Taskforce Biodiversity

The Taskforce Biodiversity is looking for the best ways and methods to use biodiversity sustainably.

How can we work towards the preservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in the Netherlandsand other countries? Which specific tools are we using? And how do we involve Dutch society? These are the questions that the Taskforce Biodiversity and Natural Resources wants to answer. The answers will form the basis for a recommendation to be issued to the government in the course of 2011, and for targeted actions in the run-up.  

A complex issue, biodiversity touches on numerous policy areas. It is connected inseparably to society in the broadest sense. The preservation and durable use of biodiversity concern us all. Hans Alders, chairman of the Taskforce, is convinced that a link between economic interests and biodiversity is vital to the preservation of biodiversity. ‘Worldwide we will have to come to an agreement on how we will pay for the value of biodiversity. Not by means of individual project financing but on a more permanent basis. The preservation of biodiversity should be economically interesting’, Hans Alders says.

The Taskforce’s composition reflects this broad challenge. Its members hail from different groups in society: trade and industry, science, social organisations and the government.

The Taskforce was instituted on 23 January 2009 by order of several ministries, LNV, VROM and OS, further to the Biodiversity Policy Program (2007) and the appeal of Leaders of Nature (2006) initiated by IUCN NL.