Fries Veenweidegebied

The Frisian peat meadow area, covering over 90,000 hectares, is the largest contiguous peat landscape in the Netherlands. It is an area whose origins trace back to the post-glacial period, when rising sea levels and sediment deposition formed vast peat bogs and fens. Archaeological evidence reveals that Frisian communities began reclaiming these waterlogged areas, transforming them into habitable land through drainage and the construction of terps: artificial dwelling mounds that elevated settlements above floodwaters. The Great Reclamation (Grote Ontginning), spanning roughly the 10th to 13th centuries, radically transformed the Veenweidegebied through a systematic, large-scale drainage of peat bogs. More intense water management measures were established to reclaim the land from the water. Peasant communities, settlers, and landless farmers were organized to carry out the physical work of digging canals and constructing dikes. This era established the characteristic open landscape of ditches, pastures, and dispersed farmsteads that still shapes the region today. Following this large-scale reclaiming of land from the water, turf-rich wetlands were transformed into arable land. Around the 1500s turf cutting for fuel became widespread, as the dried peat provided an essential energy source for heating as well as fueling urban development and industry. Turf cutting, intensive agriculture, and dairy farming have caused the area to dry out rapidly and subside. Frisian peat meadows are currently being restored to a higher groundwater level in order to counter climate change-induced decline, biodiversity loss, and conserve their CO2 storing capacity. This, however, has a negative impact on current forms of agriculture and housing. To tackle these problems and enable just transitions, so that farmers and citizens, plants, animals, soil and water equally benefit from co-existing, the national Veenweiden-programme has been founded. Initiatives such as Commonland, an international not-for-profit organisation, try to overcome polarization by restoring and revitalizing degraded landscapes through regenerative practices. The organization collaborates with farmers, entrepreneurs, NGOs, and researchers to create sustainable and resilient ecosystems, also in the Netherlands, such as in the Veenweide region, using community supported regenerative agriculture for soil health and biodiversity.