt, zonder dat we weten of er iets voor terugkomt’. [online] Demonitor.kro-ncrv.nl. Available at: https://demonitor.kro-ncrv.nl/artikelen/onze-omgeving-wordt-kaal-gekapt-zonder-dat-we-weten-of-er-iets-voor-terugkomt [Accessed 20 May 2019].
An interactive map wherein you can see the loss of forest area in various places around the world in the past 17 years
Click the image to go straight to the interactive map or go to home page:
https://www.globalforestwatch.org
Other sources (interview) Nationalities:
Surinamese, Indonesian, Dutch, Aruban, Curaçao, Dublin, China
Google Earth Images
Click here to view interviews
Area The Hague and Amsterdam 1984
Area The Hague and Amsterdam, 2016
"Area The Hague and Amsterdam" are the images we used to approach people. We also looked at the places we came from.
My home town for example was in Tanzania and these were the
results:
Pugu hills, Tanzania 2004
Pugu hills, Tanzania 2018
Some examples of the satellite images found during research
One of the ladies we interviewed was from Aruba. These are the images we found:
Aruba, 1987
Aruba, 1987
More images on:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SHDIRx2DGLKVrpHj-yUS20MaTdXQ-qbQ?usp=sharing
Sources used:
I used articles as sources where in factual information was used. However the point of most of the articles was to point out that there was more loss of forest than that there was being compensated for. In the case that forest area has been removed to make space for new nature type, they state both that the forest takes up more CO2 but that the different landscapes is dont to try an increase biodiversity. Some articles explore both points of views such as van Nimwegen (2019). There was a video that talked about how over the past year less people believe that humans are the cause of global warming (van vliet, L. 2019) this video is neutral and provides factual information. The articles we looked up we used to better understand deforestation and its causes in the Netherlands, we also used them during our interviews to ask people questions and share information.
The interviews were more personal information. People provided us with things they had observed, which are often biased experiences, however combined with the use of the internet some statements were factual. For example “when they built the Betuwelijn through the Netherlands, a lot of farmers had to leave their land and lots of grass and tree area was removed.” This is an example of something we learned through our conversations and could verify using the internet. The personal stories shared with us were partially factual and partially subjective. The subjective point of view is not a problem though, because we wanted to know peoples points of view.
Female, +- 60 years
Because of the increasing tourism and population there are more buildings and less nature.
There is also a lake of rain. The land is very dry and less green. The climate change caused a lake of seasons. There is now raining season anymore.
Female, 21 years
This is my story. I grew up in the forest, the left area of trees was protected by the government. As you can see there is a clear boarder of public versus protected land. The little box of trees sticking out of the government forest, with the road going through was my home. My parents bought this piece of land around 1980's in order to protect the forest. Had they not owned this plot of land the boarder of the governments' forest would have probably been a straight line.
We often struggled with local people coming onto our land and cutting our trees. So we always made sure that we had security guards preventing that this wouldn't happen.
in 2014 we left and moved to the Netherlands. The forest now belongs to Jane Goodall foundation.
The personal stories from our interviews can be found on:
Scan or click on Qr Code