@unpublished{theses_frw4670,
           title = {Where post-growth meets coastal adaptation: a socio-environmental evaluation of three Dutch coastal adaptation strategies},
          author = {Wera Haake},
            year = {2024},
        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.},
             url = {https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/4670/}
}