Ecodynamic design as a boundary object

Consensus in Dutch society is that the existing coastal defence regime is not sustainable. Adaptation is not only a technical challenge, but affects elements like ecology, cultural heritage, recreation, urban development, making the issue complex both from a political and from a scientific point of view. And innovations must cope with the actual system of human beliefs, values and knowledges which constitute the old coastal management regime. One possible new regime is ecodynamic design. This is an approach using interactions between ecological processes and human interventions to create new coastal structures. The Building with Nature innovation program is implementing ecodynamic experiments along the Dutch coast. One of these is an experiment along the Frisian IJsselmeer coast in the Netherlands. Participating actors (governments, NGO’s, private partners) frame it as an adaptive action, potentially providing new flood defence methods to the region. The aim of this paper is to explore the role this Building with Nature experiment plays in the interactions between actors with different perspectives and how the experiment influences collaborative learning. This case is analysed using the concept of boundary objects

Sleutel naar optimalisatie en adaptief beheer drinkwatersystemen

De zorgen over de strijd om water en de toekomstige balans tussen vraag en aanbod in gebruiksfuncties zijn wijd verspreid, zeker in het licht van klimaatverandering, bevolkingsgroei, technologische en economische veranderingen. Instituties die duurzamer zijn en goed met onzekerheden omgaan kenmerken zich door mechanismen die snelle aanpassing aan veranderingen mogelijk maken. Monitoren van de waterkwaliteit kan verrassingen voorkomen. Het is een geschikte methode, die zowel aansluit op de behoefte aan adaptief beheer als inzichten oplevert die leiden tot een beter resultaat. Ter illustratie dient een studie die in het noorden van Tanzania is uitgevoerd naar een drinkwatersysteem dat wordt beheerd door een lokale Maasai-gemeenscha

Scientific knowledge use and addressing uncertainties about climate change and ecosystem functioning in the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt estuaries

This paper analyses how scientists, policy makers and water users engage with scientific knowledge and uncertainties during a lengthy and complex decision-making process (2000–2014) about water quality, freshwater resources and climate adaptation in the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt estuaries. The research zooms in on lake Volkerak-Zoom. Interviews confirm that ‘negotiated knowledge’, shaped by the agricultural sector, NGO’s and water managers can lead to strategies to improve water quality problems. One such a strategy, based on negotiated knowledge, is to create an inlet to allow limited tides and inflow of saline waters in Lake Volkerak-Zoom. Meanwhile, during negotiations, monitoring showed an autonomous decline in the annually returning algal blooms, leading to new uncertainties and disrupting the negotiations. At another negotiation arena, water users and policy makers repeatedly disputed scientific assessments about costs and benefits regarding additional freshwater supply for agriculture and the knowledge underlying proposed decisions was still considered uncertain in 2014. Several strategies have been observed to deal with uncertainties in decision making, such as deconstruction of certainties, creation of deadlines for decisions and selection of preferred solutions based upon the ‘No-regret principle’. The risk of a lengthy decision making process can be reduced when the responsible authorities recognize, acknowledge and give an equal role to these behavioural strategies to address uncertainties. Tailor-made strategies are needed to make knowledge use more efficient, for example, joint-fact-finding (in case of disputed knowledge and ambiguity), additional research and monitoring (in case of epistemic uncertainty) or commissioning research whereby temporarily a protected environment is created to allow research without political interference (in case of ontic/structural uncertainty)

Adaptation Turning Points in River Restoration? The Rhine salmon case

Abstract: Bringing a sustainable population of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) back into the Rhine, after the species became extinct in the 1950s, is an important environmental ambition with efforts made both by governments and civil society. Our analysis finds a significant risk of failure of salmon reintroduction because of projected increases in water temperatures in a changing climate. This suggests a need to rethink the current salmon reintroduction ambitions or to start developing adaptive action. The paper shows that the moment at which salmon reintroduction may fail due to climate change can only be approximated because of inherent uncertainties in the interaction between salmon and its environment. The added value of the assessment presented in this paper is that it provides researchers with a set of questions that are useful from a policy perspective (by focusing on the feasibility of a concrete policy ambition under climate change). Thus, it offers opportunities to supply policy makers with practical insight in the relevance of climate change. Keywords: Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar); Rhine river; climate change; water temperature; adaptation turning point

