Dutch government introduces nitrogen-reduction bill for nature areas

Seed Daily via UPI: The Dutch government this week is pushing Parliament to pass a law that would reduce nitrogen leaching from farms and industrial sites into dozens of designated nature zones.

Dutch Economic Affairs Secretary Sharon Dijksma announced Monday that after years of debate on the issue of reducing nitrogen from farm waste runoff into the European Union-designated "Natura 2000" network of nature protection areas, a bill to do so has been submitted to lawmakers.

In a statement, Dijksma touted the government's Programmatic Approach to Nitrogen bill, which was first proposed in 2009 and has gone through several failed attempts and a prolonged period of negotiations with stakeholders such as farmers' organizations, provincial governments, local water boards, and industrial and transportation groups.

"In the Netherlands, more than 130 Natura 2000 sites have high loads of nitrogen," she said. "This is due to economic activities such as agriculture, transport and industry. This bill, the Programmatic approach to Nitrogen, brings clarity in the rules so that nature and the economy can be balanced for their mutual benefit."...

Sunset in a Dutch field, shot by FotoDutch, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication