Bending the curve? Scenario’s voor de toekomst van natuur in Nederland

It is proving difficult to stop global biodiversity loss. In the Netherlands too, current nature conservation practice is not yet sufficient to achieve the goals. How can we bend the curve? Should we intensify the existing approach in nature policy aimed at protecting nature in reserves? Or is a transformative change as advocated by IPBES necessary? With the recent scenarios of both the Nature Outlook and the Spatial Outlook, we explore various options for nature in 2050. The analyses show that a significant expansion of the area of protected nature reserves can yield a significant gain in achieving the targets of the Birds and Habitats Directives (BHD). Our analyses also show that an important first step can be taken by reducing the environmental pressure on nature reserves by establishing buffer zones with extensive land use around the reserves. Our analyses further show that ecosystem services hardly benefit from measures specifically aimed at BHD objectives, while ecosystem services and BHD targets do benefit from a transition to nature-inclusive land use.