Margot de Cleen

Margot de Cleen works for the executive agency Rijkswaterstaat, of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management as senior advisor Soil and Water She is member of the Expert group Soils of the European Commission and is active in the Common Forum network for contaminated sites and in the Common Forum working group “Soil as a resource”. In the Netherlands she was member of the core group of the societal initiative on conscious use of soil where she was active in awareness raising and capacity building. Together with likeminded researchers and colleagues she wrote several papers on soil as a basis for societal challenges, instigated research on how to give soils a voice in decision making and planning and recently published a green paper on the urgent necessity of soils for society Green Paper: ‘The urgent necessity of healthy soils’ | TAUW (La urgente necesidad de suelos sanos’ | TAUW)

Margot has studied at the Wageningen University and Research Centre with a specialization in soil hygiene. She started her working career at the Dutch Commission on Environmental Impact Assessment. She worked at the Dutch Research Institutes Deltares and RIVM on concepts for risk based soil remediation and monitoring before entering the realms of policy making at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.