The popular saying holds that ‘God created the world, but not Holland, it was created by the Dutch.’ From 1990 the Dutch even create their own wilderness, designed by engineers and this is called ‘nature development’.
A word that is not easily explained to foreigners, for how can something ‘natural’ be developed?
An artificially natural river
The government bought 1000km2 agricultural lands to this end for 6-10 billion euro’s. Of these former farmlands, to date 780km2 was re-designed as official “New Nature’
…removing nature to create nature
To this end, heavy machinery is employed that dig artificially natural rivers, and remove topsoil, removing nature to let nature take it’s course as is designed. The Arcadia of Arcadis, the engineersfirm mostly involved in the business of Nature Development.
…building nature
This is Anthropo-scenery at it’s finest, the celebration of unnatural naturalness in the age of Homo deus, where ‘God’s work’ is done the Dutch way.
…removing topsoil, a clean sheet?un