you gain some funding, you lose some ... - universiteit twente · a brief history of core-periphery...

Environmental Science and Policy 30(1) 113-124

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You gain some funding, you lose some freedom: the ironies of flood protection in Limburg (The Netherlands)

Anna Wesselink, Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, United Kingdom

[email protected]

Jeroen Warner, Disaster Studies Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre, The

Netherlands [email protected]

Matthijs Kok, HKV Consultants, Lelystad, The Netherlands [email protected]

Abstract

In this paper we show how applying an analytical framing of hegemony to policy making can

draw out strategic positioning and negotiation of the actors involved that would remain

hidden with a more rationalistic analysis. We show how long established flood protection

management from the Dutch lowlands was imported into Limburg after two major flood

events (1993/95) and we argue this case highlights how existing hegemony is easily replicated

in new situations. With the shock caused by these floods came a securitizing discourse that

transformed the portrayal of flood risks in Limburg as ‘safety’ rather than ‘costly nuisance’.

After an intense lobby by Limburg, the Meuse and its floodplains were included into the

Dutch Flood Defence Law in 2005, becoming a national responsibility. While most Limburg

inhabitants see increased protection against flooding as beneficial, the new law also meant

strict design procedures and planning restrictions. Water expertise plays an important role in

setting the new rules that determine which local ambitions are compatible with the national

laws and policies. While securitization helped to actively reproduce the existing (perception

of) hegemonic relations in this case, the relationship between securitization and hegemony is

context-dependent, and both hegemon and non-hegemon can use a securitization strategy to

their advantage. Exactly how this will happen cannot be predicted, but ‘securitization’ and

‘hegemony’ are important sensitising concepts that can alert the observer to mechanisms of

power re-distribution in other situations and settings.

1 Introduction

Much scholarship on hegemony focuses on the predominance of the global North over the

South (e.g. Buchanan, this issue; Clark, 2011; Norloff, 2012; Rajao, this issue). In this paper,

however, we examine an example of hegemony at a smaller scale, coincidentally also by a

dominant North but this time over a southern region within the same country, The

Netherlands. The flood management system from the Dutch lowlands (the polder system, on

the right in Figure 1) is found in the yellow areas in Figure 2. Without protection this area

would be prone to regular or permanent flooding with potentially serious loss of life

(Maaskant et al., 2009). This lowland system of flood protection by dikes was recently

transferred to the historically and geographically distinct province of Limburg (Maasdal, on

the left in Figure 1) located in the box in the lower right of Figure 2, where flooding is an

occasional problem (more details in Section 2). This transfer of the lowlands flood

management was triggered by two major flood events in 1993 and 1995, which gave rise to a

‘securitization’ discourse, in first instance nationally but when it came to deciding on flood

(2013)

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protection measures politicians in Limburg used it to increase the leverage of their point of

view. This securitization discourse redefined the seriousness of the flooding problem in

Limburg. Before the floods of 1993 and 1995 the high waters of the river Meuse in Limburg

was seen as a ‘wet feet’ problem and not as a safety problem, contrary to flooding in the

polders where loss of life is almost certain when flood defences are breached, thus an issue of

security (Figure 1). While to some extend depoliticised as a technical debate, after the two

floods opened a window for intervention the national and local governments engaged in an

exchange of moves to decide who was in charge of flood protection: the national government

or the regional authorities? The subsequent application of spatial policies and flood defence

laws designed for the lowlands to Limburg have yielded contested, and maybe unforeseen,

consequences for Limburg’s spatial planning, including limiting the choices available for

flood management in future.

Figure 1 Cross sections of the river systems in Limburg (Maasdal) and in the Dutch

lowlands (Polders)

This hegemony in flood management in the Netherlands was established in, and facilitated by,

a wider context of historic hegemonic relations. We think it instructive to contextualise the

analysis with the help of these core-periphery relations. Seen from the technical and

administrative centres in the Netherlands, Delft and The Hague, Limburg is hinterland.

Limburgers are acutely aware of the political marginalisation this often entails, closely

followed by economic and social marginalisation (e.g. Raleigh, 2010). The relationship can be

characterised as hegemonic: while formally an equal partnership, there is clearly a senior-

junior relationship, cultivated by both sides. Ferguson (1995) shows how the development of

the hinterland is often accompanied by ignorance (or neglect) of the historical, cultural and

physical realities of that area, which are themes that also appear in our account of flood

management. Before we describe the above processes in more detail, we outline our

understanding of hegemony and the role that securitization can play in its establishment.

We use the word ‘hegemony’ advisedly: in contrast to ‘domination’ hegemony marries power

asymmetry with a degree of consent, however grudgingly it is given. In our example

hegemony is played out at several scales and locations: in long term cultural-historical

characteristics, in legal-political decisions, through financial pressures, and last but not least

in the application of technical knowledge about flooding (cf. Hulme and Dessai (2008) for a

description of epistemological hegemony in climate change governance in the UK). The first

three aspects are reasonably well known but recounted here (Section 2) to present the context

for the process of establishing hegemony in flood management (Section 3). We then show

how hegemony is enacted at a very detailed and technical level in the choice of design

parameters and details of regulations (Section 4) and how it is contested politically through

challenging these same rules and regulations (Section 5). Other examples of hegemonic

discourses in the environmental domain and their relation to knowledge are presented by

Carter (this issue), Rajao (this issue) and Schwedes (this issue). In our description of this case,


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we will focus on the expression of hegemony in rules and financial dependency, and the

movements to counter this hegemony by challenges to these rules. We show how

‘Hegemony as a form of rule presupposes various practices of transformation,

negotiation, compromise and bargaining in order to safeguard and reproduce a regime

or practice, whilst the struggle to develop counter-hegemonic movements presupposes

certain forms of rule, which the movements challenge and seek to transform. At the

same time, a form of rule is the outcome of hegemonic projects that have won consent

or secured acquiescence in various contexts and sites’ (Howarth, 2009 317).

