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The dynamics of the resource-production-consumption chains as analysed in the three previous chapters were interrelated with the dynamics of societal institutions. The strategies of professional groups and political parties eventuated in a corporatist state structure, with a societal midfield solidly anchored in a political system and in a state bureaucracy at local, provincial and national levels. New notions about extreme poverty and well-being acquired a legal framework around 1900, within which governments, entrepreneurs, citizens and workers could continue to work on the solution of different issues. The legal framework was also the origin of the welfare state as it would develop in the course of the twentieth century. The modernising economy was also characterized by the emergence of new professional groups and a modern knowledge infrastructure.

This is the context in which we must place the well-being monitor for 1910. Well-being and sustainability around 1910 are viewed from three perspectives. Judged by the societal agenda of 1850 much progress had been made, especially in regard to extreme poverty. But the societal agenda of 1910 shows that opinions about poverty have shifted and that in this period the qualities of the food supply, of public health facilities, of public housing and of work are the core issues. The present-day perspective on well-being differs little from that of 1910. But in regard to the issue of sustainability there are big differences.

After tackling extreme poverty in the nineteenth century (see Chaps. , , , and ) the Netherlands faced new societal challenges around 1910: the food supply, public health care, public housing and labour issues. Water management also continued to be an important issue in well-being.

Pillarisation, universal suffrage and the emergence of political parties ensured a long period of political stability with a dominant role for the confessional parties.

Based on the monitors of 1910 and 1970, this chapter sketches the growth of material welfare, the improvement in personal characteristics and the investments in social, economic, and human capital. It also shows the emergent problems of natural capital, both within the Netherlands and in foreign countries. It also provides an overview of shifts in the three main categories of resources (organic, mineral, and fossil) and the associated supply chains. In this way the chapter forms the introduction to a more detailed analysis of trade-offs in the chains of agriculture and foods (Chap. ), construction (Chap. ) and energy (Chap. ).

A robust supply of healthy food was the challenge in the domain of agriculture and foods in the twentieth century. Despite the agrarian successes of the nineteenth century (see Chap. ), two world wars and the Great Depression had rendered food supply a persistent core element of government policy. Investments in agriculture like reclamations and land re-allocation transformed the landscape. Cooperation among the government, knowledge institutes and industry promoted mechanisation of agriculture. The use of artificial fertilisers and crop protection substances became widespread. Mixed farms transformed into specialized enterprises. The supply chains of agricultural products became longer and more complex.

In the food processing industry too innovations led to long international supply chains and new processing methods. New relationships between producers and consumers were the result. Consumer had to be convinced of the quality of food products by means of government quality control and informational campaigns.

The new production chains were a major contributor to the degradation of the natural landscape and the reduction of biodiversity, both domestically and internationally. This culminated in growing social unrest and by 1970 in a more critical view of developments in agriculture and the food processing industry. This was the prelude to measures in the area of sustainable agriculture and food production (see Chap. ).

Catastrophes and new societal ambitions energized the huge construction effort undertaken between 1910 and 1970. The floods of 1917 and 1953 led to enormous investments in coastal defences. The government also undertook major investments in the construction of roadways and other infrastructural works. New building codes, damage incurred during the Second World War and population growth incited new housing construction on a colossal scale. Demand for building materials grew apace.

The need for wood and mineral subsoil resources transformed nature and landscapes in the Netherlands and at foreign sites. Dutch forestry practices were rationalised. Imports from the Baltic regions by and large met the Dutch demand for wood. But the creation of monocultures and production forests in these regions reduced local biodiversity. Gravel and marl were mined above all in the province of Limburg. That led to tensions with local stakeholders. Gravel extraction transformed the floodplains of the Meuse into a lake landscape. It led directly to the Excavation Law, the first environmental law in the area of land-use. After 1970, regulations concerning land-use and new landscape values would regularly inspire conflicts in the national supply of building materials (see Chap. ).

Two energy transitions characterised the period 1910–1970: the rise and fall of a national mining industry and the shift from coal to oil and natural gas. Domestic coal made the Netherlands less dependent on foreign supplies. World wars and economic crises long inspired a lifestyle based on low energy consumption.

An energy-intensive lifestyle emerged after the 1960s with the import of cheap oil and the discovery of natural gas in Groningen. The discovery also led to the attraction of energy-intensive industries, to the massive use of natural gas in greenhouse farming and to a national gas grid for households.

Oil and gas also laid the basis for the production, processing and use of plastics. These became the symbol of modernity and of the rise of the consumer society. As packaging material and raw material for cheap consumer goods they also initiated the waste society and formed the iconic example of the linear economy. The products of this linear economy ended up on the rapidly growing waste heaps.

Increasing energy consumption in industry and households caused local air pollution. The first investigations of and policy measures in the area of air pollution were initiated from the viewpoint of public health. Pollution mobilised local resistance against the excesses of modernisation. Local environmental groups were the cradle of a broad societal concern about the environment, ecology and climate change in the following decades (see Chaps. , , , and ).

Around 1970, welfare and economic growth became increasingly suspect. This chapter analyses and explains how this came about. It provides an inventory of the driving forces and institutional frameworks that shaped the development of well-being. In the period 1910–1970 the government energetically pursued the building of the welfare state. It was supported in this endeavour by a radically pillarised societal midfield. The economy was also under the tutelage of a government. The six large Dutch multinationals generally supported the government’s ambitions regarding the development of well-being. Characteristic for this period was the development of new patterns of consumption and a linear economy. Thanks to the mutual alignment among government, midfield and private enterprise it seemed possible to make well-being.

