The Netherlands, for all its engineering expertise, can still learn from other delta areas

29 September 2009

Last summer the fifth People & the Sea conference took place, this time at the Waalse Church in Amsterdam. The opening ceremony was led by Ton Dietz, professor in Amsterdam and Utrecht and the chair of the programme commission of NWO-VAM (Vulnerability, Adaptation and Mitigation, the gamma programme for climate). He shared his impressions with us. “Foreign experts agree that we’re good at preventing disasters, but in doing so we’ve created a false sense of security. What do we do when things really go wrong?”

Ton Dietz said that the People & the Sea conference brought together the world’s best in the field of social science climate research. “We have technical and ecological scientists coming to the conference now too, but they still have an interest in social science,” he said. “We’re not only scientists here – there are also organisations that are involved in the practical issues of climate change.” The conference takes place every two years. The special ‘Policy Day’ took place this year for the second time. “These sorts of days are of great importance for the exchange of knowledge, questions and information between policy-makers and scientists.”

From mitigation to adaptation

Dietz confirmed that a shift has taken place in climate change discussion, from mitigation to adaptation. “A couple of years ago – for example when we had to set up the VAM programme – that was really not obvious. But now you can see that adaptation has come to be central. This is partly thanks to the Veerman Committee, which has been working on delta issues. The lessons learned by the committee were also presented and discussed during the day. It was great that it was not only about the end results, but also about the approach taken by the committee. They tried to take both scientific and social issues into account while deliberating on the question of adaptation. Because this day was all about international comparison, it was commented that it is indeed true that the Netherlands is concerned with preventing disasters, but doesn't seem to have hit its stride with anticipating actual disasters. And one day there will be a flood, that is certain – so what will happen then?”

Environmental refugee policy

The discussion then focused on two points. “The first point concerned the insurance companies’ involvement,” said Dietz. “From an English contribution on the day, it was obvious – for example – that the English insurance industry is now changing and will become involved. A second point was the environmental refugee policy that, as an authority, you really need to set in place. The environmental experts are very pessimistic. They think that in 2050 there will be 250 million people fleeing the consequences of climate change. How will we deal with that in the Netherlands? Will people here need to move to higher ground, for example? Does it need to be solved on a European level? What is the legal status of refugees that don’t have a UNHCR ticket? This brings all sorts of new social science questions along with it.”

Concrete solutions offer a false sense of security

Another conclusion covers protection and prevention. “The Netherlands is a land of engineers. We're literally used to casting our solutions in concrete. That also means that our solutions are not really that flexible. And that has the accompanying psychological effect that everyone thinks that everything's ok with the dikes, and that the authorities will make sure that we'll all keep our feet dry. But in fact, according to those in other countries, our embankment structure and the culture that goes with it end up leading to dangerous risks. The more you invest in safety, the greater the consequences. What that means for us is that insurers are now taking a pass on this place; they’re no longer so keen to insure houses in low-lying areas.” The big question that’s being avoided in the Netherlands, according to foreign experts, is what we're going to do with our valuable national possessions. “Won’t you have to move them to safer places in the coming century? But yes, that has all sorts of economic and psychological effects ... once you start thinking about that, then there's later no basis for large-scale economic investment in safety. In short, the dilemmas are clear.”

Learning from developing countries

“It's also interesting, by the way, that the technicians find that the Netherlands has a good head start on two areas: Water management itself, and the way that we have set up institutions to deal with it. The Dutch Ministry of Waterways and Public Works says that it has now set up a cooperation platform, together with five other delta areas (Jakarta, the Mekong, Bangladesh, the Nile and Mozambique), in order to exchange knowledge and to learn from each other. What we can learn from the other delta areas, especially, is now people deal with real water risks in a less-protected environment – and how people organise this unity if the State doesn’t do it.” A final point that struck Dietz is that more and more areas of the social sciences are becoming involved with climate problems. “First the economists were active, later the legal teams. But now – partly due to the VAM programme – the geographers, sociologists, psychologists and spatial scientists are involved too. But the VAM programme will end soon, so how will we continue this research? Fortunately, that question is already on the NWO's to-do list.”