Hegemony as a historically contextualized power relationship operates through material

dominance and ideational processes that bring about the active consent of those under

hegemony (Wesselink et al., this issue). In a successful hegemonic order, the hegemon’s acts

are perceived as protective and benevolent for everyone. This requires the successful

construction and continuous reproduction of shared meanings, images and notions. To acquire

the consent of non-hegemons into the hegemonic structure, security knowledge is a powerful

strategy (Buzan et al., 1998; Friis, 2000). All relevant actors participate in the construction

and consolidation of security ‘truths’ through their security practices, acts and decisions: the

subaltern are not only consumers but also producers of securitization. Actors construct their

security interest with others, but mainly with and with the hegemon. They manage the rules

that make the interaction possible (Kaygusuz, 2007). Securitization thus actively reproduces

the hegemonic security structure[s] within which securitization is possible. This general

account is clearly observable in our case study.

As a focusing event (Lowry, 2006), the question how to reduce flood damage caused by the

river Meuse turned into the main battleground where the national government and Limburg

played out a power struggle in which the securitization discourse was an important strategy.

However, to define something as a security problem is possible only within a wider political

framework of ideas, norms and values that give it a meaning and legitimacy: the cognitive-

ideational content of the hegemonic arrangement. Securitization helps to actively reproduce

the hegemonic relations (both material and ideational) within which securitization is possible:

prior to the 1993/95 flood events, these existed in other domains. While hegemony can be

clearly demonstrated in the new rules on flood management and expert knowledge needed to

implement these, the resulting situation is not to the detriment of Limburg, even though

Limburg politicians contest the rules when they feel its interests are at risk (Section 4). To

gain acceptance, however grudgingly, of power asymmetry, the centre cannot simply content

itself with controlling the periphery, but it also needs to make sure the periphery is given

something in return. In the periphery itself, the junior status can also be played out as political

capital for local politicians to lay blame and responsibility at the doorstep of the core. In the

process, hegemonic core-periphery relations are constantly reproduced.


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Figure 2 Flood defence areas in The Netherlands (Ministerie van V&W 2007a) (for

boxed area see Figure 6)

Our analysis is based on a re-interpretation of our own previous work and additional research.

Warner (2011, Chapter 5) described the history of river management plans and projects in

Limburg that culminated in the on-going implementation of the Maaswerken programme1.

Through discourse analysis of published government reports, newspaper articles and

interviews with actors involved he demonstrated how securitization of flooding played an

important role in establishing the agreed programme of work. Using ethnography and

participatory observation, Wesselink (2007b, 2009) described how water expertise and

politics are interwoven by the participants in a government study on future flood management

in Limburg, whereby challenging the established rules on flood management and spatial

planning play a crucial role (Wesselink et al., 2006, 2009). For this article, we collected

1 ‘Maaswerken’ literally means ‘Works in the Meuse’.


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additional information on the negotiations surrounding Meuse flood management projects by

consulting water experts who were closely involved in these projects (e.g. Walker et al.,

2004), we studied the details of the flood defence rules and regulations and we collected

recent newspaper articles. Our aim was to be able to substantiate the idea we had developed

that pre-existing hegemonic relationships between Limburg and ‘Holland’2 were being played

out and reinforced through the securitization of flooding in Limburg, resulting in the

establishment of hegemony in the domains of flood management and spatial planning. Given

the historic contextualisation of hegemonic power relations emphasised above, we first sketch

a brief history of core-periphery relations between Limburg as the periphery and the west of

The Netherlands, also the seat of the national government, as the core.

2 A brief history of flood management and hegemony in The Netherlands

The western and northern parts of the Netherlands (the yellow areas in Figure 2) are low-lying

and would be frequently be inundated by rivers or sea had the inhabitants not constructed

dikes to keep the water out. Dikes represent a defensive approach to the management of

floods; a (now theoretical) alternative would be e.g. to construct mounds for habitation and to

give the water free reign in between, as was the case in Friesland/Groningen (region 6 in

Figure 2) until the end of the Middle Ages. Another alternative, realistic in some parts of the

Netherlands, is to do nothing and accept regular flooding. This was the case in Limburg

before 1993/1995. Flood management was shaped by, and in turn shaped, the respective

physical and social landscapes and the inhabitants’ relationship to water. Management of

floods is inseparable from management of land (Wesselink et al., 2007).

