Landscape restorationRural areasSustainable agriculture

Future outlook and adaptation pathways for peat meadows

By September 3, 2020 No Comments

Our colleague Lotte has combined her work at Nature^Squared for the last two years with a Master program on Water Science & Management at Utrecht University, which she finished with a thesis on adaptation scenario’s for the Amstelscheg, a Dutch peat meadow area close to Amsterdam. For this research, she collaborated with renowned research organisation Deltares, and she is keen to share her results:

“Climate change and increasing costs for water management demand a new approach to managing soil subsidence in the Green Heart peat meadow area. I continued working on a set of previously developed scenario’s and investigated the support for these scenario’s among local stakeholders and policymakers. The stakeholders were quite unanimous and clear on their preference: a diverse production landscape has the preference above setting the area aside for nature. This landscape should include sustainable agriculture, bird habitats and pilot areas for new types of water management, such as innovative drainage systems and testing of new kind of crops, that are better suited for wetter circumstances. In short, a landscape that is prepared for future developments and acts on soil subsidence and against salinisation. Such a transition also requires clear decisions and strong policy support, that’s why I also developed an adaptation pathway, demonstrating important decisive moments and preferences of stakeholders.”

Download full report through this link.