Working together on a future-proof IJsselmonde

The rural area of the island of IJsselmonde is invaluable. It offers peace, space and recreation, contributes to a healthy living environment and enhances nature and biodiversity. During the coronavirus pandemic, the rural area proved to be essential for the residents of IJsselmonde and beyond as a place to get out and about. That sounds like something worth keeping, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the open landscape has declined significantly in recent decades, leaving less and less space to achieve future-proof goals.
Together with the area partners of the IJsselmonde landscape table (six municipalities, the Water Board, the Province, Staatsbosbeheer, Zuid-Hollands Landschap, Buijtenland van Rhoon), we sat down together just before the summer in a working session to thoroughly understand the bottlenecks of water, nature and recreation in IJsselmonde.

Led by Michael Moerman and Ilse Trim of Zuid-Hollands Landschap, we worked with the parties involved on the question: how can we strengthen water, nature and recreation connections and make the water system more robust?

Here, we brought together the knowledge and priorities of the various regional partners. With one goal: to identify opportunities and bottlenecks so that water, nature and recreation can reinforce each other.

What have we achieved?

• Insight into the priorities and policies of the various organisations.
• Concrete opportunities identified for nature, recreation and water connections.
• Bottlenecks in the area that we really need to solve.
  
  How do we move forward?

Thank you to all participants for your energy and commitment! By working together and pooling our knowledge, we are taking major steps towards an area where water, nature and recreation go hand in hand.

With the results of this session, Zuid-Hollands Landschap worked hard over the summer to produce results and show us some maps with opportunities and bottlenecks. These will certainly help us!

September 2025

By: Joost Swiers