The monitor is used to evaluate the state of well-being around 1970 from three perspectives. Viewed from the perspective of 1910, the monitor shows how the original agenda was realised. But when viewed through the lens of the new societal visions of 1970, an entirely different image emerges. The increase in welfare had been achieved at the cost of serious environmental pollution and the loss of nature in both the Netherlands and elsewhere. The mounting criticism of the dark side of well-being introduced a period in which ecology, natural resources, energy and climate change received emphatic attention (see Chaps. , , , , and ). From the perspective of 2010 the situation had indeed become serious. In retrospect it appeared that around 1960 welfare, well-being and sustainability were most in balance.

Around 1970 anti-authoritarian groups rose up against industrialisation and the development of welfare. They were the vanguard of a broader societal sentiment. At the end of the 1980s environmental problems were at the core of social and political debate Despite increasing worries the pattern of consumption barely changed. Contrasting the monitor for 1970 with that of 2010, this chapter sketches the growth of material welfare and the development of quality of life. Smoking, overweight and unemployment became the new societal challenges. The domestic consumption of energy continued to grow. In this period pressure on natural capital, both domestic and foreign, increased dramatically. The Netherlands continued to be dependent on foreign lands for important material flows – in some cases to an extreme extent. 80% of Dutch grain, for example, was still imported. These developments led to shifts in the sustainable development of the Netherlands to foreign countries. The following chapters analyse the societal dynamics in the in the chains of agriculture and foods (Chap. ), construction and building materials (Chap. ) and energy and plastics (Chap. )

In the period 1970–2010, environment, landscape and healthy nutrition were core issues in the supply chain of agriculture and foods. Concern for the environment put pressure on agriculture. Since the 1950s, agriculture had oriented itself to ever higher levels of production. This had seduced farmers into extreme specialisations with consequences for the environment, both domestically and elsewhere. In order to reveal these dynamics, this chapter follows developments in cattle husbandry. In the early 1980s, European measures to restrain overproduction and increasing concern about acidification and over-fertilisation destabilised the established agricultural world.

In the wake of changing ecological insights, new issues emerged in regard to the landscape. Nature management and agricultural interests had to be harmonised. Though the Netherlands laid the basis for the European Natura 2000 directive, it encountered great difficulties in implementing them domestically. Food consumption also presented new challenges; for example the problem of overweight. The chapter analyses how government, private firms and consumers responded to this issue. Consumers appear to have great difficulty grasping the complex issues of sustainable and healthy nutritional patterns.

This chapter describes the extraction of mineral subsoil resources in a changing context of increasing internationalisation and domestic concern for nature and the environment. The cases are gravel and marl in the province of Limburg and the European inventory of strategic mineral resources. The period around 1970 formed the high point of Dutch building activities. The extraction and production of building materials had an increasing impact on the landscape (see Chap. ). Bringing laws against excavations and spatial planning to bear, the government increased its control over the extraction activities. The new policy integrated the excavations in spatial planning and landscape goals.

The politicisation of environmental issues led to the harmonisation of the extraction of mineral resources with the local societal requirements for tourism, nature development, and flood control. Intensification of European cooperation positioned domestic extraction within a European economic framework. Higher prices for gravel and other building materials made recycling, among other things, attractive. The mining of gravel shifted in part to surrounding countries where it resulted in local damage to the landscape.

The outsourcing of gravel mining was similar to the overall European offshoring of the mining of mineral subsoil resources. From 2008 the European Commission commenced investigations into strategic mineral resources. The Netherlands followed in its footsteps. Initially, geological, economic and geo-political aspects were the main concerns. In a later phase, environmental issues and working conditions played a role. Developments in the area of well-being and sustainability required not only measures close to home, but also a concern for these issues outside of the Netherlands.

This chapter, exploring fossil subsoil resources, focuses on two domains: energy and plastics. The energy section analyses the difficult transition to renewable energy sources. The focus here is on electricity because promising renewable energy sources like biomass, windmills and solar panels contribute above all to the supply of electricity. There is, moreover, a close relationship among oil, natural gas and electricity.

Dutch electricity supply was long trapped in tensions among the policy of the provincial electricity suppliers, the energy policy of the national government (in particular the Ministry of Economic Affairs) and the environmental movement, with as main issues decentralised electricity generation, the inclusion of nuclear power, the role of domestic natural gas and energy-saving. Privatisation and liberalisation are setting the electricity sector completely on its head. There is now more room for other forms of electricity generation, in particular decentralised generation and heat-power coupling. Opportunities for renewable energy sources have increased, among other things thanks to international agreements (‘Paris’) in connection with climate change.

The plastics sector too has undergone dramatic changes in this period. The of bulk plastics and artificial fibres still takes place in the Netherlands, but hardly at all by firms. The plastics industry, that consists above all of small and medium-sized firms (up to 50 employees) has developed into the Netherlands’ most innovative sector. The attitude toward plastics has become ambivalent. They have shaped a life of comfort, ease, luxury, sport, and games. At the same time they are a source of litter, waste, ‘plastic soup’ and micro plastics.