Geopark Schelde Delta?
The Flemish-Dutch Scheldt delta is a unique transnational estuary, an area where the tides of the North Sea push and pull on the course of the Scheldt, and where salt water overflows into fresh water.
The Scheldt runs as a blue thread through the Geopark. Altogether it is an area of 5,500 km², spread over 63 partner municipalities and with some 1,500,000 inhabitants. It stretches across the provinces of Zeeland and North Brabant in the Netherlands, and West Flanders, East Flanders and Antwerp in Belgium. Together, they are working toward recognition as a UNESCO Global Geopark.
UNESCO Global Geopark?
A UNESCO Global Geopark is an area and a partner network, with a unique international geological importance. The Geopark contributes to sustainable development goals and connects geological heritage with all other aspects of cultural, natural and intangible heritage.
The UNESCO label - compare it to a Michelin star - opens doors; to international attention and scientific research, to regional profiling and to a new dimension in the tourist and recreational offer in the area.
What is so unique?
Geopark Schelde Delta tells a 50-million-year story of subsidence and uplift, sea level rise and fall, tidal waters, rivers and climate change. In addition, it shows the alternating role of natural processes and human influences.
Human action as a geological force typifies Geopark Schelde Delta the most. Whether we fight, use or build with nature, our actions have many consequences for the landscape and its sediments.
Finding a balance between the good and the necessary in this dynamic landscape is difficult, and deserves all the attention that a Geopark status offers. Nowhere in the world is the influence of the tides on the landscape and its inhabitants as great as in the Scheldt estuary.
Also, Geopark Scheldt Delta is the only Geopark in the world to make such a clear link with the theme of climate change.
