Quickscan EU-biodiversiteitsstrategie 2030 op zee: Financiële implicaties voor de overheid van de doelstellingen voor het mariene gebied uit de EU-biodiversiteitsstrategie

The European Biodiversity Strategy has four concrete objectives with regard to the sea. In this memorandum the additional costs of policy for the Dutch government are estimated for the first two objectives. The first objective, protecting at least 30% of the sea area, is already being achieved with current and planned policy in the Netherlands. Therefore, no additional costs for the government are expected for this. The second objective, strictly protecting one third of the protected areas, is still far from being achieved in the Netherlands, with a maximum of 0.55% of the marine area marked as strictly protected. The expected additional costs of achieving this second objective depend strongly on the assumptions about the definition of 'strictly protected', the location of these designated areas and their overlap with existing policies in certain areas. The total additional costs of achieving the protection objectives for marine areas from the European Biodiversity Strategy 2030 are therefore estimated at € 3,405,000 per year in a highest cost scenario. In a lowest cost scenario there will be no additional costs. In the middle scenario, with assumptions in between the two scenarios, costs are estimated at € 1,648,500 per year. This note is the result of a quick scan. This means that an estimate of costs has been made in a short lead time, using the data known at the time of the research (end of 2022). These costs are largely based on key figures (not differentiated per location) of existing nature policy. The results should therefore be interpreted as a rough estimate of the order of magnitude.