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Roman Catholic, Protestant

The Dutch have a saying: "God made the earth, but the Dutch made Holland." The first defenses against the sea went up some 800 years ago. Today more than 2,400 kilometers of dikes shield the low, flat land-almost half of which lies below sea level-from invasion by the North Sea. Reclamation of the Zuider Zee has created 165,000 hectares of arable land-a precious commodity in this densely populated nation. About 60 percent of the country is farmed, with super-efficiency, by just 2 percent of the workforce. Only the U.S. and France export more agricultural goods. Located at the mouth of the Rhine River, the Netherlands is a gateway to northwestern Europe and participates in the European common currency, the euro. Rotterdam, the world's largest and busiest general-cargo port, includes Europoort, a petroleum-refining center.

For several decades natural gas production has subsidized a welfare system, but the 1980s-lean years for petroleum producers-left a formidable deficit and unemployment. Funds are needed for continued flood-

control efforts and a plan that calls for cleaning up the Rhine and the North Sea and combating damage to forests by acid rain. By 2010 the Netherlands hopes to have reduced environmental pollution by 70 percent.