Sinking deltas: trapped in a dual lock-in of technology and institutions

ABSTRACT

In delta areas, flood protection structures and large-scale land reclamation are preferential water management strategies to cultivate soft delta soils. Over the past decades, river embankments, upstream dams, land reclamation, and groundwater use have intensified, and increasingly contribute to subsidence. In addition, the influence of institutions implementing these strategies has strengthened as they have acquired technical skills, knowledge, and vast financial resources. Sinking deltas are therefore trapped in a dual lock-in as dominating technology and institutions act as constraints to moving into a more long-term sustainable direction. Nine factors for the lock-in are introduced and illustrated for delta regions in Asia, Europe, and the US. To gain a better understanding of what researchers and practitioners can do to address the dual lock-in, a practical case is presented of Gouda, a Dutch subsiding city in search of more sustainable strategies and institutions. The paper ends with three steps to change the configuration of a dual lock-in: (1) getting to know the lock-in; (2) temporarily bypassing it; and (3) constituting a new, more sustainable lock-in. These steps should be further investigated in action-oriented research programmes with local experts, and targeted to policy processes and human behaviour in the sinking deltas.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the participants in the Gouda case for their contributions in the workshops, and to the researchers of Radboud University Nijmegen for creating the causal loop diagram. We thank the municipality of Gouda for their support and commitment. In addition, we would like to thank two reviewers and the general editor of Prometheus for sharing their critical and valuable feedback. This allowed us to improve the paper’s content and structure substantially. This research was part of the adaptive delta planning research theme funded by Deltares; the urbanising deltas project (W 07.69.106) of the world programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Project Number W 07.69.106; and research programme BE SAFE financed primarily by NWO.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.