This is a post in the Historicizing Adaptation blog series, introduced here by series editor Shannon Stunden Bower.
The Netherlands is rather well-known for its water management arrangements in terms of institutional organizations, intervention strategies, and innovative technologies. In order to ensure that a desirable version of the country manages to stay above the waves of the future, current Dutch water management agencies are thinking about future-proofing the country. One of the approaches under consideration is Adaptive Delta Management, a recognized strategy in the new Dutch Delta Programme. This programme resulted from the so-called Second Delta Commission, established in 2007 as a State Commission, which was asked to investigate the consequences of climate change, with attention to prospects for sea level rise along the Dutch coast and changing discharges of the major Dutch rivers. The resulting Delta Programme aims to “look far ahead to the challenges facing us and, with this knowledge, […] take the measures on time that are necessary and affordable at that point” in order to “always respond flexibly to new opportunities and new insights.”1 The goal is to ensure any prospective interventions are evaluated within a longer-term perspective of the next 50 to 100 years. One of the challenges in such an endeavour is that measures themselves can take decades to be realized – as the large-scale first Delta Programme shows. This first programme resulted from policy developments after the 1953 storm that caused flooding in the southwestern part of the Netherlands (and other regions in Europe around the North Sea). A Delta Commission introduced cost-benefit methods to assess water safety interventions and defined new safety standards. Construction of the resulting infrastructure started in 1954, with the last structures being completed in 1997.
Given the established vulnerability of Dutch society to all kinds of water-related changes and hazards, it is clear that adaptation has taken place in the past.2 One of the icons of the first Delta Programme, the Oosterscheldekering – still known in the Netherlands as ‘THE storm surge barrier’ – illustrates this rather nicely. One could argue that the barrier is itself a sign of adaptive management (although the term was not in use at the time). The original plan was for a closed dam, and by 1973, construction was underway. After protests from a coalition of mussel fishermen and environmental groups, the barrier’s design was adapted to include gates, in the aim of offering flood protection during storms while making it possible to keep the Oosterschelde, an important estuary, open most of the time. Over time, the Oosterscheldekering – which was ready in 1986 – became one of the highlights of the Delta Works and attracted a lot of attention to Dutch expertise.
Today, the design of the Oosterscheldekering is again under discussion. One issue is whether the barrier will continue to function under the expected extreme weather conditions of the future. Another issue derives from how changing water and sediment flows around the pillars of the gates have meant a decrease in the volume of sand and silt entering the Oosterschelde itself, which is detrimental to local salt marshes and mud flats. The decrease has been inconvenient for certain types of nature and for certain forms of resources harvesting, but also for the safety of the protected land, as less sediment may lead to the undermining of embankments.3 There may be a need to adapt the design of the gates to deal with the sediment issue.
I find it rather fascinating that the new Delta Programme calls for something that apparently has already been done for some time (adapting), but that was not defined as such in terms of ‘adaptive management.’ Following the Wikipedia definition of ‘adaptive management’ being “a structured, iterative process of robust decision making in the face of uncertainty, with an aim to reducing uncertainty over time via system monitoring,” key to the new approach is adapting on purpose, in the sense of using a “learning process” to find “the correct balance between gaining knowledge to improve management in the future and achieving the best short-term outcome based on current knowledge.”4 So we are to adapt on purpose, in a systemic and ‘correct’ way.
Deltares, one of the Dutch government-coordinated knowledge institutes with expertise in water management, is an important player in the development and application of Adaptive Delta Management.5 Its work includes sketching scenarios of possible futures, drawing on qualitative and quantitative information about climate, water systems, and water and land use. The resulting storylines and maps involve predictions about temperature, rainfall, river discharges and geographical data. These efforts aim to support the development of multiple strategies that can be used when particular problems emerge. They are intended to highlight the need to act because of anticipated future events and to ensure that the longer-term effects of interventions are known.
It is very likely that the adaptive management turn will rely on some kind of historical analysis to support the longer-term future focus. After all, history does provide some insight on trajectories of change over time and their impacts. The engineer in me would argue that it makes perfect sense to think carefully about investments in water management infrastructure, especially those components that tend to be rather costly, that ask much from many societal agents, and that will persist for decades, if not longer. Some decisions will be better compared to others, and we should try to figure out which ones are best.
