Co-producing ‘nature’: autonomous grazing in the Dutch Room for the River programme

Conservation biology has traditionally sought to justify public investment made specifically for biodiversity. I explore an alternative proposition: whether biodiversity can be co-produced through investments that society already undertakes for other public purposes. Using the Dutch Room for the River programme as a case study, I examine how autonomous grazing contributes to the long-term management and functional improvement of restored river wetlands created primarily to improve flood safety. Rather than evaluating autonomous grazing as a restoration philosophy, I analyse it as a management technology operating within contractual hydraulic boundary conditions defined by the national river management authority. This study demonstrates that self-organising groups of large herbivores can maintain floodplain vegetation within prescribed hydraulic limits whilst contributing to wetland functions and reducing the need for repeated mechanical intervention. Nationally standardised Dutch cost estimates indicate that vegetation management based predominantly on autonomous grazing costs approximately one quarter as much as management relying largely on repeated mowing and biomass removal. Biodiversity therefore emerges not as the primary objective of public investment, but as a valuable co-produced public good arising from the management of an engineered landscape. This study also illustrates the practical application of the Ecosystem Approach adopted under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Indeed, a clearly defined societal choice (flood protection) can be achieved through management that allows self-organising ecological processes to contribute simultaneously to economic efficiency, wetland functioning and biodiversity. It demonstrates that biodiversity need not always justify public investment, but can instead emerge as a valuable co-produced public good.