The Netherlands fallacy refers to an error

Paul R. Ehrlich Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born May 29, 1932) is an American biologist known for his predictions and warnings about the consequences of population growth, including famine and resource depletion. Ehrlich is the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population ...

and his co-authors claim others make in assuming that the

environmental impact Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further, these issues can be caused by humans ( human impact on the environment) or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot reco ...

s of the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

and other rich nations are contained within their national borders.

Environmentalist Environmentalism is a broad Philosophy of life, philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of Green politics, g ...

s since the late 20th century have analyzed the environmental sink status and sink capacities of poor nations. As polluting industries migrate from rich to poor nations, the national

ecological footprint The ecological footprint measures human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people and their economies. It tracks human demand on nature through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biolo ...

of rich nations shrinks, whereas the international ecological footprint may increase or also decrease. The nature of the

fallacy A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument that may appear to be well-reasoned if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian '' De Sophisti ...

is to ignore increasing environmental damage in many

developing nations A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreemen ...

and in

international waters The terms international waters or transboundary waters apply where any of the following types of bodies of water (or their drainage basins) transcend international boundaries: oceans, large marine ecosystems, enclosed or semi-enclosed region ...

attributable to the imported goods or changes in the economy of such nations directly due to

developed nations A developed country, or advanced country, is a sovereign state that has a high quality of life, developed economy, and advanced technological infrastructure relative to other less industrialized nations. Most commonly, the criteria for evalu ...

. Such an approach may lead to incorrect assertions such as the environmental impact of a particular developed country is reducing, when a holistic, international approach suggests the opposite. This may in turn support over-optimistic predictions toward the improvement of global environmental conditions. The Netherlands has had a huge impact regarding leaving water footprints across the world. They have made this footprint by importing water from other countries, leaving increasingly scarce regions. Water footprints of a country can come from either water resources used internally or resources that are outsourced. Dutch consumers have left most of their water footprint through agricultural goods and industrial goods.

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