Land-Sparing and Land-Sharing in Dutch National Parks: A Historical and Transition Perspective

Jorien Zevenberg () and Henny J. van der Windt
Additional contact information
Jorien Zevenberg: Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society, University of Groningen, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands
Henny J. van der Windt: Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society, University of Groningen, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-23

Abstract: Global biodiversity rates remain in decline despite the fact that worldwide 16% of the land is protected. Some argue that to stop the biodiversity decline, a shift from “land-sparing” (agricultural production and nature conservation on different plots of land) towards “land-sharing” (both activities on the same plot of land) may be needed. We use the regime dimensions of the multi-level perspective to analyze the development and implementation of land-sparing and land-sharing in Dutch national parks as they are experimenting with this. Our qualitative text-based analysis of Dutch national park policy documents from 1930 until 2022 shows that the first Dutch national parks focused on nature conservation and land-sparing. In contrast, the so-called Dutch national landscape parks were the first serious attempt to integrate nature conservation and agriculture and to implement land-sharing. However, this failed because of the misalignment between nature conservation and agriculture at that time. A new attempt is currently being made with the national parks “new style” in which more land-sharing should take place. We argue that for this, a hybrid agriculture nature-conservation regime is needed for which different dimensions of both regimes should align, which currently appears to be starting in The Netherlands.

Keywords: nature conservation; land use; extensive agriculture; multi-level perspective; regime change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/4/808/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/4/808/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:14:y:2025:i:4:p:808-:d:1630916

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().