While the branches of the Rhine have been enclosed by dikes along their full length for

several centuries, the southernmost part of the Meuse, where it enters the Netherlands, could

until recently freely flow onto its floodplain. The history of flood management in the southern

province of Limburg is therefore distinct from the lower parts of The Netherlands. In the

lowlands, the history of human intervention against flooding began in the 10th

century with

field drainage systems. (Te Brake, 2002; Van de Ven, 1993). As well as dikes it includes

dams to close off the estuaries and an extensive system of drainage channels and pumping

stations to evacuate rainwater from the enclosed areas or ‘polders’, which necessitates

regional levees3. Flood management is part of the overall system of water management which

also includes e.g. letting river water in during times of drought. Everywhere in the landscape

man-made structures for water management are visible, and the landscape as a whole is man-

made. The dikes play a large part in determining the character of the lowlands landscape. In

this area, failure of the dikes means rapid and sudden flooding with several meters of water.

Because of short warning times there is little opportunity to evacuate the population. Failure

thereby means disastrous loss of lives, immense social disruption and huge economic damage.

2 ‘Holland’ strictly speaking refers to two of the provinces, North Holland and South Holland, adjacent to the

North Sea (Zeeland is the third, most southerly one). Holland contains most of the economic and political power

in The Netherlands. However, in Limburg ‘Hollander’ (i.e. some from Holland) is a flexible category and might

refer to anyone who is not from Limburg. 3 We choose to use the term ‘dikes’ (Dutch: dijken) for the primary flood defence structures in the lowlands and

‘levees’ (Dutch: kaden) for the secondary, lower structures in the lowlands and also for the technically similar

structures in Limburg. Legally, with the inclusion of the Limburg levees in the Flood Defence Law they are

treated as the lowland dikes. Internationally, the terms are used differently, e.g. some of the levees along the

Mississippi are higher than the dikes in the Netherlands.


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The 1953 flood event in the south-western parts of the country, brought about by a storm

surge on the North Sea caused 1835 inhabitants to drown. This was only the last in a long list

of flood disasters. Lack of maintenance of the dikes is one of the main causes of these flood

so these disasters can be seen as ‘man-made’ in more than one sense.

Managing flooding in this way did not just create civil-engineering structures in the

landscape, it also reshaped and reorganised the landscape itself and even created new land by

surrounding water by dikes and pumping the water out. As a result, the whole lowland area is

compartmentalised by dikes and dunes that clearly separate ‘space for water’ (regularly

flooded) from ‘space for people’ (protected from flooding). Meanwhile, the sense of safety

created by the dikes and the relative low probability of flooding means that inhabitants of the

protected polders might forget there is still a risk of flooding, although the many floods

around the world occasionally serve as ‘wake-up calls’ (Wesselink, 2007a). In the lowlands,

the relationship with water is thus very much determined by the continuous fight to defend

land, lives and livelihoods. As can be expected, this existential struggle has left a big mark on

lowland culture and conscience. It can be argued that the Dutch political culture exhibits

several characteristics that can be traced back to the early history of water politics (Bijker,

2002), where the governance of the lowland flood defence system has for a long time been,

and still is, organised separately from other policy issues in dedicated water boards, a very

early example of democracy in Western Europe. Only in the 18th

century some centralised

coordination developed, culminating in the establishment of a national body, Rijkswaterstaat

(Lintsen, 2002).

During the 20th

century flood management was formalised through:

- the 1995 Flood Defence Law, in 2009 replaced by the Water Law;

- related technical guidelines on construction and maintenance;

- national spatial planning frameworks ‘Room for the River’ (1997) and ‘Big Rivers’

(2006).

The 1995 Flood Defence Law formalises the protection levels that were decided after the

1953 disaster: a safety standard4 of 1/10,000 in the most densely populated areas and 1/4000

in less densely populated areas subject to flooding from the sea, and 1/2000 or 1/1250 in areas

subject to flooding from rivers, also depending on population density (Figure 3). Limburg was

added in 2005 (Section 3). In comparison, protection levels of 1/100 are usual in the rest of

Europe. The national planning frameworks impose strict limits on constructions and other

developments in the floodplains. Although they do not have the power of law, these

frameworks are in practice binding unless there are very compelling reasons to deviate. The

frameworks also indicate preferred flood management options. Here, the influence of the so-

called ecological turn in water management (Disco, 2002; Meijerink, 2005) is evident: there is

a strong policy preference for river widening and deepening to create a more natural profile,

with dikes as the last resort to achieve required flood protection levels (Wolsink, 2006). Note

that while both the Flood Defence Law and the planning frameworks dealing with rivers were

published after the 1993/1995 floods, their preparation started (long) before. The safety levels

were in fact applied in practice from the 1970’s.

4 A safety standard of 1/10,000 means that there is a probability of 0.01 % that the design water level is exceeded

in any year. We refer to these figures as ‘protection levels’ in the rest of the paper.


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Figure 3 Legal Flood Protection Levels in the Netherlands (courtesy

Huisman et al. 1998)

The picture is very different in the province of Limburg. In Limburg the river Meuse lies

lower than the land in a gently sloping river valley. When flooding occurs, the impact is much

less severe than it could be in lower lying areas (on the left in Figure 1). The water level rises

slowly so people can evacuate, depths are limited and water subsides relatively quickly so

damage and disruption are less. Rather than a threat to life and limb, flooding is an expensive

nuisance: it is rare for a person to drown in the Meuse. ‘Living with water’, the recently

adopted national policy slogan, was for centuries the reality here: in the absence of dikes to

prevent inundation, floodplain residents adjusted their homes and livelihoods to the possibility

of flooding. Without dikes there was no indication in the landscape where ‘space for people’

ended and ‘space for water’ started, but the original inhabitants knew the limits of the flood-

prone area from experience. Spatial planning and flood management are therefore more

closely interwoven in Limburg than in the lowland: limiting flood damage means spatial

management of the floodplain. However, the last big flood event had happened in 1926 and in

the 1980’s the possibility of flooding had pretty much been ‘forgotten’. With forgetting came

a desire to use the floodplain, and there do not seem to have been any planning restrictions in

force here until 1993. Especially in the 1980s many new residential areas were designated and

investment in property built in the floodplain was considerable. The province and the

municipalities did not warn the new inhabitants that they were living in a floodplain, so they

were very surprised when flooding did occur in 1993/95.

