On 26 October 2016 the ‘Forest and Timber Action Plan’ was signed by the Dutch Environment Secretary and eighteen partners. One element of the plan is to plant an additional 100,000 hectares (ha) of woodland at various sites in the Netherlands.
The Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat) also sees possibilities for creating this new woodland at locations along motorways, however. This could be realized in the form of ‘habitat strips’ along motorways or ‘habitat woodland’ adjacent to the approximately 300 motorway rest areas in the Netherlands. Rijkswaterstaat therefore commissioned CE Delft to carry out an exploratory study to determine the welfare impacts (costs and benefits) of creating 100,000 ha new woodland according to three variants: ‘Forest and Timber Action Plan’ search areas, ‘habitat strips’ and ‘habitat woodland’.
Mini-SCBA
This study took the form of a ‘mini-SCBA’, in which the welfare impacts were identified in approximate terms according to the SCBA philosophy. These impacts were determined mainly in a qualitative sense and can now be used as a starting point for further elaboration and a more precise analysis in a quantitative SCBA.
This publication is only available in Dutch.