Safeguard the minimum standards of conservation, better representation, higher ambition
The Embassy of the North Sea and Doggerland Foundation advocate a better position for the North Sea in the legal, public and political domain. On 13 February 2025, we published the manifest Making Room for the Dogger Bank. With a broad international coalition of knowledge institutions, nature organisations, designers, artists and civil society, we will work on an extensive programme in the coming years consisting of a plan for rewilding, reef restoration, legal procedures and a ‘School of Dogger Bank’.
read our manifest Making Room for the Dogger Bank here
The Dogger Bank is a protected nature reserve – about a day’s sailing from the Dutch coast – with a high diversity of habitats and animal species. It is an important nursery for sharks, rays, herring and cod and a rich feeding ground for whales and seabirds. The Dogger Bank is also a nursery for stories about the past, present and future of our relationship with the sea.
Emile Reuchlin, ecologist and director of Doggerland: ‘The Dogger Bank is part of a network of protected marine areas in the North Sea and symbolises our relationship with the sea. We do not take good care of it, in fact: we are exhausting it. The North Sea has been deteriorating for generations, while we are heavily dependent of it.’
Thijs Middeldorp, director of the Embassy of the North Sea: ‘The sea is a living body and deserves a seat at the negotiating table as a political figure. But to actually view the sea in this way? Unfortunately, we’re not there yet. We want to change that, with improved representation of the area in the legal, public and political domain aimed at building a better relationship with the living system that is the North Sea.’
School of Dogger Bank
To protect the ecosystem from irreversible collapse, the Embassy of the North Sea Embassy and Doggerland Foundation advocate real protection of the North Sea, a much higher ambition for rewilding and democratisation of the North Sea politics.
Middeldorp: ‘Under the name School of Dogger Bank we are organising a research and imagination programme. In addition to the legal procedures and the rewilding and reef restoration program, we offer a free space and learning community that will work on various cases. In the coming years, the School will collaborate with various social, cultural and academic institutions to give the democratic debate about the North Sea and Dogger Bank an impulse.’
Reuchlin: “If we succeed in giving one of the world’s busiest seas the time, tranquility, and space it needs to recover—and actively support its restoration where necessary—the Dogger Bank can once again become a strong, beating heart of the North Sea and a global source of inspiration for boundless collaboration and large-scale ecosystem restoration.”
