Haake, Wera (2024) Where post-growth meets coastal adaptation: a socio-environmental evaluation of three Dutch coastal adaptation strategies. Pre-master thesis.
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Abstract
As sea levels rise, the Netherlands faces escalating challenges to its renowned water management practices; challenges which exacerbate the competition of land uses in the country. This research adds to academic debate in that it explores the spatial implications of climate adaptation and flood risk management pursuits for the quality of life. Simultaneously, the research carries social relevance by exploring pathways for integrating quality of life in Dutch coastal adaptation policies and in its bid to not compromise social and environmental prosperity in adaptation processes. This research investigates the alignment of Dutch coastal adaptation strategies with post-growth principles focused on quality of life. It examines three questions: What post-growth planning practices enhance quality of life? Which of these practices are present in the three adaptation strategies? How do these strategies differ in their integration of post-growth principles? The study aims to reveal how effectively each strategy promotes environmentally and socially sustainable development beyond economic growth. A conceptual exploration has been conducted in the theoretical framework section, which resulted in a set of two post-growth indicators for prosperity, namely environmental sustainability and social justice. In sum, post-growth planning advocates broadening the understanding of prosperity beyond its typical economic understanding to include quality of life considerations such as the environmental and social experience of space and draws attention to environmental and social costs in growth-centric spatial planning. Using the post-growth indicators of quality of life in the analysis of three Dutch coastal adaptation strategies, this study set out to evaluate which strategy aligns most with this holistic understanding of quality of life to provide an outlook on the broad prosperity implications inherent in these strategies. Based on the current explorative research into the three strategies, it is concluded that the protect-closed strategy demonstrates the best balance between environmental sustainability and social cost in the short-term, leveraging existing structures to minimise social impacts and controlling saltwater intrusion to mitigate agricultural changes, while further governance and strategy integration details require deeper exploration. Ultimately, this research concludes that quality of life and therefore environmental and social concerns are common denominators in flood risk management and post-growth planning but that the considerations in flood risk management are not (yet) being integrated holistically as would be expected under post-growth planning.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Pre-master) |
|---|---|
| Degree programme: | Environmental & Infrastructure Planning |
| Supervisor: | Verweij, S. |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Jul 2024 11:33 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Jul 2024 11:33 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4670 |
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