She was the first senator ever to turn down the traditional flower bouquet at her swearing-in ceremony. Instead, she was presented with an ecological houseplant – one grown without pesticides. This plant is now at her home on her desk, where it will continue to grow for years to come.
Of course, head of the PVV party Geert Wilders did not miss out on this opportunity to portray Ingrid Visseren-Hamakers as “pathetic” in De Telegraaf. She was also jeered at on Twitter. But looking back, she is grateful for the commotion that followed her action. “It led to me being invited by the flower industry to engage in a conversation about how flowers are grown,” she says. “That is exactly what I want: to shake things up.”
Visseren-Hamakers joined the Senate as a representative for Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals) in June. She combines this position with her job as Professor of Environmental Governance and Politics at Radboud University. She co-authored the 2019 report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). In this report, scientists warn of the extinction of one million plant and animal species worldwide.
In both the political and academic arena, she wants to contribute to a fundamental change in society that will lead to a sustainable economic system. And, she says on our walk through the Heumensoord woods, contribute to creating a world where nature, humans, and animals are equal. For as long as she can remember, she has had a strong interest in animal welfare.
Who was your first pet?
“Nijntje. We now know that it's not a good idea to keep rabbits in a hutch by themselves, but that knowledge wasn't available then. Nijntje 1 was followed by Nijntje 2, 3, and 4. My father worked for the air force, so we lived in many different places. I remember when we were moving to Munich. With my parents and my sister, the canary, the rabbit, and the dog, all in a small Opel Kadett. That is a lovely memory. Now I only have one dog, Greta. She was not named after Greta Thunberg, although everyone thinks so. But our Greta came first. “We got her from the shelter when we were living in the US; she’s a Dutch Shepherd Dog.”
You came back to the Netherlands in 2019 to become a professor in Nijmegen?
“Yes. I saw the vacancy and thought it was a great job. At the time, I was an associate professor, living in the US with my husband. This experience of living abroad was kind of on my bucket list. I had lived in Alabama with my parents as a teenager and I wanted to spend another period in the US as an adult. After more than four years, we thought it was time to return to the Netherlands.”
You studied Business Administration at Erasmus University, so how did you end up working in environmental and social sciences?
“When I was a student in the 1990s, the concept of the environment was not very well established yet. Business Administration was a broad study programme that could take you in any direction. I just knew I wanted to do something good later on, although I didn't know what exactly. I only found out later that there was such a thing as environmental and social sciences, and then I started taking those courses right away. I completed my PhD in Utrecht. The field has not let me go since.”
Takkenwijf
She worked for a few years as a policy officer for the province of South Holland, but she felt more at home at Greenpeace, her next employer. There, she was the campaign manager for ‘forests’, which earned her the nickname Takkenwijf (literally Branch Bitch, the Dutch equivalent of ‘shrew’). She still cherishes that nickname, she says with a laugh as we walk under the trees. It says something about her activist disposition as well as her respect for nature. At Greenpeace, she focused on illegal logging and the role of the Netherlands in the international timber trade. “We desperately need the agenda-setting role of Greenpeace or Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) to push forward the slow debate on a sustainable economy,” she says.
How do you think we can achieve such a sustainable economic system?
“First of all, we need to stop thinking in terms of sectors, which is something we have done for far too long. We need to see society as a whole. The choices we make in our economic policies affect sustainability issues, and vice versa. For example, if we continue to import soy on a large scale to feed our cattle... I avoid using the word ‘veestapel’ (Dutch term for livestock, literally meaning ‘cattle pile’), because I really think that is a terribly disrespectful term... to feed the large numbers of animals we keep in the livestock industry, only to export them again as animal products, that is an unsustainable economic system. Because we are literally and figuratively drowning in shit in the Netherlands.
“We need to adjust our economic system so that it serves our well-being again, rather than the other way around. How is it that we consider economic growth to be more important than the health of the Dutch people? Look at Tata Steel, a company that makes the local residents ill. Or take PFAS, which we are all imbibing too much of through our drinking water and our food. Isn't that crazy?
“Secondly, we need to redefine what values our society is based on. Instead of values like individualism or consumerism – both stemming from short-term thinking – we need to switch to loving values.”
What values are these?
“Our relationship with nature, our relationship with animals, our relationship with each other. Ecocentric, compassionate, and fair sustainable development. These are long-term values on the basis of which we can make our economic policy choices. For decades, we have focused on growth, growth, and more growth. Now the time has come to recognise that things have to change. That we stop seeing the gross national product as the only indicator of how the Netherlands is doing, but start instead to take a broader perspective on prosperity.”
How do we get there? Few people would object to loving values, unless it means they have to sacrifice something.
“It's really simple. By ensuring that an ecologically grown carrot is cheaper than a conventionally grown carrot. Then people will switch naturally. But that means you can't start with the citizens. Where we have gone really wrong in the past 50 years is that we have placed far too much responsibility on individual consumers. The industry can then keep saying ‘yes, but the consumer doesn't want to pay more for their groceries’ and continue with an outdated production model. But the change required is precisely on the industry's side. Our current economic system stands in the way of sustainability. As politicians, we need to support the sustainable market. We need to make choices. And simply ban some things in the old-fashioned way, like the use of pesticides. We must stop subsidising large-scale agriculture and livestock farming, as well as fossil industries. There are plenty of people who do want to do sustainable business, but they are currently getting bogged down by laws and regulations. These are political choices which we can use to initiate change.”