More generally, the province of Limburg has a distinct identity which is bound up with its

history. In 1830 Belgium seceded from The Netherlands, taking the provinces of Brabant and

Limburg with it. The Dutch responded with military force, reclaiming much of the two


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provinces. However, Limburg has continued to feel culturally separate and subjected to

'Hollanders' (e.g. Osinga, 1997). The latter was reinforced by the fact that Limburg was long

the mining ‘colony’ of the Netherlands. Although coal and marl mines have long closed, and

in spite of extensive measures to mitigate unemployment, the image of being exploited has

not been eradicated. In fact, mining for the gravel deposited by the Meuse to satisfy the

national demand continues, despite protests from Limburg citizens about the destruction of

the landscape, noise, dust and damage to houses. Hegemonic relations between Limburg and

‘Holland’ thereby play out specifically in this domain of quarrying; this argument of being

exploited returns in several guises in the debates on flood management (Section 3). In this

context, the 1980s environmentalist turn described above had its best chance in the Meuse

valley as quarrying gravel from the floodplain seemed to offer opportunities to create ‘new

nature’ by giving the river space to braid and meander (Figure 4). This ‘green for gravel’

swap, formalised in 1991, was thought to be self-financing too: win-win all around. The fact

that the Meuse could cause flooding and that something might need to be done to alleviate

this was backgrounded to the point of oblivion.

Figure 4 Making more space for flood water through increasing the river’s cross section

3 The 1993 and 1995 floods

Plans to implement ‘green for gravel’ projects were in the making when in December 1993

the Meuse rose to levels not seen since 1926, causing extensive flooding5. Some 8000

inhabitants were evacuated and the damage was estimated at €122 million (1994 prices).

Because of these events and the damage and shock they caused, suddenly flood management

was number one on the political agenda in Limburg. An extensive study commissioned by

Rijkswaterstaat produced a choice of strategies to limit damage in the future while respecting

other ambitions for floodplain use and development, in particular the existing plans for ‘green

for gravel’ (Commissie Watersnood Maas, 1994a). In line with the national framework

‘Room for the River’ the construction of dikes was considered a last resort: there was

optimism that the planned gravel quarrying could achieve the required protection levels. In

addition, initial calculations showed that the sale of the gravel could pay for the whole project,

including ecological development of the river and floodplain. The study proposed a protection

level for inhabited areas along the Meuse of 1/250 (we will discuss this figure in Section 4).

5 The 1993 flood is the largest on record (since 1911), the 1926 flood the second largest and the 1995 flood the

third largest. The estimated probabilities of the peak discharges are 1926: 1/175, 1993: 1/100 and 1995: 1/50


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The study was followed by the first step towards implementation: the drafting of the

‘Maaswerken’ programme6 (Van der Meulen et al., 2006).

At the end of January 1995 the Meuse again rose to similar levels as in 1993, with similar

consequences. Water levels were also dangerously high in the Rhine branches and

accordingly 250,000 inhabitants were evacuated from areas at risk of flooding. Flood

protection was now a political priority nationally and not just in Limburg. People and

politicians in Limburg asked for immediate action, framing their concerns in terms of ‘safety’

and ‘danger’. The national shock ‘securitised’ (Buzan et al., 1998) flood management and in

this context the legitimacy of the demand from Limburg was not challenged. ‘Securitization’

eliminates ambiguity about priorities that might have existed before (Friis, 2004), in this case

about the choice between preserving the landscape and flood protection. A Delta Plan for

Large Rivers was accepted without opposition by Parliament, mirroring the Delta Plan

established after the 1953 disaster and presenting a ‘securitised’ window of opportunities. In

Limburg this law enabled rapid construction of new levees by circumventing planning

procedures and other regulations for a limited period. 145 km of levees were constructed

around population centres to provide a protection level of 1/50 (Van Heezik, 2008) (Figure 6).

They were designed as temporary measures, keeping in mind that the Maaswerken

programme was already working on a long term solution (with a protection of 1/250) whereby

these ‘ugly obstacles’ could be removed’7 - recall there is no tradition of levees along this part

of the Meuse. These levees are characteristically about one meter high, but occasionally they

block the view of the river valley or they surround a village or hamlet, turning it into a fortress

(Figure 5).

With respect to the longer term flood protection plans developed by the Maaswerken, after the

sums had been done it transpired in 2002 that a lot less nature and flood protection was

possible with the money available from gravel quarrying. Since the national government was

not prepared to help pay for the project, Rijkswaterstaat proposed that gravel companies

should dig up twice as much gravel as originally agreed (70 rather than 35 million tonnes) to

make up for the shortfall. Limburg’s overall response to these proposals was a very angry one.

