Estrategias sociales de prevención y adaptación Social ... - La RED

ed to invade the Netherlands. Large tracts of land were
sacrificed to stop foreign armies in their tracks. Any foreign
ships would be fended off with very shallow (flat)
craft. This was integrated into a plan for a series of fortresses
to protect the Dutch towns, the New Dutch
Water Defence Line, running from the Zuyder Zee
down to the Biesbosch wetland, and implemented in the
mid-19th century. Inundation for defence purposes was
practiced in all major wars until the Second World War
against German tanks – in vain, as by then air-power
had become decisive in warfare proving the point that
we have a tendency to prepare for the last war rather
than the next.
Indeed, on the river Ijssel, the Ijssellinie defence line
was built after 1953 to stop Russian tanks, as if the Soviets
did not have air power. Again land set aside for
inundation. In 1962/3, during the Cuba Crisis, the first
part of the plan was initiated: closing the sluice gates
(Duineveld et al., 2004). It is this defence line that is
being revived as the New Water Defence Line.
Muiden
Weesp
IJsselstein
Lek
Boven-
Merwede
Utrecht
Vianen
Asperen
IJsselmeer
Naarden
Hilversum
Waal
Fort bij
Rijnauwen
Houtense
Viakte
Culemborg
Fig. 1.3. The water defence line.
Dike reinforcement and delta dikes. It is clear that the above example is only a “simulacrum”
of a real defence line, and therefore not really a “best practice” as such. This is different
for the other examples in this paper.
Dikes, for example, seemed to go out of style in the early 1990s, but were revived in the
form of emergency dikes (“kaden”) after the 1995 event. The year 2005 proved a particularly
good year for dikes too when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans. While the Dutch
were busy “making space for the river”, they exported the dike technology, for all its flaws,
to the US. The US had long said goodbye to levees, making space for institutional reforms
such as developmental zoning. Katrina made the Americans regret the poor state of their
flood defences. Thus, as the Dutch pendulum swung away from dikes, the American pendulum
swung back.
However in a country where space is as scarce as it is in the Netherlands, the taking of
space is likely to be controversial. A more recent case of protesting citizens is the “Brakel debacle”
of 1980. Dike reinforcement is part of the Delta Plan would imply the destruction of
picturesque dike houses in the town of Brakel, Gelderland. While new, more context-friendly
types of dikes were recommended by the Commissie-Becht of 1977, water boards resisted
the concept (van Meurs, 1995). Environmental consciousness led to protests in the Southern
town of Brakel (Brabant), near the historic Loevestein castle. In a series of protests, citizens
contested plans for dike reinforcement in 1980’s as it threatened old dike houses and natural
values. The national water department responded by recruiting more and more incorporating
“green engineers” from the ranks of their critics, and prided themselves on the culture
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