It has now been twenty years since Tom Bade gave his first lecture on the theme of nature and economics. This was at the invitation of Jan Habets of Plant Pblicity Holland in preparation for the Floriade. The lecture was a great success, because of the completely new angle. On March 2nd, Tom gave another lecture in West-Zaan on the same subject, with even largely the same photos. First of all, it can be noted that the theme is still current. But we also have to be honest: some of the lessons about more sustainable financing of nature and landscape have not yet been taken up.

In West-Zaan, for example, it was about the question of why part of the value of houses in and near nature reserves – which clearly derive their value from this location – is not used for the management of those same nature reserves? After all, this can easily be done by using part of the WOZ value for this purpose.

Does that mean that the twenty years and many hundreds of lectures have yielded no further results? Well that certainly isn’t.  Concepts such as the energy landscape (after the book of the same name from 2009) have generally landed, the landscape auction (2007) has brought about an enormous transition in thinking about financing nature and landscape and recently the Veluweroute (2005) was also very much alive. Although the IVN forgot to mention the correct source.

The experience of recent years is that everything has momentum and this is very difficult to predict and influence. Patience is a virtue and perseverance is the most important mental state.

This became apparent earlier on the same day when Tom Bade gave a short presentation at the ‘Let’s get weaving’ meeting of the Vechtstromen water board in Enschede (!) about the usefulness and necessity of applying the legal reallocation to achieve the Twente policy goals. This is also a theme that we as Triple E have been working on and advocating for years. But we now notice that momentum is building. Because the executive power of governments in green space is too often lacking. Or we see blunt administrative expropriations – such as recently in the Krimpenerwaard – which lead to both bad blood and sub-optimal solutions. So in this case too, we will continue to argue persistently for the better solution that benefits everyone: a legal reallocation.

There is no question that we will continue to propagate these consistent yet refreshing sounds for the next twenty years, of course enriched with many new ideas and adapted to current events. Because after twenty years we now know that there is a moment for everything: fortunately also for good ideas.