The historian in me, however, feels very uncomfortable with the idea of ‘correctness.’ As I have written with Dr. Ruth Morgan, the core of historical scholarship is an effort to demonstrate and understand the complexity of the past: “History is comprised of a confluence of specific contexts, causation, and contingencies that shape human relations and experiences over time.”6 This means that, even when we agree that historical trajectories might point toward possible (future) directions, or at least show why certain directions are more likely than others, it should not be expected that lessons from the past will speak directly to the concerns of the present. History does not provide a “roadmap for the future.”7 Rather, it offers a way of grappling with the complex ways in which earlier societal agents have addressed their water challenges – “challenges that are inherently about the relationships between society, water, and the environment more generally.”8
Historians study the past to explain how it can be understood, whereas engineers typically aim to understand particular issues or problems in order to provide solutions. Both endeavours involve creating versions of historical processes, with the engineer’s functional use of the past running the risk of turning observations on change into something like laws of nature governing societal change. This brings me to a crucial issue when using history to think about future change. I would argue that conceptualizing history in terms of laws of nature means adopting one of two mindsets. The first holds that societal developments indeed reflect natural laws, which must mean that historical agents – including the historian and engineer in the present – cannot escape these laws. The second one – which is my own – is that ideas about history, about the past, present and future, and about laws of nature are constructed by observers, usually in interaction with other observers. From this perspective, understandings of the past and the future amount to claims being made about reality, rather than established realities.
Without suggesting that historians need to intervene in Dutch water management, what might be helpful is to consider today how future historians will interpret Dutch Adaptive Delta Management. The significance of efforts to adapt on purpose will become apparent only through time. In the meantime, however, we can ask ourselves a set of questions that might help us to think more productively about potential decisions and interventions. We might ask: what are we aiming for in our efforts at adaptation? Who decides on our aims? Would today’s decisions change if we understood that these decisions will constrain future choices?
Connections between past, present and future are continuously asserted and recreated by a diversity of societal actors. These connections are always contested and contingent. What we encounter today in Dutch water management are (quite often material) manifestations of a particular narrative – one that created winners and losers and that involved shifts in power over time. The landscapes we encounter today demonstrate persistence by those who could establish persistence through artefacts. Water infrastructure helps “shape what counts as ‘real’.”9 To me, this means that whatever Adaptive Delta Management brings, it cannot be ‘correct.’ It may be supported by many, it may even work in conjunction with natural waterflow patterns, but it is also inevitably the result of negotiations between agents (human and non-human) that produce adaptation efforts. Like historical processes, these adaptation efforts are messy, defined by power relations, and subject to contestation.
Feature image: A black-and-white etching of a stone, circular labyrinth, engraved and designed by Toni Pecoraro in 2007. By Toni Pecoraro – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7087098
Notes
1. https://english.deltaprogramma.nl/delta-programme/what-is-the-delta-programme/adaptive-delta-management
2. For a good overview of Dutch water history, see: Gerard P. van de Ven, Man-made Lowlands: A History of Water Management and Land Reclamation in the Netherlands (Matrijs, 1993).
3. https://nos.nl/regio/zeeland/artikel/445305-zeeland-zonder-oosterscheldekering-nieuw-plan-moet-ons-klaarstomen-voor-klimaatverandering; https://www.omroepzeeland.nl/nieuws/17129738/de-oosterscheldekering-wordt-getest-op-extreme-stormen-nodig-voor-de-toekomst
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_management; For a more thorough review of adaptive management concepts, see: Marjolijn Haasnoot, Valeria Di Fant, Jan Kwakkel and Judy Lawrence, “Lessons from a Decade of Adaptive Pathways Studies for Climate Adaptation,” Global Environmental Change 88 (2024): 102907, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102907.
5. https://www.deltares.nl/en/expertise/projects/deltaprogramme-and-the-adaptive-delta-management-approach
6. Maurits W. Ertsen and Ruth A. Morgan, “A Drop in the Ocean: On Writing Histories of Water Resource Management,” in Handbook of Water Resources Management, eds J. Bogardi et al (Springer, 2021), 89-103.
7. As suggested by Pauk Sabin, “ ‘The ultimate environmental dilemma:’ Making a Place for Historians in the Climate Change and Energy Debates,” Environmental History 15 (2010): 76-93.
8. Ertsen and Morgan, “A Drop in the Ocean.”
9. Peter-Paul Verbeek, “Materializing Morality: Design Ethics and Technological Mediation,” Science, Technology, and Human Values 31(2006): 361-380.