2025 - 2026
Future perspective Volkerak-Zoommeer
2025 - 2026
Future perspective Volkerak-Zoommeer
As a major freshwater lake, the Volkerak-Zoommeer (VZM) plays an essential role within the Dutch delta system. It is of great importance for the freshwater supply of the islands of Zeeland and Zuid-Holland and for water storage, while also providing an important freshwater counterpart to the delta’s saline and brackish ecosystems. It serves as a wintering ground for tens of thousands of waterbirds and therefore fulfils an important ecological role on a continental scale. At the same time, the VZM is a major economic artery: as the only tidal-free shipping route between the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp, it accommodates approximately 150,000 vessel movements each year.
Location
Volkerak-Zoommeer
Client
Provincie Zeeland, Zuidwestelijke Delta
Collaboration
Team: Ro&Ad architecten, Jim van Belzen (NIOZ), Solidarity University,
Samenwerkingspartners: Provincie Noord-Brabant, Rijkswaterstaat, Waterschap Scheldestromen, Waterschap Brabantse Delta, Waterschap Hollandse Delta, Gemeente Bergen op Zoom
Surface Area
100 km2
Yet this significance is matched by major challenges. The central role the area could fulfil within the delta is still barely perceptible in spatial terms: rather than functioning as the delta’s lifeline, the Volkerak-Zoommeer currently feels more like the back edge of the provinces of Noord-Brabant and Zeeland. High nutrient loads combined with limited water circulation cause extensive cyanobacterial blooms and place considerable pressure on water quality. At the same time, there is very little exchange between the freshwater and saline water systems. The absence of natural fresh–salt transitions and estuarine processes make the ecosystem vulnerable, while dams and other hard barriers form an almost impenetrable boundary for migratory species, including European eel.
These extensive and interconnected challenges call for collaboration. Through a collaborative process involving municipalities, water authorities, provinces and many other stakeholders, a long-term perspective for 2050 has been developed. Four jointly defined ambitions form their guiding principles:
Clean
A clean Volkerak-Zoommeer is the foundation of a vital freshwater landscape. By structurally improving water quality and reducing cyanobacterial blooms, conditions are created for richer aquatic ecosystems as well as clean, attractive water for people and nature.
Climate-resilient
The area becomes more resilient to the uncertainties of a changing climate. Rather than discharging water as quickly as possible, water is retained, buffered and used more intelligently. Together with an increasingly self-sufficient hinterland, the lake becomes part of a robust freshwater system that is better equipped to withstand drought, salinisation and climate change.
Natural
Hard boundaries give way to natural shorelines, ecological connections and gradual transitions. Restoring connections with rivers, the hinterland and surrounding delta waters strengthens habitats and fresh–salt gradients, making the delta more ecologically resilient. Nature is given room to thrive, while remaining in balance with recreational use.
Spatial quality
The Volkerak-Zoommeer evolves from a body of water that often feels remote into a distinctive and accessible waterscape. New routes, green structures and places to stay, meet and swim bring people and water closer together. In this way, the lake develops into an attractive landscape in which to live, work and spend leisure time, with a strong identity of its own.
The long-term perspective not only presents a vision for the future but also provides stakeholders with practical tools to work towards it step by step. A set of building blocks illustrates how the four ambitions can be advanced, which measures can be applied and where opportunities exist to combine different challenges and objectives.
Together, these building blocks cover the full spectrum of potential interventions: from optimising subsurface freshwater availability to make areas more self-sufficient and tackling nutrients runoff in the marine clay areas to improve water quality, to introducing distinctive moments along the dikes that strengthen the relationship between land and water and make the region’s identity more tangible.
Rather than prescribing a fixed end-state, this future perspective therefore provides a shared toolbox that enables public authorities, land and water managers, and regional partners to work purposefully towards the area’s future.
Together, these elements form the future perspective for the Volkerak-Zoommeer, deliberately looking beyond the lake’s immediate shores. The functioning of the system begins upstream, in the streams, creeks, polders and rural landscapes of West Brabant and Flanders, and extends through the lake to the surrounding delta waters.
Clean water starts at the source.
The greatest effort is therefore concentrated in West Brabant, where a significant share of the nutrients entering the VZM through the Mark–Dintel–Vliet system. Here, source-based measures and water purification are combined with a more robust landscape capable of retaining water for longer. Creeks and streams form vital capillaries connecting the VZM with the Brabant polders and the higher sandy soils. By creating space for more natural water-level management, water storage, natural banks and water-purifying landscapes, water quality, water quantity and ecology can be strengthened in an integrated way.
Local water storage becomes the foundation of a climate-resilient freshwater system.
Soil and water become guiding principles for the spatial organisation and use of the hinterland. Wherever possible, precipitation is stored both above and below ground, increasing local self-sufficiency. This is particularly urgent on the Zeeland islands, Goeree-Overflakkee and in the PAN polders. These areas remain entirely dependent on freshwater from the VZM and are therefore vulnerable to increasing drought and salinisation. By retaining more water locally and using freshwater more intelligently and efficiently, a robust system can emerge in which local buffers complement the VZM as a large-scale freshwater reserve.
Along the lake’s edges, water, nature and landscape come together.
Here, incoming water is purified wherever possible before reaching the lake, while space is created for local freshwater buffers. At the same time, this zone provides the key opportunity to reconnect the VZM with its surroundings. Natural dikes, creeks, shorelines and green structures develop into a coherent landscape framework that also accommodates recreation. A continuous walking and cycling route around the lake forms its backbone, with local and regional connections linking villages, towns, forts and historic landscapes to the water. Where land reclamation has severed the historic relationships between villages and the VZM, new connections are established. In this way, the lake’s edge is transformed from a hard boundary into an attractive and accessible transitional landscape.
The areas outside the dikes form the quiet, natural heart of the system.
Foreshore zones, islands and shallow waters provide unique freshwater habitats within the delta and are strengthened and expanded wherever possible. Hard shorelines are softened to create more room for natural processes. Recreation is carefully zoned: more intensively where the landscape can accommodate it, and quieter where ecological values require protection. This allows ecological quality and the experience of the VZM landscape to be strengthened side by side.
At the same time, the Volkerak-Zoommeer is reconnected with the delta’s wider ecological network. The ‘Deltawerken’ replaced many natural connections and gradual fresh–salt transitions with hard boundaries. At strategic locations, these relationships are restored. Other barriers are addressed through fish passages, natural connections or adaptations to existing hydraulic structures.
In this way, water quality, freshwater availability, nature and spatial quality are brought together within a single spatial strategy, transforming the Volkerak-Zoommeer from a backside e into a clean, resilient and accessible freshwater landscape: a lifeline for the Dutch delta.
