A sandpit as a bridge between science and practice

A landscape takes shape in a sandpit. Participants use their hands to move a dyke, deepen a channel or raise a patch of land. A projector displays data from a digital model onto the sand. As soon as someone changes something, the model responds: water finds new routes and flood risks become visible. What normally remains abstract is literally at their fingertips.

This Tangible Landscape is one of the creative practices WUR researchers are experimenting with. The sandpit shows how land and water can be managed in a climate-resilient way and helps people discuss the choices involved.

Marlies van Ree, a researcher in climate adaptation and Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) at Wageningen Environmental Research, sees the Tangible Landscape as more than a tool for displaying data. Depending on the case, researchers work with policy makers, water boards, businesses and residents, for example. ‘The Tangible Landscape helps those involved see things differently, work together and ask new questions. Precisely because they view the same landscape from different perspectives, a shared dialogue does not come naturally.’

NbS are ways of tackling societal challenges relating to climate change, biodiversity loss and water management by using natural processes. Daan Verstand, a climate adaptation researcher at Wageningen Environmental Research (WENR), uses the definition provided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). ‘A measure is a Nature-Based Solution if it both addresses a societal challenge and benefits biodiversity,’ he says. ‘Both aspects have to be present.’

In towns and cities, trees, urban parks and green-blue roofs can help combat heat and flooding while providing habitat for birds and insects. Along rivers, the Room for the River programme is a well-known example. Instead of preventing floods by raising the dykes, the river is given more room.

Interest is growing. ‘Government agencies and water boards are increasingly realising that constantly raising a dyke or pumping water away is becoming more and more difficult,’ says Verstand. NbS make use of natural processes. That requires a different way of thinking. ‘You give a natural process room to unfold,’ he says. ‘As humans, we find that quite difficult. We prefer to control it. And it takes time before a solution like this becomes fully effective.’

Within the Knowledge Base programme Climate Resilient Water and Land Use, researchers from various WUR institutes are working on NbS. In the case of green-blue roofs, for example, scientists are investigating how rainwater can be retained for longer while promoting biodiversity. During dredging operations to keep harbours and navigation channels navigable, they are looking at ways to return the released sediment to the system in an ecosystem-friendly way. One option is to raise salt marshes, thereby strengthening natural coastal defences.

These examples also show why putting such solutions into practice can be complicated. Flood protection, agriculture, nature, the economy and spatial planning are all interconnected, while policy is often organised in separate domains. This raises practical questions: who is responsible, who pays, who benefits and who decides?

That is why researchers from different fields of expertise and WUR institutes not only work on individual measures, but also come together around questions that recur across multiple projects. How do you involve policy makers and local stakeholders? How do you bring different interests together? And how do you connect research with practice?

This is where creative practices, such as the sandpit, come into play. ‘They are essentially different ways of using creativity in your process or in the outcome,’ says Van Ree. ‘Because we know that facts alone are not enough. Behavioural research shows that choices are largely driven by emotion, imagination and experience. We make a large proportion of our decisions based on feelings, not just on reason.’

That does not mean knowledge is unimportant: science must continue to measure, calculate and substantiate. But people do not automatically change their behaviour because of yet another graph. ‘We have been producing reports for 40 years saying that things are not going well with the climate,’ says Van Ree. ‘Perhaps that is not the right approach, or at least it also requires a different approach.’ With NbS, the relationship between people and nature also plays a role. ‘It is also about how we relate to nature and to one another.’

The Tangible Landscape shows how such a creative approach works in practice. The landscape is recreated in special sand that retains its shape. Information from a computer model is projected onto it. ‘If you remove a dyke, for example, you immediately see the consequences for the landscape,’ says Van Ree. ‘You experience what happens straight away. And there is something about moulding sand that affects people. It connects them. Everyone has played in a sandpit at some point.’

During internal pilot sessions with researchers and WUR colleagues, Van Ree noticed that participants talked differently. The discussion focused less on numbers of homes, technical requirements or individual interests and more on values: what makes this area a good place to live? ‘Sitting together with your hands in the sand creates more room to talk openly about complex and sometimes sensitive issues.’

This also helps because different disciplines do not always speak the same language. An ecologist, a hydrological modeller, a policy maker and a site manager may use the same words but mean something different. According to Van Ree, making an issue visual or tangible creates a different form of shared understanding. ‘For some things, we have a limited vocabulary, or we attach different meanings to the same words.’

Several larger sessions with external stakeholders are planned for the autumn. The first case study centres on the ‘forest of the future’. For this, the case study area, part of the Veluwe, will be recreated in sand using a 3D-printed mould. In addition, a new creative practice will be used during a stakeholder meeting on nature-inclusive dredging in December, another case study within this project.

Within this Knowledge Base programme, the researchers are therefore studying different creative practices to better understand when and how such an approach adds value. They are looking, for example, at whether it leads to new insights, encourages participants to look at an issue differently, strengthens their engagement with the subject, or creates new connections and forms of collaboration. ‘We are going to monitor the upcoming activities carefully,’ says Van Ree. ‘That will give us a better understanding of their value.’

That question of value is closely linked to the point in the process at which creative practices are used. According to Verstand, NbS cannot be scaled up by developing a solution within WUR and only afterwards telling others how to apply it. ‘You need to actively involve policy makers and other stakeholders during the process.’

Creative practices do not solve this problem, but they can reveal where tensions lie and which interests are at stake. Water retention can help tackle drought, but can also affect agriculture. Nature-inclusive dredging can benefit ecosystems, but must also fit with shipping, regulation and costs. These practices can help create space for the right conversation earlier in the process.

Van Ree sees this as an important distinction. ‘On the science side, we still often think in terms of: how can we present the knowledge we have gained in a different way, so that it becomes clearer or more tangible?’ she says. ‘But we want to show that there can be significant added value in using creative practices right from the outset.’

Creative practices are no miracle cure. If you want to measure how much CO₂ is released from peat, you mainly need good measuring equipment. Not clay or sand. ‘It is not appropriate at every point in the process, nor is it suitable for everyone,’ says Van Ree. ‘You need to think carefully: what is the aim, does creativity fit that aim and, if so, in what form?’

Some people are reluctant to draw, build or play, says Van Ree. ‘In that case, a creative practice can backfire.’

There is also a risk that a playful approach trivialises the seriousness of the issue. Climate change and biodiversity loss are not a game. This requires care, says Van Ree. This way of working also takes time, money and guidance. And its impact is difficult to measure: sometimes the value only becomes apparent later, for example when someone starts looking at an issue differently, asks a new question or finds a partner to work with.

For researchers, it also means working in a different way. ‘It requires openness,’ says Van Ree. ‘And a little courage. You do not know exactly where it will lead.’ She hopes creative practices will become more firmly embedded in the structure of projects and programmes.

Verstand hopes this approach will help bring Nature-Based Solutions closer to practice. ‘I hope we can make the concept of Nature-Based Solutions tangible for many more people,’ he says. ‘That they know which measures are available for their specific problem and can start using them.’

Creative practices can help bridge the gap between science and society: not by making complex knowledge simpler than it is, but by making it visible, tangible and relatable, and by opening up the conversation about what is needed to move forward together.