Terugdringing fosfaatafspoeling van boerenland

De aanleiding van dit innovatieonderzoek was het groeiende inzicht dat een belangrijke transportroute van fosfaat van boerenland naar het oppervlaktewater bestaat uit oppervlakkige afspoeling. Na hevige neerslag stroomt water via greppels, of gewoon via het oppervlak naar de sloot. Als er net bemest is dan kan het wegstromende water een aanzienlijk deel van de mest meenemen naar de sloot. Boeren op slecht doorlatende gronden herkennen dit uit eigen observatie. De ‘snelle P route’ opent nieuwe mogelijkheden om fosfaat emissies te verkleinen. De vraag is dan hoe fosfaat uit, naar de sloot stromend water, gehaald kan worden zonder dat de afwatering van agrarische percelen gehinderd wordt? En dan liefst op een manier die boeren gemakkelijk in hun bedrijfsvoering kunnen inpassen, zodat de maatregelen daadwerkelijk kans van slagen hebbe

Natuurlijk IJsselmeer: ecodynamisch visie IJsselmeer 2100

Deze ecodynamische visie laat een palet van potentiële ontwikkelingen voor het IJsselmeer zien: ecodynamische ontwikkelingen, die bijdragen aan meerdere functies en ambities waaronder natuur, waterveiligheid, visserij, recreatie en infrastructuur, en waarbij optimaal gebruik wordt gemaakt van de in het gebied aanwezige natuurlijke factoren als wind, water, sediment en vegetatie. Deze visie laat zien dat er kansen liggen voor nieuwe vormen van waterbouw, die de veiligheid van de Houtribdijk en de Afsluitdijk vergroten. Ook worden de kansen in kaart gebracht om met moerassen zowel de waterveiligheid als de biodiversiteit langs dijken bij de Noordoostpolder te verbeteren

Huwelijk tussen natte waterbouw en ecologie

De Houtribdijk strekt zich uit tussen Lelystad en Enkhuizen. Wie over de weg tussen beide steden reist kan aan de Markermeerkant moerasachtig land ontwaren – kleine experimenten, die de voorboden zijn van grote ingrepen. Rijkswaterstaat experimenteert er met een omvangrijk 'wetland'

Implementing Building with Nature in Complex Governance Situations

Two governance aspects of modern coastal engineering which seem to be of importance to many coastal projects all over the world are considered here. Reflections on these two aspects are related to the context in which projects take place. The first is the fragmentation of decision-making and funding. The second aspect is the growing sense of uncertainty actors experience as a result of the longer time horizons of projects and as a consequence of the integration of a growing number of functions to be served by the projects (including ecological ones). The question is: how to deal with this uncertainty? The issue of uncertainties inherent to “building with nature” is of special interest to projects and of relevance to governance

Implementing "building with nature" in complex governance situations

Research assessing the impacts of trade liberalization on poor rural populations can be divided into two categories: more quantitative research, assessing relationships between specific, measurable variables (such as changes in the macroeconomic environment and their impact on farmers’ income levels); and more qualitative research, which takes trade policy as a context and provides broad, descriptive data about dynamic livelihood strategies. In this paper, we outline a framework that could be used to integrate these two approaches by unravelling the macro-micro linkages between national policies and responses at a household level. Using the Mexican maize sector as an illustration, we trace the pathways through which trade liberalization (including the North American Free Trade Agreement) has interacted with changes in government institutions, and thereby impacted on farmers’ livelihood strategies. We identify three pathways through which trade policy affects households and individuals: via enterprises, distribution channels, and government, and we link these to a five-category typology of smallholders’ strategies for escaping rural poverty: intensification, diversification, expansion, increased off-farm income and exit from agriculture. Based on a case-study from Chiapas, Mexico, we report on farmers’ responses to post-liberalization agricultural policies. Data suggest that farmers have intensified maize production, sought more off-farm employment or have exited agriculture altogether. The potential for smallholders to escape poverty by diversifying farms or expanding their land-holdings or herd-size has been largely unrealized. We provide a conceptual framework for linking the impacts of liberalization to farmers’ livelihood strategies and suggest that this framework is useful in the context of agricultural modernisation initiatives that seek to increase agricultural production and productivity