The Netherlands is consuming the earth’s natural resources so fast it is as if it has two worlds at its disposal, says the World Wide Fund for Nature in the first Dutch edition of its Living Planet Report.

It is the first time the organisation has analysed the Dutch ecological footprint – the country’s demand on the earth’s ecosystems.
The bulk of the country’s ecological footprint is made up of energy use. Then follows the demand for raw materials which impact on biodiversity elsewhere. These include soya, timber, coffee and fish.
For example, the Netherlands is the second biggest importer of soya in the world, after China, says WWF. Some two-thirds of the soya imports come from Brazil where massive chunks of tropical rain forest are being cut down for agriculture.

Big meat consumers
Most of this soya is used to produce animal feed for livestock farming – a major industry in Holland. And the Dutch are also the seventh biggest consumers of meat in the world, at 86 kg per person per year, the report says.
‘The Netherlands is using up its green credits but is forgetting to work out a deal on paying it back,’ said the WWF director in the Netherlands Johan van de Gronden.
The government needs to do more than pay lip service to the environment if it wants to be a world leader on the environment, the organisation says.