Integrated coastal policy via Building with Nature

Abstract

The thesis which appears here is excerpted from the book Integrated Coastal Zone Development via Building with Nature® (Waterman 2008a, 2008b). Although this approach was first applied in the Netherlands, it has gradually been recognized worldwide as a harmonious means of creating land areas for living, working, tourism & recreation, and infrastructure, whilst ensuring the preservation or expansion of valuable environmental resources, nature and landscape. In addition, climate change resulting in sea-level rise, more frequent and intense storm-surges are taken in to account, as well as land subsidence and salt water intrusion. The most extensive applications are found in the Netherlands, but remarkable examples also exist or are in progress bordering densely populated coastal and delta areas elsewhere in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Far East, the Americas, Australia, as well as numerous waterfront developments on lakes, rivers and canals. With approximately 80 percent of the largest population centres in the world situated on coasts and deltas, the need for sound, integrated coastal zone development via building with nature” is urgent and appropriate. The flexible integration of land-in-water and of water-in-land, using materials and forces & interactions present in nature is an environmentally friendly and economically advantageous system which is gaining more and more acceptance worldwide. In implementing this method a new flexible dynamic equilibrium coastline is created using sand from the sea, consisting of a new primary range of dunes with a new beach in front and with a minimum of solid sea-wall elements. The emphasis is no longer on inflexible solid bulwarks against the sea, like dams & dykes, but instead on flexible soft structures in harmony with the sea, like dunes & beaches.