A loving society
This brings us back to the Senate. As a researcher, Visseren-Hamakers is abreast of the latest scientific findings in her field; as a politician, her mission is to use that knowledge to convince others as well. And she is hopeful, now that the Dutch government has fallen, which she sees as an opportunity. Twelve years of Rutte, she says, have resulted in a lot of problems being left unaddressed. Think of the victims of the earthquakes in Groningen, the victims of the childcare benefits scandal, the farmers who don't know where they stand, everyone that is involved in the nitrogen file. Discontent in society grew and people became angry. And rightly so, according to the politician. That anger led citizens, out of protest, to vote en masse for a party like BBB. Several current politicians have since announced their intention to leave The Hague. This too is a positive development, Visseren-Hamakers believes, because some of them are the elected representatives that citizens were angry at. A new generation is stepping up now, and it is up to this new generation to do things differently, to actually address these problems. “Hopefully, this will also shift the dynamics of the protest vote. In our campaign, we as Partij voor de Dieren hope to at least show that as a citizen you really do have a choice. Now is the time to choose for a loving society.”
Again: few people would argue with that. Love appeals to everyone.
“Call me naive, but I really do believe in it. Even in a political debate, I try to appeal to people's empathy. Suppose a child was to fall off his scooter in front of us here on the forest path. I cannot imagine that there are people who would not run to help him up. I believe in the basic goodness of people, but we have created a system in which there is no more room for this empathy. Things really can be different. In my maiden speech to the Senate, I deliberately introduced the term ‘loving society’, simply because that is what I was talking about. That is the essence.
“It is important, though, to make people aware of how things are being done now and how they could be done differently. People don't want to feel that things are being taken away from them, like their barbecue sausage... But if we show them that the animal that sausage is made from is an individual, and we show them the animal suffering required to make that sausage, then no one will want it anymore, right? This is a consequence of the change in values you go through as a person. You don't want to eat meat anymore. We need to tell people how our food is made. Who in the Netherlands knows that a cow has to give birth to a calf every year to produce milk? Who knows what happens to those calves?”
Living laboratory
In October, Visseren-Hamakers and her colleagues organised a large-scale conference in Nijmegen: the 2023 Radboud Conference on Earth System Governance. They will welcome five hundred researchers from around the world. The theme of the conference is Bridging sciences and societies for sustainability transformations. The aim is to jointly discuss the necessary fundamental change in society and share the latest scientific findings around this.
For a week, the university catering services will serve only vegan food to conference participants, the professor says. This was quite a deliberate choice, with which the organisers want to show that it can be done. Nijmegen already portrays itself as a sustainable university, and that is something Visseren-Hamakers is proud of, but she wants to take it a step further. Academics must set an example, she believes. They have access to the latest knowledge, and how great would it be if we could also use the university campus more often as a kind of living laboratory? For example, she would like to see not only humans but also animals represented in the University participational bodies. There should be a party representing the fox, because it too lives on campus. “A university is the perfect place to experiment with innovative democratic processes. What happens when we give animals and plants a place in our organisation? How will this affect our choices? Let's try it out and see what happens. It doesn't have to go well straight away, on the contrary.”
She believes that the time is ripe for the fundamental transformation of society that Partij voor de Dieren stands for. Every self-respecting restaurant's menu now features vegan dishes, you can say the word degrowth on a podium without being booed, and the activism of Extinction Rebellion and Scientist Rebellion has taken serious forms.
Couldn't you achieve more by joining GroenLinks? That party has many more seats, especially now that is has merged with PvdA (Dutch Labour Party).
“I was an active member of GroenLinks, but in those days Partij voor de Dieren did not exist yet. The answer is no. Partij voor de Dieren is the only party that envisions a loving society as I see it, and in which the way we treat animals is essential. A society in which the term ‘slaughter rate’, which appeared just recently in a consultation with the minister on slaughterhouses, is commonplace has really lost its way as far as I’m concerned. I can't do politics without standing up for animals.” As far as I am concerned, therefore, the term Symbiocene does not quite cover the era I advocate. It is a response to the Anthropocene, in which humans were leading. But the Symbiocene is still too much reasoning from a human point of view: how can we coexist peacefully with nature? You can also reason from the perspective of nature or animals. What do they actually want? What's more, I don't think that the interests of individual animals are adequately represented in the description of the Symbiocene. As far as I am concerned, the term ‘loving society’ covers everything.”
Partij voor de Dieren is also a climate party. But can the climate still be saved? In June, scientists concluded that global warming is proceeding at an unprecedented rate and that we are already close to the critical 1.5-degree warming limit.
“We can still prevent the worst of climate change, but time is running out. We have wasted so much time in inertia. So let's get going!”
You have a part to play
Our society is facing major challenges. Radboud University wants to contribute to a healthy, free world with equal chances for everyone. With 'Je bent nodig' (You have a part to play), Radboud University aims to reach people who want to contribute to that goal.
Would you like to actively contribute or read more about sustainability in our education and research? Visit www.jebentnodig.nl for more information.