No country in the world collects more data per square kilometre about the condition of its soil, air and water or animal, insect and plant life than the Netherlands. A small army of scientists, researchers and volunteers are systematically monitoring an enormous range of developments that are happening to nature. Hi-tech computing and automated equipment is increasingly being used for this but it frequently requires hands-on processes such as taking measurements or counting over an extended period of time, often many years.

Even though it’s widely accepted that the natural world (indeed the planet itself as we know it) is endangered by multiple issues, including pollution, climate change, habitat loss, a decline in biodiversity and so on, in recent years, a growing unwillingness to accept the scientific evidence has emerged as a powerful social phenomena. Results that are challenging, inconvenient or unpopular are being dismissed as ‘opinion’ or even as deliberate misinformation and scientists producing research that highlights an environmental threat find themselves in a new and difficult position. Some have even been personally threatened, as if they are idealogical campaigners or politicians.

What might the consequences of this situation be for generations to come?

Photographer, filmmaker and writer Hans van der Meer (1955) is known for taking polarised subjects and making them approachable again. A master of careful and perceptive photographic observation, he takes a step back and really looks. In Counting on Nature the current state of our living environment is the primary subject, but the behaviour of humanity (en masse as well as individually) is of equal importance. In a literal sense, van der Meer’s images investigate people, who are in turn investigating nature.

As with Time to Change, his 2018 project about dairy farming, Hans van der Meer raises questions by using both photography and text: What are we looking at here? What do these, often strange and somewhat comical situations represent? What are those serious looking people doing in that landscape with their hi-tech equipment? What about those people in a different landscape with a notepad in one hand and a pencil in the other ? Are they counting or drawing or what? It seems significant that many of them are down on their knees, in intense concentration, bending over the earth.

Counting on Nature features a broad range of scientific projects that are measuring and monitoring nature. From the levels of nitrogen deposits in soil, to the declining populations of northern voles, pine martens, eels and garlic toads to name just a few. But in essence this is about mankind. Will the collection of data and the accumulation of scientific evidence ultimately lead us towards an era in which humans do no longer position themselves above nature, but alongside it?