Teacher: Bart Klem

Time: 10:15 - 12:00

Place: 305

Today's slides click here

In this lecture, we will turn to a Western-European context with a long history of flooding, both from the sea and from rivers: the Netherlands. Water has in fact shaped the very nature of Dutch society, the territorial make-up and the constellations of state governance. The bulk of this history has been shaped by modernist ambition to tame the risk of water, where the central ambition of government is to mitigate the risk of flooding by constraining water flows with higher dams and dykes, stronger infrastructure, and waterways with a depth and straightness that channel water to the sea as efficiently as possible. This thinking climaxed with the unprecedented levels of welfare and technology that became available in the twentieth century.

In recent decades, however, this paradigm has shifted to yield a vision that cherishes water, rather than treating it first and foremost as a threat. There is a growing realisation that there are limits and downsides to modernist impulse of maximally constraining and draining water, and that it may be wiser to utilise nature’s own buffers, adjustments and absorption capacities. By implication, we need to give rivers more space, rather than less, and we need to think about adjusting to risk of floods rather than completely banishing it. This, however, raises new challenges, clashes of interests and possibly conflict.

Mandatory readings:

All: Engel, Karin, Georg Frerks, Lucia Velotti, Jeroen Warner and Bart Weijs (2014) “Flood disaster subcultures in The Netherlands: the parishes of Borgharen and Itteren,” Natural Hazards, 73(2): 859-882.

Group A: Warner, Jeroen, Martijn van Staveren, Jan van Tatenhove (2018) “Cutting dikes, cutting ties? Reintroducing flood dynamics in coastal polders in Bangladesh and the netherlands”, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 32: 106-112.

Group B: Zevenbergen, Chris, Sebastiaan van Herk, Jeroen Rijke, Pavel Kabat, Pieter Bloemen, Richard Ashley, Andrew Speers, Berry Gersonius and William Veerbeek (2013) “Taming global flood disasters. Lessons learned from Dutch experience”, Natural Hazards, 65: 1217-1225.

Recommended readings:

Bankoff, Greg (2013) "The “English Lowlands” and the North Sea Basin System: A History of Shared Risk’, Environment and History, 19(1): 3-37.

Bankoff, G., G. Frerks, and D. Hilhorst (2013) Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development, and People. London: Earthscan.

Blaikie, P., B. Wisner and T. Cannon (2003) At Risk: Natural Hazards, Peoples Vulnerability and Disasters. London: Routledge. Second Edition.

Green, P. (2005) “Disasters by Design: corruption, construction and catastrophe,” British Journal of Criminology, 45(4): 528-547.

Hanlon, Joseph (2020) “Bangladesh farmers push for temporary flooding to occur Dutch polder failure”, Journal of International Development, 32: 29-43.

Hilhorst, D. (ed.)(2013) Disaster, conflict and society in Crisis: Everyday politics of crisis response, pp. 223-240. London: Routledge.

Hudson, Paul, Hans Middelkoop, Esther Stouthamer (2008) “Flood management along the Lower Mississippi and Rhine Rivers (The Netherlands) and the continuum of geomorphic adjustment”, Geomorphology, 101: 209-236.

Jantsje M. Van Loon-Steensma & Pier Vellinga (2019) ‘How “wide green dikes” were reintroduced in The Netherlands: a case study of the uptake of an innovative measure in long-term strategic delta planning’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 62(9): 1525-1544.

Kapucu, N. and T.L. Kuotsai (2014)(eds) Disaster and development: Examining global issues and cases. Harvard: Springer.

Oliver-Smith, A. and S. Hoffman (1999)(eds) The angry earth: Disaster in anthropological perspective. London: Routledge.

Pelling, M. (2003)(ed.) Natural Disasters and Development in a Globalising World. London: Routledge.

Ritzema, H. and J. van Loon-Steensma (2018) “Coping with climate change in a densely populated delta: A paradigm shift in flood and water management in the Netherlands”, Irrigation and Drainage, 67: 52-65.

Squires, Chester and Gregory Hartman (2007) There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina. London: Routledge.

Van Koningsveld, M., J. Mulder, M. Stive, L. Van der Valk and A, Van der Weck (2008) “Living with Sea-Level Rise and Climate Change: A Case Study of the Netherlands”, Journal of Coastal Research, 242: 367-379.

Vink, Martinus, Daan Boezeman, Art Dewulf and Catrien Termeer (2013) “Changing climate, changing frames
Dutch water policy frame developments in the context of a rise and fall of attention to climate change”, Environmental Science and Policy, 30: 90-101.