Its perception of being disadvantaged came to the fore: why should it pay for its own flood

protection, at the detriment of liveability, while elsewhere the State funds the reinforcement of

flood defences? The environmentalists that formed a part of the Maaswerken consortium

threatened to pull out because they wanted the nature development originally foreseen, and

local inhabitants were up in arms too because of the additional nuisance and destruction

caused. Throughout the project, opposing local groups have complained that safety was

compromised by environmental objectives. They remained unconvinced by the need for

‘nature development’, especially if this was to the detriment of their cherished local

environment. What is wrong, they asked, with the cows grazing in the rollicking Limburg

countryside? The three objectives of the Maaswerken: flood protection, nature development

and gravel extraction, therefore all have their own partly overlapping debates and coalitions.

From the point of view of most Limburg inhabitants, gravel quarrying is ‘imposed’ by

‘Holland’ but at the same time it was agreed by the provincial authorities. It is opposed

strongly by local inhabitants, although at the same time the quarrying companies represent

regional economic interests. Again from the point of view of Limburg inhabitants, nature

6 The Maaswerken consists of several localised projects so we will refer to it as a ‘programme’ rather than a

‘project’. 7 http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2844/Archief/archief/article/detail/601489/2001/03/24/De-Maas-wordt-er-niet-

mooier-op.dhtml accessed 21 April 2011.

http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2844/Archief/archief/article/detail/601489/2001/03/24/De-Maas-wordt-er-niet-mooier-op.dhtml

http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2844/Archief/archief/article/detail/601489/2001/03/24/De-Maas-wordt-er-niet-mooier-op.dhtml


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development is ‘imposed’ by nature-loving outsiders, though supported by local conservation

groups, too. These debates coalesce around the concrete proposals made by the Maaswerken

and are all overshadowed by questions of costs and who pays for what aspect of the project.

More details of these processes of transformation, negotiation, compromise and bargaining

around the Maaswerken are presented in Warner (2012). As far as the flood protection issue is

concerned, this financial question was eventually resolved though homogenising the Limburg

arrangement with the lowlands. Rather than discussing responsibility for flood protection

explicitly, the disagreement between Limburg and the national government led to a war of

words around the framing of the problem presented by the river Maas. The central

government took care not to call the emergency flood defences ‘dikes’, and not to refer to

‘safety’ with respect to the Maas: by implication they advocated that flood protection should

be a regional responsibility, as it had always been. The Limburg authorities on the other hand,

reflecting the general mood amongst the population, used the discourse of ‘safety’ and

expected a generous contribution from the State for flood defence. After an intense lobby by

Limburg politicians it was agreed in 2005 that flood protection would become a national

financial responsibility and be included on the register of ‘primary flood defences’ listed in

the Flood Defence Law. Note, however, that in the lowlands the local waterboards fund the

regional levees, and the levees in Limburg technically correspond with these.

Figure 5 New levees in Limburg


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Figure 6 Flood defence areas in Limburg (Ministerie van V&W 2007a)

After a lot of wrangling, false starts and alternative plans developed by the province of

Limburg, the first Maaswerken programme started in 2005. However, in 2011 most projects

are only just starting or still in preparation8. Ecological development will be much more

limited than originally foreseen while gravel quarrying will be more extensive, and long-term

flood protection is going to be achieved mainly by increasing the height of the levees as this is

the cheaper option. In short, little remains of the original pre-1993 vision of a more natural

Meuse and the 1994 plan (Commissie Watersnood Maas, 1994a). While these quarrels

continued, the river Maas itself refused to keep quiet. The long delays in getting the Maas

works started meant a necessary reliance on existing and emergency structures, which fail to

meet the legal standards of 1/250. The 21st century has seen several high-water events and

occasional flood damage. The mayor of Maastricht claims that procedures have taken too

8 http://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/water/plannen_en_projecten/vaarwegen/maas/maas_maaswerken/ accessed 21

April 2011

http://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/water/plannen_en_projecten/vaarwegen/maas/maas_maaswerken/


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long, and that the national government should do something about the structural flood risk in

Limburg9. Limburg inhabitants still feel disadvantaged compared with the lowlands, even

though they are now officially covered by the same Flood Defence Law; the fact that for the

moment measures exist mainly on paper only contributes to this perception. In early 2011 250

elderly citizens and a number of farm animals were evacuated by the army; one person died

trying to save his dog10

. These traumatic experiences predictably brought new calls for

speeding up the security upgrade (from 1/50 to 1/250). These experiences also show that the

view that the people in Limburg were accepting to ‘live with floods’ is perhaps too romantic.

4 Limits to freedom enacted: the technicalities

When the financial responsibility for the levees was transferred to the State in 2005 this meant

that the Flood Defence Law and related technical guidelines would now apply to the levees

along the Meuse in Limburg. The floodplains in Limburg had already been included in the

1997 national planning framework ‘Room for the River’. From the national government’s

perspective, since any flood damage was compensated by the Dutch taxpayer and the flood

defences were also paid for from the national budget, Limburg now has to comply with the

procedures developed for the lowland paradigm. This transfer of an alien land and water

management approach was bound to create tensions by itself. Limburg felt hegemonized once

again (see Section 2) because ‘their’ flood management was hijacked by ’Holland’ and

engineered by ‘Holland’ engineers. The following detailed examination of the technical

content of the Flood Defence Law and related technical guidelines shows that Limburg has

some reason to feel exploited by ‘Holland’ although there are compelling arguments that this

is for the best of Limburg. In deciding the details of the rules, knowledge about flooding in

the lowlands had to be interpreted and translated to the context of Limburg. Seemingly neutral

technical choices thereby express the hegemony of the lowland paradigm: numbers have

politics.

