Yes to revitalisation of watercourses: (not) a question of loss of arable land (essay)
Because of the reduced availability of soil resources, projects for flood control, renaturation or revitalisation of watercourses have been opposed on the grounds of their excessive consumption of land in general, and arable land in particular. By the way of the Water Protection Act, which has been revised and came into force in 2011, the Confederation obliges the cantons to prepare strategic plans for revitalisation of watercourses. In the Canton of Aargau, it is planned to revitalise 152 km of watercourses between 2015 and 2035, which will lead to the loss of 32 ha of arable land. This is about 1.5 ha per year, or 6% of the annual loss of arable land, which is about 24 ha per year. Three quarters of this total is lost to settlements. If one only considers losses outside built-up areas, in 2014, more than half was lost to buildings connected to agricultural activity. We can demonstrate, using the Siegfried maps of 1880, that more than 1,000 ha of former marsh and wetland are now arable land. The planned revitalisation of watercourses in Aargau over the next 20 years is equivalent to about 3% of the marsh and wetlands converted over the last 135 years. Revitalisation is compulsory, and the planned obligation to compensate the loss of arable land disregards the true situation: the major consumers of soil resources are settlements and, outside built-up areas, agriculture.
