Expert perspectives on living with water (meebewegen) as climate adaptation in the Netherlands

In many places around the world, flood defenses—structures such as dams, levees, and dikes—have allowed societies to grow and thrive near bodies of water. However, adapting to intensifying climate change may require an alternative or additional flood management strategy for living with water, motivated by both long-term flood risk reduction and other societal goals. Based on 43 interviews with climate adaptation experts in the Netherlands, we evaluate perspectives on living with water—or meebewegen in Dutch—including the degree to which living-with-water measures are expected to be implemented, their likely role as part of the Netherlands’ future flood risk management, and enablers and barriers. We find widespread agreement that many living-with-water measures will be implemented at large to very large scale, but find the most disagreement about the subset of living-with-water measures focused on retreat. We develop a typology that organizes the diverse set of perspectives on the future role of living with water into four quadrants, based on whether experts expect flood risk management to depend more on engineering flood defenses or living-with-water strategies, and on whether living-with-water strategies are viewed as socio-politically favorable or unfavorable. We identify spatial constraints, political leadership, living-with-water narratives, and misaligned incentives as factors shaping the barriers to and opportunities for living with water. Our research shows that, despite wildly differing perspectives about flood adaptation through living-with-water measures, points of agreement exist about limits of current adaptation strategies and some need for living with water strategies. These could be harnessed to enhance living with water where this new paradigm of water management emerges.