As mentioned, the study performed after the 1993 floods concluded that the probability of

failure of 1/250 was appropriate for the flood protection in Limburg (Commissie Watersnood

Maas, 1994c). This compares with protection levels of 1/1250 upward in the lowlands

(Section 2). This advice was agreed by provincial and national politicians and transposed into

the Flood Defence Law in 2005. The study argued that high protection levels were not needed

in Limburg because inundations cause material damage rather than casualties. In any case

there is no general national protection level so Limburg is no exception to have its own

treatment. In addition, the study showed that at higher protection levels the additional costs of

construction would not outweigh the prevented damage (Commissie Watersnood Maas,

1994b). In fact flood protection at lower levels is not cost effective either at most locations

except town centres (Wijbenga, 2010), but this was overruled by the political need to provide

inhabitants with some protection. The levees on the Belgium side of the Meuse are designed

for a probability of around 1/250, and this is likely to have influenced this choice of 1/250 for

Dutch Limburg. On a national scale the same rationale is followed, since protection levels are

widely different between regions, but not within regions. It can be concluded that the

protection level of 1/250 was a political choice, albeit partly supported by economic and

9 http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2686/Binnenland/article/detail/736844/2003/01/03/Maaswater-zorgt-voor-

overlast-grote-overstromingen-blijven-uit.dhtml accessed 13 July 2011 10

http://nos.nl/artikel/210424-hoogwater-eist-leven-in-limburg.html

http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2686/Binnenland/article/detail/736844/2003/01/03/Maaswater-zorgt-voor-overlast-grote-overstromingen-blijven-uit.dhtml

http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2686/Binnenland/article/detail/736844/2003/01/03/Maaswater-zorgt-voor-overlast-grote-overstromingen-blijven-uit.dhtml

http://nos.nl/artikel/210424-hoogwater-eist-leven-in-limburg.html


13

technical considerations. The fact that protection levels in Limburg are lower than those

immediate downstream in ‘Holland’ remains a sore point: even though agreed by the Limburg

politicians they themselves do not hesitate to use it as an argument to prevent further flood

protection measures being implemented, as explained in Section 5.

The story reveals more inequality when the technical guidelines for construction and

maintenance of the dikes are considered (Ministerie V&W, 2007a, 2007b). Not only is the

protection level in Limburg lower than elsewhere in The Netherlands, the Limburg levees are

designed with the express purpose of overtopping once this water level has been reached. In

contrast, in the lowlands extra ‘robustness’ is added to the design to minimize the possibilities

of breaching (Ministerie V&W, 2007b; but see Mens et al., 2011). Limburg is treated

differently because it was agreed that the new levees should not increase the flood risk

downstream, i.e. when the river reaches a level of 1/1250 the floodplain in Limburg should be

filled to capacity, including the areas that are protected at 1/125 levels. If this had not been

done risks downstream would increase and the dikes downstream would have to be

strengthened. This is a classical upstream-downstream problem (Zeitoun and Warner, 2006).

In Limburg this is perceived as unfair: why should they ‘sacrifice’ their property and suffer

disruption to help prevent flooding in ‘Holland’? From a risk analysis point of view this

discussion about protection levels is hampered by a lack of understanding about the difference

between societal risks and individual risks. The political and popular interpretation of the

protection levels refers to individual risks, while the considerations for setting the legal

protection levels refer to societal risks. Seen from the societal point of view, it is realistic that

protection standards in more crowded areas are higher than in less crowded areas. However, it

is the individual perception of risks that determines Limburg’s feeling of being short-changed.

A similar reasoning as in the technical guidelines (Ministerie V&W, 2007a, 2007b) is applied

in the spatial planning rules for floodplains as laid down in ‘Room for the River’ (1997). In

this framework it is stipulated that there shall be no new development (or changes to existing

ones) in the floodplains in order to preserve the carrying capacity and also to prevent

additional damage to property in future11,12

. While in the lowlands it is obvious where the

floodplains are, i.e. between the dikes and the river, in Limburg until recently there were no

physical structures that indicate which area the river could inundate. In Limburg the planning

framework defines ‘floodplain’ as the area which would inundate with a 1/1250 probability

flood. Inclusion of these areas in the framework therefore means that economic and

residential development is effectively halted in a much larger area than the area that is

protected from flooding. The framework was barely off the press when it was contested in the

Parliamentary Special Committee for Water, Traffic and Spatial Planning. Committee

members from Limburg felt that there was no need for absolute bans on construction, that

existing agreements with developers had to respected, that the restricted area was defined too

large, etc. The subsequent ‘Large rivers’ (2006) framework is indeed less restrictive. It

distinguishes two areas in the floodplain: where water flows and where water is stored, with

fewer restrictions in the latter. In view of the floodplain characteristics, this change in rules is

relatively more beneficial to Limburg. It also exempts developments that were already in the

pipeline before the policy framework.

11

The rules are slightly more complicated than this, e.g. new buildings are allowed within villages or towns.

However, these variations are not relevant for the general picture. 12

The Netherlands does not know individual flood insurance; damages due to flooding were so far reimbursed

by the State so the State has a vested interest in keeping damages as low as possible.


