RESILIENCE AND VULNERABILITY - COASTAL DYNAMICS OR DUTCH DIKES

This paper describes coastal resilience as a measure of the extent to which a coast is able to respond to external pressures without losing actual or potential functions. Such usage of the term gives coastal sc ientists, planners and managers a new opportunity to express complex c oastal dynamics in a simple aggregated form. Coastal resilience has mo rphological, ecological and socio-economic components, each of which r epresents another aspect of the coastal system's adaptive capacity to perturbations. Enhancing coastal resilience is increasingly viewed as a cost-effective way to prepare for uncertain future changes while mai ntaining opportunities for coastal development. The Netherlands has kn own a long tradition of controlling natural coastal processes by strin gent dune management and building hard sea-defence structures. However , both socio-economic and natural adaptive processes have become const rained owing to the limited availability of land and the diminished co astal resilience that has resulted from technological solutions and le gal provisions. The recent study Growing with the Sea proposes to rest ore natural coastal processes along the Dutch coast and let natural an d socio-economic systems interact more dynamically. It explores possib ilities of enhancing coastal resilience in The Netherlands by allowing managed retreat in areas where it is environmentally acceptable and r eclaiming land in other areas.