Common Grounds

As pollution proliferates, the climate unsettles and a sixth mass extinction looms, water-clearing, carbon-capturing and biodiversity-harboring wetlands safeguard multispecies liveability. Global anthropogenic wetland loss was recently estimated at 21 percent over the last three centuries, a number that pales in comparison to the 70 to 80 percent loss in the highly (agro-)industrialised and previously wetland-rich Netherlands. In recent years, though, some wetlands have returned, usually designated as water storage areas. Common Grounds dwells within one such area, the Onlanden, near the city of Groningen. The Onlanden are a lively alternative to the kinds of monotonous ecologies agro-industrial ‘progress’ has taught us to pursue, even as they remain vulnerable to the ruinous rhythms that surround and pierce them.