14

Interestingly, the ‘Room for the River’ planning framework mentions a mandatory protection

level of 1/1250 for newly built developments as a means to prevent additional risks, thus

accepting that there would be new developments and that the carrying capacity of the Meuse

would thereby be reduced. In fact, as a result of the negotiations surrounding the

establishment of the Maaswerken and ‘Room for the River’ some developments in the

floodplain that were in the pipeline were excluded from the ban to future investments. One

such ‘pipelined’ luxury housing project in the Meuse floodplain, Oolderveste, secured this

exemption for after intense social and parliamentary debate (Wolsink, 2006) and with the

condition that the developer builds a dike at 1/1250 protection level. The ‘sacrifices’ made by

Limburg to preserve the carrying capacity of the river, for the benefit of downstream areas,

were therefore not quite as big as they could have been. However, the perception of being

used by ‘Holland’, this time to reduce the lowland flood risk, remains.

The overall picture that emerges is one of ambivalences. As far as residents and politicians in

Limburg are concerned, they want the same level of flood protection as the lowland

inhabitants and they want this to be paid for by the national taxpayer: the hegemony of the

lowlands flood management is by and large accepted. While there is no true counter-

hegemonic coalition, the inhabitants do raise counter-hegemonic arguments to try to retain

some autonomy: they want to keep the freedom they were accustomed to for building in the

floodplain. However, this means that flood damage will increase which they then expect the

national government to reimburse. As far as rules and regulations are concerned,

developments in the floodplain are forbidden by the national planning frameworks, so the

floodplain in Limburg is treated in the same way as floodplains in the lowland although some

exceptions were negotiated so Limburg is relatively well off. However, in the new flood

defence system the protection levels in Limburg are much lower than in the lowland, so

Limburg loses out here although the impact of flooding is never as great as it would be

downstream. It is important to stress that all decisions described above were accepted by

Limburg’s regional and local politicians. However, this does not mean that they do not contest

them when opportunity arises. One place where such opportunities occurred was the study

Integrated Assessment of the river Meuse (IVM) on future flood management in Limburg.

5 Flood management futures

The perception that Limburg is treated unfairly also came to the fore in the Integrated

Assessment of the river Meuse (IVM). This was an exploratory study into possibilities for

flood management in the future, when climate change is expected to add 20% to the river

flows (Reuber et al., 2006). It was initiated in 2001 by the Secretary of State for Transport,

Public Works and Water Management and implemented by Rijkswaterstaat’s regional

directorate Limburg. Its objective was the selection of a politically acceptable set of flood

management measures that would ensure the legal level of flood protection as well as provide

as much ‘landscape quality’ as possible (see Wesselink (2009) for a discussion of landscape

quality and its interpretation in IVM). The required space for the selected measures would

have to be reserved and protected from all developments, so in effect this study investigated

whether the area covered by the planning framework ‘Room for the River’ would be large

enough in future.

The project commissioned many detailed studies to inform regional debates with politicians,

NGOs and other organised interests about possible and acceptable solutions (Wesselink,

2007b; Wesselink et al. 2006). In these debates, the key issues were (Wesselink et al., 2009):


15

- A belief that more could be done upstream (in Belgium and France) to reduce floods in

Limburg. At the beginning of the project this question threatened to halt the regional

debates, as some participants did not want to continue unless these upstream measures

were taken into account. The issue kept arising during IVM and it is incorporated in

Provincial and other planning documents as an important area to pursue in international

arenas.

- The political unacceptability of more digging to increase capacity in the floodplain while

there is much resistance to the current Maaswerken gravel quarrying. It was felt that

possibilities to prevent more digging and/or the need to set aside land should be

investigated, especially accepting higher flood levels and setting up a fund to cover the

additional damage. It was recognised, however, that proposing the inhabitants to increase

flood risk at this moment in time would mean political suicide.

- A recurring question why Limburg should have lower protection levels than the lowlands,

effectively helping to solve the problem there.

- Are measures needed outside the 1/1250 floodplain; if not, there was no need for detailed

investigations since this area is already subject to planning restrictions.

- Who will pay if the proposals were to be implemented.

The first three of these issues represent challenges to the overall IVM objective and thereby to

the ‘new’ flood management paradigm transposed from the lowlands made operational in the

current legal and policy frameworks that set the boundary conditions for IVM. These

challenges were mainly played out through detailed contestation of the models and other data

used by the project (Wesselink et al., 2009). They can all be countered by technical

arguments, which is exactly what the IVM experts did, but this only temporarily closes the

essentially political debate on authority and autonomy. While the new flood management

paradigm therefore promotes the inhabitants’ safety, the perception remains that it is an

unrequited interference in local affairs: it invades their space and freedoms, making them feel

fenced in and (sometimes literally) ‘enclosed’. Limburg even blames the national government

for failing to diminish flood risk by failing to convince Belgium and France to retain water

(Warner 2011). More details of these processes of transformation, negotiation, compromise

and bargaining around the IVM are presented in Wesselink (2007b) and Wesselink et al.

(2006, 2009).

