Background Nitrogen mood
Getting out of the nitrogen impasse certainly doesn't help everyone
In the hope of a blessing, but under the guise of a breakthrough, the cabinet has established a number of new principles for a more workable nitrogen policy. In the name of Minister Femke Wiersma, a outline letter discussed 'company-specific emission standards for nitrogen and greenhouse gases'.
The Lower House will be allowed to discuss it next Thursday. It is expected that the four governing parties will not be too difficult about it, because they are already familiar with the main points.
Praise for Wiersma, but...
Even before the cabinet had sent out an official message about it on Friday, the BBB was already beating the drum its own website, and the daily newspaper De Telegraaf was allowed to come out even earlier. The Minister of Agriculture expresses hopefulness about a way out of the current legal and administrative chaos, and a new start for the business community. There is a lot of praise for Wiersma, but was it her merit, or did other BBB people in the cabinet pull the wheel? Reportedly, another and fresh team has looked closely at the nitrogen problem.
Not for all PAS reporters
If we really succeed in getting the Netherlands 'unlocked' again and, for example, also helping the thousands of PAS reporters move forward again, that would be a major achievement. However, with an arithmetic lower limit of 1 mol for nitrogen, as the government is now proposing, there will still not be a solution for everyone, no matter what is said. The fact that the new limit is 200 times higher than the current, theoretically determined lower limit of 0,005 mol does not change that either. Moreover, nature is a contour policy apply, with 5 kilometer zones around nature, where livestock farms are having a hard time. However, not much is said about this yet.
Vague NDFF
Another problem is that the Aerius calculation model has been fed with more and more chunks of nitrogen-sensitive nature in recent years. Numerous 'derived habitats' have been added (around 100.000 hectares), partly on the basis of the (possible) presence of endangered species just outside Natura 2000 areas. Evidence for this should be found in the recently opened National Flora and Fauna Database offer, but that is difficult to check due to the deliberate blurring of data for precisely these species. The additional area of nature indirectly puts more and more activities under pressure, because the bar has been raised for companies outside of it. Nevertheless, the new approach is a start, certainly if the German methodology of nitrogen calculation can then also be applied, as is suggested.
Candy store without cash register
Anything that helps to get out of the current situation is a gain. The situation as it is now, in which every uncertainty in the nitrogen regulations is interpreted to the disadvantage of the business community and judges opt for a maximalist application of the precautionary principle, feels like a candy store without a cash register for radical environmental action groups. Many major cases feel like a no-brainer. The most far-reaching is the Council of State ruling of 18 December.
The statements made at that time regarding Rendac and the Amercentrale have such far-reaching consequences that even the participants in the Lbv+ and Lbv buyout schemes - including the Houbensteyn Group - are now in trouble. previously pointed out, but now the consequences are becoming concretely visible. Of the 1.587 applications for participation up to mid-January, 1.323 have been granted by government agency RVOThese people have all had in the past few days a letter had, in which they are pointed out to the impasse in which the termination process has ended up due to the aforementioned ruling. According to RVO, this is not the fault of the government. Patience is requested.
Buy now, pay much later
Participants in one of the two schemes cannot always have that. The company has often already been terminated and perhaps an advance has already been received, but what then? More needs to be done for the final settlement, also with the bank. A demolition permit is often still needed for the stables, and there was a prospect of a nature permit with a residual share of emissions. Will they still come, and when?
It is important to give these stoppers clarity quickly, because otherwise agriculture will not only have a new category of bottlenecks, but the Minister of LVVN can also kiss a new purchase scheme goodbye. From the current perspective, such a scheme is already dead before it is published.
Enforcement
The new arithmetic lower limit, even if parliament agrees, must also withstand the test of the courts, and then we are back to MOB, Vereniging Leefmilieu and other manifestations of the same group of activists. Not that they are out of work for the time being. They continue to chase the provinces with enforcement requests against PAS reporters and try to keep livestock farms all over the country along the line of sensitive nature in the vicinity or a little further away. They even try to link red list species of birds and insects to other areas that are not yet recognized as vulnerable nature, in order to create even more 'facts on the ground'.
The price of achievable reduction
Regardless of what is happening around arithmetic lower limits and limitations around nature, the government also continues to work on reducing corporate emissions of nitrogen and ammonia, because the set targets for 2030 and beyond remain in place. Last week a group of Wageningen computer scientists gave an explanation to the House of Representatives how those goals can be achieved. Viewed in terms of models, almost all goals are achievable, they said cheerfully, even if it seems like a tough task. When Member of Parliament Harm Holman finally asked whether there would still be a livestock farm after the exercise was completed, the story stopped. "That's a good question," Holman then heard.
This is the question that also remains with the letter about the contours of the emissions policy, which the minister sent to the House of Representatives on Friday and which builds on the Wageningen calculations.
Feed for procedures
The change from a deposit to an emission policy, as the BBB wants and as described in Wiersma's letter, may sound sympathetic, but it does not make the legislation and regulations stronger or better. It remains a policy that has to work with many inherent uncertainties and results that cannot be proven. This also leaves the door open for new and almost certainly successful lawsuits from environmental groups, because experience shows what happens when the burden of proof is problematic.
Klaas van der Horst
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