Planning Makes Perfect

Abstract

Even some of the most fervent nature lovers outside northern Europe grow weary of hearing stories about that region’s exceptional environmentalism. But what the heck – here’s another one. The Dutch now lead the world in key green achievements. Fourteen years after deciding to tackle their problems with a single, comprehensive plan, their industrial sector has reduced its total waste output by more than half. Sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants are down 70%, and up to 70% of waste is recycled. Ozone-depleting substances have been phased out completely. “We still have to clean up a lot of things”, said environmental planning official Cees Moons last year, in a videotaped talk in San Francisco, “but it is managed. The money is there. We just have to take 20 years, and the problem is solved in a final way.” Managed – what a concept, especially when you consider most of the rest of the world’s general disarray when it comes to environmental matters. Indeed, the secret behind Moons’ confidence is the simple operating principle of merely having a simple operating principle. Holland’s set of targets and guidelines, known as the National Environmental Policy Plan (NEPP), was first adopted in 1989, and has been revised every 4 years since then. Huey Johnson, founder of the San Francisco-based Resource Renewal Institute, and a leading US champion of “green plans”, calls it the world’s best such effort to date. “The Dutch decided to be a model for the world and clean up environmental problems on every level”, says Johnson, who runs “Seeing is Believing” tours to Holland for leading US officials and corporate executives. “We take people there and it blows their socks off.” The record isn’t perfect. This small nation’s environmental footprint – the resources it takes from outside its boundaries – remains proportionally Sasquatchian. While the Netherlands has stabilized its greenhouse gas emissions, it hasn’t yet reduced them. Of most concern, this year’s new government has signaled its desire to tackle environmental problems more slowly – making some previous deadlines open-ended, for instance – for fear of damaging its economy. Nevertheless, the NEPP’s achievements are striking, and served as inspiration for a broader, EU-wide, multi-year plan that began in the mid-1990s. The Dutch plan-to-have-a-plan took shape after a group of top scientists noted that, despite some of the world’s most progressive laws, environmental problems were worsening. Their report warned of an environmental breakdown if overall emissions of pollutants weren’t cut by at least 70% by the year 2010. That winter, Queen Beatrix used her traditional Christmas Eve radio address to voice her fears that “the earth is slowly dying”. In the dramatic change of approach catalyzed by these events, officials who had previously relied on 3-year timelines and complex webs of regulations set a new, 25-year horizon. They organized efforts into nine environmental “themes”, including climate change, toxic waste, and groundwater depletion, and they limited themselves to setting goals for improvement, which business leaders could meet any way they wanted – as long as they showed progress. As planner Moons puts it, the country taxes the “bads” and encourages the “goods”. Pesticides, gasoline, and garbage are all taxed. In fact, half of the Dutch tax base comes from green taxes. My personal favorite is a newly approved project to equip 10 million vehicles with a wireless tracking device, and charging drivers taxes for each kilometer traveled. Meanwhile, there are tax exemptions for investors in green funds. Cooperation certainly comes more naturally to small, homogeneous nations than big, diverse ones, and the Dutch are also somewhat freer than, say, the US, to support green energy, since fossil fuel production isn’t a big part of their economy. And the Dutch have a pressing incentive to go green, since their population density – second only to Bangladesh – makes the impact of excessive resource use a much more personal issue. But that doesn’t change the fact that, when compared to the Dutch, the US and most other countries are barely up to sticking a finger in the dike holding back environmental crises. “We are tragically ignoring planning”, says Johnson, who blames the US lack of progress primarily on the campaign finance system. Once a plan is in place, he says, it’s much harder for governments to grant favors as paybacks. In his 1995 book “Green Plans”, Johnson compares the bureaucratic NEPP to Rembrandt’s painting “The Night Watch”, which gives the impression of a three-dimensional hand reaching out towards the viewer. “It changed our ideas of art forever,” he says. “And I believe the NEPP will change the way people see themselves and their actions in relation to the environment.” We can only hope – and plan. Katherine Ellison