Ultimately, in the IVM recommendations to the Minister no firm commitment was made to

reserve additional areas for flood management (originally the project’s objective)13

. This

sends a clear message from the region that the debate about how to approach flood

management is by no means closed, even though for the moment the current legal and policy

frameworks are accepted. This project is thereby an example of the more general observation

that ‘flood projects bring contest over the risk, over who should be protected by whom at

what sacrifice. These issues are so fundamental they warrant intense political debate and

action. It is therefore prudent to anticipate that such projects will always be politicised,

although this rarely really means the end of the project’ (Warner, 2011 19). According to a

civil servant: ‘This is not as serious as they like us to believe. In view of the political

difficulties [...] a binding decision will not be taken.’ The IVM participants knew that many

studies and consultations would be necessary before the diggers could move in, providing

ample opportunity for opposition. At the same time, they considered it important to ensure

13

This outcome reflects as much the opposition from other, downstream, provinces as well as from Limburg. To

discuss these details would unnecessarily complicate the text.


16

that the interests of the organisation they represented were taken into account even if this was

a preliminary investigation.

6 Hegemony through securitization

After the 1993 flood event national politicians and press flocked to Limburg, sharing with

residents the outrage that a flood could happen in this day and age and promising

compensation and better flood protection. After the 1995 events decision making truly moved

towards a ‘politics of floods and fear’ (Warner, 2011 1) where everything seemed possible

that was not in times of normal politics: an emergency law (Delta Plan Rivers), large sums of

money, bypassing existing EIA policies, opaque negotiation on dike locations, etc. This has

left Limburg integrated, with their consent, in a hegemonic flood management paradigm that

sits uncomfortably in its physical and social landscapes, that does not provide as much flood

protection as its inhabitants would wish and at a cost (long term gravel quarrying) they are not

really prepared to pay. So how come they find themselves in this situation?

Understanding this process as strategic security framing (‘securitization’) can help explain

how this came to be. Technically, in Limburg flood risk is limited to the likelihood of damage

to infrastructure and property. However, despite advanced techniques of flood risk assessment

and management that give the appearance of controlling the future, in the political arena ‘risk’

is ultimately about fear and anxiety. In 1993 and again in 1995 flooding was declared by

Limburg journalists and politicians alike to be a matter of (personal) safety and survival. Re-

labelling flooding as a security issue in this way legitimised extraordinary measures that are

otherwise impossible to achieve (Buzan et al., 1998). Assigning this label of ‘security’ is a

powerful move for the closure of debates, foreclosing political debate and choice for the sake

of swift emergency action. Before 1993, flooding was not on the political agenda in Limburg;

after that, it never really left it. Limburg’s leadership has repeatedly sought to invoke a

securitization logic to claim fast-tracking and additional funding from the national

government. In the end, Limburg won the battle to be included in the national system of

safety standards and, as a consequence, the national budget14

, although it cannot be so sure

whether the war was won over who sets the rules.

The securitization of flooding thus had a political instrumentality: it immediately raised flood

protection to priority number one to which other objectives, such as the re-creation of a more

natural river, had to surrender. Money available for flood safety was spent on emergency

levees instead of a long term, possibly more satisfactory, solution to create a more natural

river. This is a solution the inhabitants will now have to live with. In this context there is a

strong sense that disasters are exploited in the decision-making arena as windows of

opportunity for bringing in a set of measures that was already waiting in the wings: they bring

enough pressure to push preferred alternatives through. In this case, the beleaguered ‘green

for gravel’ plans could be tabled and linked with security provision while this support for a

flood scheme existed. However, this piggyback arrangement did not sit well with local

inhabitants, who believed security should come first and gravel quarrying should be reduced

as much as possible. This brings, on the part of citizen groups, a sense of being caught out by

a ‘blue-and-green’ alliance of national and regional politicians and engineers, the former still

14

Interestingly national documents on the Maas now also refer to ‘safety, a label that had strongly resisted by

flood experts until then.


17

tainted by corruption scandals and the latter representing centuries of ‘Holland’ dominance.

While being co-opted at times by the local and regional leadership, citizens remained wary

and distrustful of interventions in the Meuse floodplain, especially if the project, as such

complex projects inevitably do, runs into unexpected setbacks.

In any hegemonic arrangement, it is to be expected that the most powerful partner downplays

conflict and inequality while foregrounding joint responsibility and partnership, while the less

powerful actor downplays the responsibility that comes with partnership and foregrounds

conflict and inequality. In this respect, Limburg’s tendency to self-victimisation is expressed

in a rather contradictory stance. Limburgers are wary of measures that mean local sacrifices to

protect themselves or even only the lowlands from floods. Limburg’s developers and

municipal authorities want to build in floodplains, but also to be protected from river floods

and/or be compensated if there is a flood. Limburg does not want to be patronised, yet

‘securitises’ flooding to demand protection, preferably paid for by others. Whether the rules

from the lowlands are ultimately beneficial to Limburg, or to specific groups within the

province, is likely to remain a contested issue. Other examples of securitization in the water

domain are presented e.g. in Warner (2008, 2012, this issue). It is clear from these studies that

the relationship between securitization and hegemony is context-dependent, and that both

hegemon and non-hegemon can use a securitization strategy to their advantage. It is also clear

that seemingly closed debates can at any time be re-opened, especially when ‘focussing

events’ happen that demand immediate political attention. The Limburg case highlights how

existing hegemony is easily enacted in new situations. Exactly how this will happen cannot be

predicted, but ‘securitization’ and ‘hegemony’ are important sensitising concepts that can

alert the observer to mechanisms of power re-distribution in other situations and settings.

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