Honderd jaar nationale parkenbeleid in Nederland: een terug- en vooruitblik

Although the Netherlands has 21 national parks, the national government has been struggling for a hundred years with the question of what place they should be given in the Netherlands and its colonies. Initially, private individuals took initiatives for national parks and there was at most a rudimentary national park policy. In 1970, however, the government launched an ambitious plan for twenty national parks and as many national landscape parks. A large part of this has been achieved, although the landscape parks hardly function. Moreover, the policy objectives, embedding and implementation were inadequate and regionally there was often a lack of power, resources, knowledge and cooperation. Around 2000, the parks policy almost stopped completely, but in 2013 the parliament put national parks back on the policy agenda. The aim was to make the Dutch national parks more robust, stronger and more attractive, leading to new impetus and initiatives. However, many conditions for the successful establishment of national parks and landscape parks have not yet been met. In addition, we argue that a modern national park should be based on a social-ecological concept, which clearly connects social and natural functions.